Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/scott-sanders/)
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.
Confessed mass murderer Scott Evans Dekraai will receive life in prison after Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals Friday blocked him from receiving the death penalty.
It’s one of several questions Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals is considering before ruling Aug. 18 on whether or not confessed mass murderer Scott Evans Dekraai faces the death penalty
Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals will announce Friday if mass murderer Scott Evans Dekraai faces the death penalty in a case that upended at least six other criminal convictions, damaged the reputations of both the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney’s Office and unveiled the “jailhouse snitch scandal.”
Orange County’s civil grand jury said ongoing court hearing about possible misuse of jailhouse informants have turned into a “witch-hunt,” and should stop after the grand jury determined there is no “systemic, widespread informant program.”
Judge Thomas Goethals wants Sheriff Sandra Hutchens to explain in court her claim that there is no jailhouse informants program in Orange County jails.