An Orange County Superior Court judge who failed to turn over evidence as a prosecutor in a 2010 murder case indicated Tuesday, June 11, that the fault may have been with sheriff’s investigators.
Ebrahim Baytieh, testifying in a hearing on whether murder defendant Paul Gentile Smith should go free because of the lack of disclosure, has said he didn’t know the evidence in question existed until 10 years after the trial.
On Monday, Baytieh testified he didn’t know what went wrong. On Tuesday, he said he depended on investigators to let him know what evidence was available for discovery.
“The presumption I worked on is that the police agency gives us everything that’s there,” Baytieh testified, under questioning by San Diego County Superior Court Judge Daniel Goldstein. “I worked based on the protocol they had, which is they bring me everything.”
Goldstein responded that Baytieh was still head of the prosecutorial team in the case, which includes the sheriff’s investigators, and, ultimately, responsible for turning over discovery to the defense. Sheriff’s officials have said the evidence was properly booked and available for discovery at the time of trial.
In a rare occurrence, Baytieh was under oath and on the witness stand in the case against Smith, who was convicted in 2010 of fatally stabbing his boyhood friend 18 times and torching the body in Sunset Beach.
Smith’s conviction was overturned in 2021 amid arguments that his constitutional rights were violated when evidence was not disclosed that multiple jailhouse informants were used against him. Only one informant was disclosed to the defense at the time of trial.
Smith now faces a retrial and his case was sent to Goldstein in San Diego to avoid a conflict with the Orange County bench. Orange County Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders requested the hearing as part of his attempt to get the murder charges dismissed because of the prosecution’s conduct.
Baytieh was fired from his high-level…
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