The man guilty of the worst mass killing in Orange County history could find out Thursday if he continues to face the death penalty or have the Orange County District Attorney’s Office removed from prosecuting his case based on revived arguments that his rights were violated by the use of jailhouse snitches.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals, who has already ruled that prosecutors cannot use damning statements Scott Evans Dekraai made to a jailhouse informant about his case in the penalty phase of his trial, may rule Thursday on further penalties against Orange County prosecutors based on allegations that some law enforcement officials lied under oath during previous hearings.
The ruling could come after attorneys make their final arguments following several more evidentiary hearings and testimony about how Orange County law enforcement handle jailhouse informants.
In recent court filings, Dekraai’s attorney, Scott Sanders of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, alleges his client cannot get a fair hearing while prosecutors argue that even if the allegations were true the remedies being sought are not allowed.
Particularly at issue is whether some investigators lied about how government informant Fernando Perez was placed in a cell next to Dekraai, where Perez befriended him and heard him “brag” about the Oct. 12, 2011, massacre in and around a Seal Beach beauty salon.
In August, Goethals ruled that jurors in the penalty phase will not hear those statements. It was the only sanction Goethals allowed as he ruled serious misconduct occurred in the handling of jailhouse informants in the case, but he chalked it up more to negligence than a conspiracy as Sanders has alleged.
After that ruling, however, Sanders became aware of jail records that he argues contradicts evidence in the first round of evidentiary hearings that indicated a nurse put Perez next to Dekraai’s cell, not sheriff’s officials seeking to gather more damning evidence against the defendant, which could lead to a violation of his constitutional rights because he was represented by an attorney.
Sanders has also alleged that sheriff’s officials would place some informants into disciplinary isolation — even though they had done nothing to merit any punishment — so they could be with other inmates and seek more evidence against them. He has also alleged that some informants spur their targets to confess or face the wrath of the Mexican Mafia.
Deputy Seth Tunstall hired a prominent defense attorney to be with him as he testified in the hearings, consulting him once as Sanders pressed him on a seeming contradiction between a statement he made regarding his involvement in a program for jailhouse snitches during a civil suit and his testimony in the Dekraai case.
“It is now clear that the (Sheriff’s Department) long ago created an informant operation designed to capture substantial information about inmates, and in particular from high-profile defendants like Scott Dekraai,” Sanders wrote in court papers.
“However, as has also been made increasingly clear, the members of that unit who have managed that operation have dedicated themselves to hiding evidence that would be helpful to Dekraai — and to an extraordinary level. Additionally, the District Attorney’s Office has taken no action to correct the systematic withholding of evidence, and lying in order to facilitate such withholding, either in its own office or in the Sheriff’s Department.”
In their zeal to win a death sentence against Dekraai, prosecutors can no longer be trusted to ensure a fair penalty phase for the defendant, Sanders argued. Dekraai pleaded guilty last year to killing his ex-wife and seven other people, and almost killing a ninth victim, outside the beauty salon.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Howard Gundy argued in his court brief that the jail records do not contradict Goethals’ earlier finding that a nurse put the informant next to Dekraai’s cell.
“The defense put on six witnesses, and introduced numerous exhibits before it ran out of gas without having moved the needle one iota on this critical issue,” Gundy wrote.
Gundy cited an appellate court ruling overturning a lower court judge’s decision to throw out a sex-crime case based on a prosecutor’s perjury during an evidentiary hearing. The perjured testimony did not deny the defendant a right to a fair trial because it came during an ancillary hearing and not during the trial, the appellate court ruled.
Also, Dekraai has already gotten what he wanted, Gundy argued.
“Defendant has already received the remedy to which he was entitled — production of the records, time to investigate them and the re-opening of the hearing,” Gundy wrote.
— City News Service