A San Diego County Superior Court judge overseeing the trial of a man charged with a 1988 murder in Seal Beach granted an evidentiary hearing Monday related to new allegations of prosecutorial misconduct stemming from the county’s jail informant scandal.
San Diego County Superior Court Judge Daniel B. Goldstein granted the evidentiary hearing in the case of Paul Gentile Smith, 64, who is charged with killing 29-year-old Robert Haugen in Sunset Beach on Oct. 24, 1988.
Smith was convicted in 2010 of murder with special circumstances of torture and robbery as well as solicitation to kill or attack the lead investigator in the case, sheriff’s investigator Raymond Wert.
In 2021, prosecutors conceded Smith should get a new trial in the murder case because some evidence was not turned over to defense attorneys as is required by law. The charge relating to an alleged plot to kill the investigator in the case was dismissed.
A year later, the prosecutor on the case, Ebrahim Baytieh — who is now an Orange County Superior Court judge — was fired by Spitzer, who cited the alleged failure to turn over evidence in the case. Last year, the murder case was reassigned to the judge in San Diego County when defense attorney Scott Sanders filed a motion to dismiss for outrageous governmental conduct over the jail informant issue.
The evidentiary hearing on that matter is set to begin Tuesday.
It remains unclear if Baytieh will be called to testify in the hearing.
On Monday, Goldstein initially appeared skeptical of Sanders’ arguments in support of an evidentiary hearing, but after hearing more arguments, he said he was more convinced of the necessity.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Seton Hunt has said previously that the District Attorney’s Office agreed to not use evidence from informants in the case.
“What would deny the defendant of having a fair trial?” Goldstein asked Sanders, who previously won a motion to recuse the Orange County District Attorney’s Office from the prosecution of Scott Dekraai, the worst mass killer in the county’s history, as well as the option of the death penalty for Dekraai, who pleaded guilty and is serving a life in prison without parole sentence.
Sanders argued the corruption of not turning over favorable evidence to defense attorneys was ongoing. Prosecutors legally are required to turn over evidence that is helpful to defense attorneys.
At issue in the evidentiary matter are comments made by confidential informant Jeffrey Platt that indicated he had violated Smith’s constitutional rights by questioning him in jail about the charges against him when the defendant had a lawyer representing him.
The county’s long-running jail informant scandal is based on allegations that sheriff’s deputies would use snitches to pump other inmates for information about their cases when they were represented by attorneys, which is illegal. It is not illegal if investigators are working on a current or ongoing crime such as what Smith was accused of doing — soliciting the murder of Wert, the lead investigator in his case.
As a result of the Dekraai case, multiple other defendants saw reduced charges or cases dismissed because of the use of jailhouse informants. The recusal of the District Attorney’s Office was upheld on appeal.
Sanders has alleged that Baytieh concealed for more than a decade a recorded interview Platt made in which he said that he and two other inmates were placed in Smith’s dayroom group in jail where they repeatedly asked him about his case.
Sanders argued that when it became clear Platt admitted a violation of Smith’s rights, they turned to another informant, Arthur Palacios, who defense attorneys say falsely claimed he overheard Smith talking about the murder.
Sanders alleges that Baytieh misled a grand jury with testimony from Palacios to falsely portray Platt as part of the conspiracy with Smith to kill or attack Wert even though Baytieh knew Platt was an informant.
“No one from the District Attorney’s Office — when all of this was developing — at any time went to Ray Wert and said `Explain what happened here, why did this happen, give me assurances it didn’t affect the case,’ ” Sanders said. “None of that has happened.”
At stake is whether Sanders will seek a dismissal of the case against Smith or whether Goldstein might consider some other sanction such as limiting prosecutors to a lesser charge of second-degree murder and dismissal of a special circumstance allegations of torture and robbery that could lead to a sentence of life without parole.
Goldstein said he was “having a little problem getting my head wrapped around this that currently Orange County’s DA’s Office or Sheriff’s Office is not providing discovery.”
Sanders explained that he has never been told whether the District Attorney’s Office or Sheriff’s Department has ever questioned Baytieh about what went wrong with the disclosure of evidence and what his explanation was for it.
Hunt insisted his office has turned over all the evidence Sanders has asked for.
“I agree with you on the analysis of the motion to dismiss,” Goldstein told Hunt. “But where I may depart from your analysis is it’s not just a Massiah violation (of questioning defendants illegally with informants). It is something that looks like a conspiracy, and not necessarily just to deprive Mr. Smith of his rights, but it seems like a number of people were infected with this conspiracy. I should probably use a different term than conspiracy. But normally with a Massiah (violation) you get a detective or a group of detectives making a bonehead move. But this seems a bit more than that. … And now Mr. Sanders is arguing he believes the case is so contaminated there is exculpatory evidence out there and you may not even know about it.”
Goldstein said he needed to hear more during an evidentiary hearing to make a better-informed ruling.
Sanders questioned whether the District Attorney’s Office and sheriff’s department can afford Smith a fair trial, given their animosity toward the defense attorney.
Sanders said Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes has filed a complaint with the state Bar against Sanders.
“The sheriff of Orange County has filed a bar complaint against me, which include allegations that relate to this case,” Sanders said.
Sanders also noted that Spitzer has issued a statements claiming Sanders was going to run against him for district attorney.
“He said I was the engine of a leftwing cabal to overtake him for office,” Sanders said.