A Los Angeles Superior Court judge denied a defense attorney’s attempts to have an Orange County jurist removed from presiding over the case of a double-murder defendant’s trial, according to a court order obtained Friday.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kevin Brazile was chosen to rule on the motion to disqualify Orange County Superior Court Judge John Conley from presiding over the case against Daniel Patrick Wozniak, 30, based in part on Conley’s past experience as a prosecutor for the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
Conley is the third judge on the case since January when another judge recused himself.
Wozniak’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, cited Conley’s work with a jailhouse informant in a case from the 1980s when Conley was a prosecutor.
Sanders argued that Orange County prosecutors have a questionable past dealing with jailhouse snitches going back to a case against Thomas Thompson, who was executed in 1998.
Sanders also claimed Conley could be an “important witness” in his motion to dismiss the judge from the case as well as the death penalty for Wozniak.
Conley responded that the only case cited by Sanders involved William Lee Evins, a murder defendant Conley prosecuted more than 30 years ago.
Brazile ruled that Sanders produced no evidence of his claims that Conley cannot be fair.
“A party’s belief as to a judge’s bias and prejudice is irrelevant and not controlling in a motion to disqualify for cause, as the test applied is an objective one,” Brazile wrote in his ruling.
“The fact that a judge was a deputy district attorney more than a decade ago does not disqualify the judge from presiding at criminal matters where the same office represents the people.”
A judge’s links from private practice no longer require disqualification after two years, Brazile noted.
Also, Sanders did not make a case for why Conley’s testimony would be crucial to the Wozniak proceedings, Brazile ruled.
“The facts asserted (by Sanders) are so remote in time, occurring before different district attorneys, and under the supervision of a former sheriff, that they are not sufficiently relevant or material to warrant concluding that the judge presiding in this matter is disqualified on the basis of being a” potential witness, Brazile wrote.
The Los Angeles County judge also ruled that it was not necessary to hold a hearing on the issue. Sanders has 10 days to appeal the ruling.
It’s unclear whether Sanders can now try to have Conley removed under a different rule that does not require a reason. Sanders only gets one chance at that maneuver.
Conley worked in the District Attorney’s Office’s homicide division from 1980 to 1982. Conley said in court papers objecting to the disqualification that he was unsure how jailhouse informants factor into the Wozniak trial.
An inmate tried to cajole information from Wozniak, but it was before he became an official informant and Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy has no intention of using the evidence in the trial.
There are only two other Orange County Superior Court judges beyond Conley left qualified to preside over capital cases — Gregg Prickett and Patrick Donahue. Sanders has signaled he intends to get all of the county’s judges recused.
Judge James Stotler had been presiding over the case, but stepped down in January when he concluded he could not guarantee he would be fair to Sanders.
The case was assigned to Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals, who had been hearing evidence of misuse of jailhouse informants in the case of convicted mass killer Scott Dekraai, another Sanders client.
On Thursday, Goethals kicked the Orange County District Attorney’s Office loose from the Dekraai case based on a violation of the defendant’s rights through the Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s use of jailhouse snitches.
Prosecutors, without saying why, objected to Goethals also considering the Wozniak case.
Wozniak’s alleged victims — 26-year-old Samuel Eliezer Herr and 23-year- old Juri Julie Kibuishi — were friends. He is accused of killing Herr at the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base and using the man’s cell phone to lure Kibuishi home to her Costa Mesa apartment, where he allegedly shot and dismembered her, then disposed of the body parts at the Eldorado Park Nature Center in Long Beach.
Sanders declined comment on the ruling.
— City News Service