An Orange County sheriff’s sergeant testified Wednesday he has no idea why a report he wrote of an interview with an informant got lost in the case of a murder defendant whose case has led to an evidentiary hearing into allegations of the illegal use of jailhouse snitches.
Sgt. Donald Voght took the stand Wednesday, a day after Orange County Superior Court Judge Ebrahim Baytieh finished two days of testimony in which he defended how he prosecuted Paul Gentile Smith, 64, for the killing of 29-year-old Robert Haugen in Sunset Beach on Oct. 24, 1988.
Much of Voght’s testimony focused on interviews he sat in on with inmates Jeffrey Platt and Arthur Palacios, who claimed they heard Smith confess to the killing. At issue in the case is whether they were acting as informants for law enforcement questioning Smith on the murder, which would be what lawyers call a Massiah violation.
Before heading into an interview with Platt in July 2009, Voght “never heard of the guy before,” he testified.
Sheriff’s investigator Raymond Wert was the lead in the case with Voght helping.
“I did not know Jeff Platt was an informant,” Voght said. “Honestly, I thought he was just a witness. I didn’t know he was an informant to anybody… The day that I met Jeff Platt I thought he was giving us information as a witness.”
It came out years after Smith’s conviction in 2010 when a sheriff’s log on the handling of informants surfaced that there was discussion about having Platt, Palacios and Paul Martin scheduled together to be in a dayroom of the jail with Smith to question the defendant.
“I don’t know that any of these guys were informants,” Voght said.
When asked if Wert told him about the arrangement with the informants to be in the same dayroom with Smith, Voght said “absolutely not.”
“Did you think it was important to ask him questions about (Platt’s) motivations” in coming forward to authorities, Smith’s attorney, Scott Sanders of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office asked.
“I didn’t ask him hardly any questions, maybe four or five,” Voght said. “I think he just said he thought it was wrong (what Smith was accused of doing), so, no, I didn’t think to ask him what his motivations were.”
It was the first case in which Voght worked with an informant, he said.
Voght emphasized that he did not often work with informants, but said it was important to “corroborate” what any snitch says.
“You just assumed (Platt) wanted to take a bad guy off the streets?” Sanders asked.
“Correct,” he replied.
Platt also provided information to authorities about Smith’s alleged attempt to hire someone to attack or kill Wert. At one point Platt supposedly said he would aid in that, but Voght said he didn’t believe Platt was sincere about it.
Even though Platt provided recordings of phone calls with Smith when Platt was out of custody, Voght said he wasn’t sure whether Platt was an informant.
Baytieh testified that it appeared to him that the informants were being used to help with what is known as a Perkins Operation, which is a legal use of snitches to question a defendant when there is an ongoing crime occurring such as solicitation of a hit on an investigator.
Sanders asked Baytieh about his client’s claims that Smith knew investigators were listening in on his jailhouse calls and that he and his girlfriend, Tina Smith, would talk about hiring a hit man as an entertaining game between the two, but the former prosecutor said there was evidence Smith was seeking help for a hit on a witness in the case even when he was in custody in Las Vegas before he was transferred to Orange County.
Wert was concerned enough about the threat that he “put up some security cameras” to protect himself, Voght said.
Voght said he wrote the report on the interview with Platt two months later. He said there didn’t seem to be any urgency to document the meeting.
Voght also denied any knowledge of a “snitch tank” at the Intake Release Center of the Orange County Jail.
He admitted he was confused about who would be considered a witness and who would be categorized as an informant.
“It’s easier to define what a witness was,” he said. “I never worked with an informant, so I didn’t know what a confidential informant entailed.”
Voght did recall that Smith turned to selling pornography as a means to raise money for the alleged hit.
Voght said he never spoke with Baytieh about informants in the case and said he would never keep any evidence from prosecutors.
Voght also didn’t doubt Palacios’ claim to be a “listening post” only with Smith and avoided questioning him about the murder.
When Sanders asked Voght why he didn’t dig deeper to check out the claims of the snitches, Voght said, “If I as an investigator failed to do what I should shame on me… But, no, I didn’t probe and think to ask those questions.”
Under questioning from Senior Deputy District Attorney Seton Hunt, Voght said he “never had any intentions of hiding that report” on the meeting with Platt.
“I didn’t send it over” to Baytieh, he said. “I wasn’t responsible for that.”
San Diego County Superior Court Judge Daniel B. Goldstein, who is overseeing the hearing due to the conflict with Baytieh, asked Voght that if he intended to hide evidence would he document it in the first place?
“No,” he said.
Voght confirmed for Goldstein that at the time there was only one way to file a report or evidence such as the recording of the interview, which also went missing. And there was no difference whether an informant was involved or not, he said.
Now, sheriff’s officials call it a “remedy report” instead of an evidence report.
“Why is it called a remedy report” Hunt asked Voght.
“I’m not 100% sure,” he said.
Under questioning from Goldstein, Voght said case agents and investigators helping on the case could book evidence.
“We would log it onto a computer which prints off this red tag,” he said. “That was the record, the physical record that was stapled to the piece of evidence, which was locked into storage.”
“Seems to me the case agent… has to have an evidence list to know what to share is that fair to say?” Goldstein asked Voght.
“Yes,” he replied.
“Did the homicide unit receive training on the handling of evidence?” Goldstein asked him.
“No, we never received training on how to handle evidence,” Voght said.
Voght also recalled attending a lecture led by Baytieh on training for providing evidence to defense attorneys.
“I remember Massiah being a big deal in 2015-16-17,” Voght said, referring to the first informant scandal involving another Sanders client, Scott Dekraai, the worst mass killer in Orange County history.
“The first time I had ever heard of Massiah was about then,” Voght said. ” I knew the principle of Massiah, but I didn’t know the term Massiah honestly.”
Hunt indirectly asked Voght about any potential motive investigators might have had in burying evidence.
“Do you believe the threats against (Wert) by Mr. Smith caused him great anger?” Hunt asked Voght.
“I believe it caused him fear,” he said. “Anger isn’t the word I would use.”
“Do you believe it was appropriate for Investigator Wert to be the case agent on a case where the defendant threatened his life?” Hunt asked Voght.
“I didn’t even think about it back then,” he said. “I had no problem with him being the case agent on that.”