A court ruling Tuesday accuses Orange County prosecutors of “reprehensible” conduct in a murder case stemming from the so-called jailhouse snitch scandal. The San Diego judge who made the ruling also said a former top O.C. prosecutor, who is now a judge, was “not truthful” during court proceedings.
The backstory
A decade ago, in the wake of the county’s biggest mass murder, the Orange County public defender’s office discovered that local law enforcement had been illegally using informants — sometimes called snitches — to get information and confessions from defendants in jail. The discovery has unraveled close to 60 criminal convictions to date and tainted the reputations of the county district attorney and Sheriff’s Department.
What is this case about?
The public defender’s office was asking a judge to drop charges against Paul Smith, who was accused of fatally stabbing his childhood friend Robert Haugen in 1988 and then setting the body on fire in the victim’s Sunset Beach apartment. The defense argued that the district attorney’s office and Sheriff’s Department hid dozens of pieces of evidence that could have been useful in defending against the murder charges, so the issue was being heard by a San Diego judge.
What did the judge rule?
The judge, Daniel Goldstein, declined to drop charges against Smith — citing, at least in part, the current prosecution team being “far more concerned with a search for the truth” than the team that initially prosecuted Smith. But he did preclude prosecutors from seeking life in prison without parole.
The judge also lashed into the former lead prosecutor at the time, Ebrahim Baytieh, who is now an Orange County Superior Court judge. Goldstein stopped just short of calling Baytieh a liar,…
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