Orange County supervisors Tuesday rejected a mediator-approved $2.5 million settlement with a veteran Orange County District Attorney’s Office investigator who sued the county, claiming she was wrongly disciplined for her work on a high-profile rape case.
Jennifer Kearns, who started working for the District Attorney’s Office in 2017 following 25 years on the Long Beach Police Department, sued in 2021, alleging District Attorney Todd Spitzer retaliated against her and placed her on six months of administrative leave for her work on the case against Dr. Grant Robicheaux and his girlfriend Cerissa Riley, whose case generated headlines as it became a political football in Spitzer’s campaign to unseat then-District Attorney Tony Rackauckas.
Kearns alleges in the lawsuit she was a whistleblower in the way the case was handled. The county agreed to work with the plaintiffs to hammer out a settlement with a mediator, but the board unanimously rejected the $2.5 million deal, saying it disputes the allegations Kearns acted as a whistleblower and was retaliated against.
Kearns’ work on the case became fodder for Robicheaux and Riley’s attorneys, who ultimately whittled it down to Riley escaping any charges and Robicheaux accepting a plea deal on gun and drug charges. The two had been initially charged with drugging and raping several women they met at bars in the Newport Beach area.
Spitzer initially criticized Rackauckas for waiting months to serve a search warrant on the defendants while he was campaigning against then then-incumbent Rackauckas. After Spitzer won the election his office took another look at the case and he recommended dropping the charges, but an Orange County Superior Court rejected that and kicked Spitzer’s office off the case and it dragged on until the Attorney General’s Office’s handling of the case fell apart following a preliminary hearing.
Kearns said she was reprimanded for “omitting material and eculpatory information from witness interview summary reports,” she alleged in her lawsuit. Kearns said the prosecutor on the case at the time approved the reports and did not raise any concerns.
A jury trial in the case is scheduled for May 4.