More than a year after the initial request for intervention was made, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division on December 15 announced that it would initiate an investigation of the still unfolding jailhouse snitch scandal that has embroiled Orange County, California.
“A systemic failure to protect the right to counsel and to a fair trial makes criminal proceedings fundamentally unfair and diminishes the public’s faith in the integrity of the justice system,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Civil Rights Division, said in a press release.
As The Intercept has reported, the Orange County district attorney’s office along with the Orange County sheriff have been at the center of a nearly four-year-old scandal involving the illegal use of jailhouse informants — violating their targets’ Sixth Amendment rights — and allegations that prosecutors withheld evidence about their shenanigans from defense attorneys, violating their clients’ due process rights.
Both District Attorney Tony Rackauckas and Sheriff Sandra Hutchens have been insistent over the years that there is nothing wrong with the county’s criminal justice system — despite still mounting evidence that deputies crafted illegal schemes to coerce confessions out of high-profile inmates and lied about their activities while under oath, and that prosecutors were complicit in and covered up some of the wrongdoing.
Nonetheless, in a statement posted to Facebook, Hutchens welcomed the review: “It is, and has been, our ultimate goal to have a jail system that is exemplary and that upholds its duty to the inmates, our staff and the people of Orange County.”
Although the DOJ credited Rackauckas for requesting the inquiry, he was clearly reluctant and did so only after the handpicked group of lawyers he asked to review the situation issued a scathing report recommending an outside investigation, and several months after a group of 30 distinguished lawyers and interested parties signed on to a letter urging DOJ intervention.
Rackauckas’ statement regarding the review was perfunctory, though he made sure to remind readers that it was he who asked the feds to make their inquiry. The office is “grateful” for the response, reads the press release. And he reiterated the belief that no one in his office did anything wrong — at least not on purpose: “The OCDA believes at the conclusion of USDOJ Civil Rights Division review, they will conclude that the OCDA did not engage in systematic or intentional violation of civil rights of any inmate and no innocent person was wrongfully convicted.”
The DOJ’s planned practice-or-pattern review of the Orange County criminal justice system will seek to ferret out persistent patterns of misconduct and to determine whether systemic deficiencies “contribute to the conduct or enable it to persist.” If misconduct is found, the agency will determine specific remedies needed to fix the issues — usually as part of a negotiated agreement that becomes a federal court order. If the local law enforcement agencies decline to work with the feds to enact the remedies, the DOJ can initiate a civil lawsuit to secure the reforms.
Orange County’s snitch scandal was uncovered by public defender Scott Sanders while working on two high-profile death penalty cases, including one involving Scott Dekraai, responsible for the county’s worst-ever mass shooting. The evidence of misconduct uncovered by Sanders led a local judge, after months of hearings, to conclude that the district attorney’s office should be recused from handling the Dekraai case. The state attorney general sought to overturn that decision, but was shot down in a blistering appellate court opinion delivered in late November.
“The Court of Appeal stated that the ‘magnitude of the systemic problems [in OCDA and OCSD] cannot be overlooked,’” Sanders wrote in an email to The Intercept. “It is hoped that the Justice Department’s probe will help reform the system so that all Orange County residents will receive the constitutional protections to which they are entitled.”
Top photo:Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta speaks to reporters at a press conference on December 4, 2014.
Was weird seeing a picture of Cleveland, OH’s mayor Frank Jackson on a story about Orange County, CA.
Only jailhouse snitching? and in Orange County, CA? “The land of ‘the’ free and ‘the’ brave …” has become ‘the’ land of snitching from University Departments, … to building superintendents and filthy bodega shop owners. They always talk about the NSA like it is just about computer technology, monitoring cameras on the streets and those kinds of office @ssh0l3s.
The BStU has confirmed that the snitch to general population ratio in stasi land East Germany was 1:85
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_collaborators_(East_Germany)
Now, gringos, as if it were not enough to “monitor” and store all their communications for good (actually the world’s), keeping all that data in corpora indexed so that they have automatic socially relational, stratifying/pattern predicting and Zeitgeisting capabilities about their whereabouts with centimetric precision, what they buy, eat (sh!t and pee), what they talk to on the phone, with whom, what they say on the Internet, who reads it, all their medical records, their DNA, … have an all encompassing net of “Informal Collaborators” including the Anschloss of “shop-lifting prevention”, “neighborhood watch”, “neighborhood watch sex offender”, all janitors and security personnel in buildings, federal office workers, … (in NYC the MTA) … in fact at least I can assure you that in NYC every business has at least one “collaborator” and if that business is just a one-man stand at this time (just one key smith in his shop), this will be their “collaborator”. They make their “collaborators” stop doing whatever their business is and walk out to the side walk to watch, harass you. They have been doing this to me for more than 20 years.
They are using their snitches to harass regular people they would target (whom they know are not terrorist, a “threat to society” or any of that b#llsh!t) among many other reasons for refusing to snitch for them, or just having minimally personal, “unofficial” views about what is going on. What would be the one of the most important reason why they would target someone? They just need people to target, so they can justify salaries and keep their army of snitches “ready”.
// __ Village Voice: 2016-06-28 NYPD Watchdog Shatters Bratton’s ‘Broken Windows’ — Now What?, by NICK PINTO
villagevoice.com/news/nypd-watchdog-shatters-brattons-broken-windows-now-what-8796746
~
Some of these businesses and private agencies proudly show their snitching certificate (we are proud members if “nexus” the NYPD city-wide snitching program), which (their publicity) doesn’t have to be something bad. More and more they are making targeted repression official by doing it in the open:
// __ On Contact: The BDS Movement with Miko Peled
youtube.com/watch?v=VTepqDOMdZw&t=1165
~
// __ NY Times: November 30, 2016: I Am a Dangerous Professor
nytimes.com/2016/11/30/opinion/i-am-a-dangerous-professor.html
~
Less than a 5 years ago they could not stop reminding people about those morally inferior lowlife governments of China, Cuba, East Germany, Russia, … that spend their time minding other people’s private businesses … then when Snowden made undeniably clear that USG with Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were part of an all-encompassing worldwide surveillance that was way beyond what the stasi, the KGB, … not even Yevgeny Zamyatin, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley couldn’t have dreamed up in their wildest nightmares! They quietly went into a pretentiously mindless “if you have nothing to hide …” mode. Do they even know from where those “if you have nothing to hide …” mindset come from?
As it has been thoroughly documented the NSA, die Geheimpolizei (Gestapo) in those times was just a clerical organization. It was actually “We the people” all throughout Europe the ones that were taking care of business:
// __ The Real Life Stormtroopers – Hitler’s Secret Police [Documentary] 2016
youtube.com/watch?v=beTNdjrdeZ8
~
The next day 5 SS officers arrive by train in Hungary all Jewish business were taken over by locals. Do you really believe the evil Nazis could have attained that so quickly?
I would bet one of my balls that the snitching ratio in “USA! USA! …” has greatly surpassed the stasi’s.
RCL
Thanks for the update and report. Sure seems likely the investigation will discover a lot of bad stuff.
But I’m curious about this: “The state attorney general sought to overturn that decision, but was shot down in a blistering appellate court opinion delivered in late November.”
Why wasn’t Kamala Harris named? She’s a pretty big rising star and Senator-Elect. And while I voted her and generally think she’s an honestly good politician and whose tenets align with my own at least 90% of the time and hope she keeps rising, she does have some faults (well, for liberals) which shouldn’t be covered up. Perhaps this one. And also this one:
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Judge-rips-Harris-office-for-hiding-problems-3263797.php
“San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris’ office violated defendants’ rights by hiding damaging information about a police drug lab technician and was indifferent to demands that it account for its failings, a judge declared Thursday.
Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo stopped short of granting a request by more than 40 drug defendants that their cases be dismissed because of prosecutorial misconduct, saying that decision must be left up to the judges hearing their cases.
But in a scathing ruling, the judge concluded that prosecutors had failed to fulfill their constitutional duty to tell defense attorneys about problems surrounding Deborah Madden, the now-retired technician at the heart of the cocaine-skimming scandal that led police to shut down the drug analysis section of their crime lab.”
Anyway, again, if I were writing this article, I’d certainly think Kamala Harris should be named, seeing as how she just replaced Boxer, and is a noted figure. I wouldn’t use the generic “attorney general” unless I was trying to deliberately not inform readers that she may have some faults/isn’t perfect.
Truth and information is always good. Even if it slightly sullies an ally.
You make a good point — would have been good to name her, given everything. But, so you know, leaving her name out certainly wasn’t intentional!
Some folks are living on the wrong side of prison bars in Orange County, which has always been a disgrace and embarrassment to California and the resr of the USA.
The Obama-Lynch DOJ decides to investigate just in time for Trump to pull the plug before they start.
Yep. The Obama admin has followed, reluctantly, rather than led federal oversight of local/state PD and justice corruption and misdeeds. And also reluctantly (and shabbily at that) reacted to the additional problem of militarizing local police. Where a town of 200 now has a tank and hummer with a .50 cal turret and a SWAT team with grenade launchers and FN P90s which they use to no-knock break into loitering and jaywalking suspects’s homes, whose dogs and children are killed in that serving of warrant.
Well I exaggerate but maybe not too much. He’s also done jack shit, or at least not much, about the plague of civil forfeiture.
Anyway, pretty disappointing. And if I were the new Prez I’d initiate a big hiring raise for the DOJ, because I’d also order the Fed to investigate every fucking PD and AG office in the nation, because I expect the majority are doing a lot of shady things. Hell, this should also be a scheduled/automatic thing, such as the census.
Yep. Obama = Bush III
They don’t call it “behind the Orange Curtain” for nothing. This shithole is where Reagan and Nixon are from, which tells you all you need to know about it.
Nothing about the article here, but you may want to use a picture of relevance to the article. That fellow in the picture looks to be Frank Jackson, mayor of Cleveland, Ohio
The journalism pressuring the feds to act deserves a lot of credit for this.
Well done.
Edit-
Fourth paragraph
“Both District Attorney Tony Rackauckas and Sheriff Sandra Hutchens have been insistent over the years that there is *(nothing)* wrong with the county’s criminal justice system”
sure.
Will problems like this become worse after the gov privatizes prisons?
sure.
Probably 15-20% of CA prisons are already private.
after they privatize prisons?
You are quite late. It’s called the prison industrial complex for a reason.