Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/scott-sanders/)
Barnes declined to discuss specific cases, citing laws protecting police officers’ privacy. But he laid the evidence booking problem squarely on individual staff members and “gaps” in evidence booking protocol.
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said Wednesday he was informed four months into his administration about a decision days after he was sworn in to not file charges against a sheriff’s deputy found to have made 74 false reports about evidence booking.
On Tuesday, it was publicly disclosed in Orange County Superior Court that sheriff officials kept a deputy in the field doing investigations months after they learned he made numerous false statements in police reports about evidence booking.
The records would show what officials knew – and when – about a sheriff’s deputy found to have falsely stated in 74 different reports that he had booked evidence.
An ongoing review by prosecutors – as well as court documents – are prompting questions about whether Orange County’s top law enforcement officer has been telling the whole truth.
Phone company Global Tel Link (GTL) kept possibly hundreds of other U.S. jails in the dark about phone system problems it knew of since 2015 that caused the illegal recording of attorney-inmate calls in Orange County, according to a 42-page legal motion filed by OC Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders.
Former District Attorney Tony Rackauckas quietly decided last year to not have prosecutors tell defense attorneys about 10 sheriff deputies suspected of lying about or concealing records about jail informants.
The California Attorney General ended its probe into the jailhouse snitch scandal that rocked the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney’s office, which was first uncovered in a mass murderer’s trial over four years ago.
Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders says Sheriff’s Department personnel and Global Tel Link, the county’s jail phone contractor, knew about improper recordings of attorney-client jail calls but conspired to cover it up. He also points to discrepancies in data turned over by Global Tel Link that suggest far more than 1,079 attorney-client phone calls were improperly recorded.
Complicated investigations can several take years, but a deadline is looming: the expiration of the three-year statute of limitations on state perjury charges against three Sheriff’s deputies who are accused of lying under oath about their work with informants during testimonies in 2014 and 2015.