OC District Attorney Todd Spitzer says his office hasn’t improperly convicted anyone in the last three years after reviewing over 200 cases.

The reviews came from the Conviction Integrity Unit, a new office established by Spitzer after he was elected in 2018 to review cases where prosecutors were accused of improperly convicting people, a finding that was backed up by the federal Department of Justice. 

Spitzer says that era is over in the DA’s office. 

“The best cure of darkness and corruption is sunlight,” Spitzer said at his inauguration in 2019.”I pledge to bring an era of transparency to the DA’s office.”

In a recent statement to Voice of OC, Sptizer says the recent reviews by the Conviction Integrity Unit have proven him right.  

“We are extremely proud that over the last few years and hundreds of case reviews by our Conviction Integrity Unit we have yet to discover a single instance when a convicted defendant was either wrongly convicted or was determined to have been factually innocent,” Spitzer said in a statement to Voice of OC.  

The office did throw out 67 cases in 2021 due to evidence mishandling that came before Spitzer’s time as DA and has other investigations ongoing. 

But there are nagging questions about how deeply Spitzer has looked into the issue.

Questions Center on Unconstitutional Jail Informant Program

Scott Sanders, an assistant public defender who unearthed an illegal pattern of interviewing inmates without their lawyers present in the county jail, says the DA hasn’t really investigated the depths of the problem. 

Revelations about the programs first surfaced during the trial of Scott Dekraai, the 2011 Seal Beach mass shooter, which ultimately led to the DA’s office being thrown off the case and replaced by the state Attorney General.

The death penalty was also taken off the table for Dekraai after he was approached by confidential informants in the jail. 

Dekraai’s trial turned the spotlight on a program that had been used by the DA and Sheriff’s Department for decades that let confidential informants question suspected criminals in the county jail without their lawyers present, a violation of their Sixth Amendment rights. 

A federal Department of Justice investigation found prosecutors’ violation of inmates’ rights was  “systematic,” and encouraged the DA’s office to immediately examine any of the impacted cases. 

[Read: Federal Investigators Call Out ‘Systematic’ Rights Violations in OC Jailhouse Informant Scandal]

While Spitzer’s office claims the Conviction Integrity Unit is currently reviewing cases impacted by the informant scandal, it’s unclear which cases they’re considering or who they’ve talked to. 

Overturned Murder Conviction Opens Questions on Review 

In a recent legal filing, Sanders claimed the “unspoken truth,” is that prosecutors have “steadfastly avoided investigating the discovery violations and other misconduct,” in at least one of the cases impacted by the jailhouse informant program. 

“Numerous prosecutors…have demonstrated a commitment to not making assessments about the improper conduct of individual prosecution team members,” Sanders wrote. “If the prosecutor has an explanation for this that does not point to a communicated plan to avoid investigation, he should share it.” 

The case in question focuses on Paul Gentile Smith, who was convicted of murder in 2010 in Seal Beach, but had his conviction thrown out after the DA’s office acknowledged they failed to turn over evidence to his legal defense. 

Former Sheriff’s investigator Bill Beeman, nicknamed the Rhinestone Cowboy, who was part of the unit that oversaw the jail informant program, said he has never been asked by anyone in the DA’s office about possible misconduct during his testimony last month in a related prosecution. 

[Read: OC Murder Conviction Thrown Out as Misconduct Accusations Fly at High-Level Prosecutor]

On Monday, Sheriff’s Sgt. Michael Padilla and former Lieutenant Roger Guevara also testified in Smith’s case they were not asked by the DA about the use of confidential jailhouse informants. 

Ebrahim Baytieh, the prosecutor on Smith’s case, was later fired by Spitzer, who went from calling Baytieh his “ethical north star,” to saying he was removed due to mishandling the Smith case. 

But there were also questions at the time around why Spitzer fired him after Baytieh raised concerns about comments Spitzer made that he felt needed to be disclosed to defense attorneys. 

[Read: Santana: Did OC District Attorney Todd Spitzer Fire a Top Prosecutor to Protect Himself?]

Shortly after his firing, voters elected Baytieh to become an Orange County Superior Court Judge. 

Sanders, who is now representing Smith, said he plans to call Baytieh to the stand to testify on his work in the DA’s office in June.  

He notes the informant scandal impacted at least another 60 felony cases in which charges were downgraded or thrown out altogether due to illegal questioning. 

[Read: OC Public Defender Says Jailhouse Informant Program Led to Dozens of Murder Charges Being Dropped]

Sanders also claims the scandal could throw nearly 100 other convictions into question. 

Yet it remains unclear which, if any, of those cases have been reviewed by the Conviction Integrity Unit. 

[Read: Could Scores of Convicted Criminals in OC Get New Trials Due to Prosecutors Misconduct?]

What Has the Conviction Integrity Unit Found? 

Beyond the informant program, most of the unit’s work has been focused on past evidence mishandling and cases that are currently being handled by Spitzer’s office. 

According to the Conviction Integrity Unit’s own review, there were over 3,100 cases where evidence was improperly processed, but only 67 cases where it interfered with prosecution.

“Most of the attorneys and defendants, once notified of the specific evidentiary issues, have agreed with CIU’s initial evaluation that the case was not negatively impacted or compromised by the missing or late evidence,” prosecutors wrote in a special report on the evidence scandal.

In the 202 cases reviewed by the unit over the past three years, DA officials told Voice of OC they’ve found zero instances in which there was a “meritorious basis to lose confidence in the existing conviction.”

Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.