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Thread: Scott Evans Dekraai Sentenced to LWOP in 2011 CA Murders of Eight

  1. #41
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Alleged Misconduct Jeopardizes Death Penalty For OC's Worst Mass Murderer

    Two sheriff's deputies pleaded the fifth Thursday in a hearing that could decide the fate of OC's worst mass murderer

    By Patch Staff
    SoCal Patch

    SANTA ANA, CA — Two Orange County sheriff's deputies asserted their constitutional right against self-incrimination Thursday when called to testify in an evidentiary hearing alleging outrageous governmental misconduct in the case of Scott Evans Dekraai, the worst mass killer in the county's history.

    Sheriff's Deputies Ben Garcia and William Grover, who have been on paid administrative leave for the past several months, took the stand and invoked their Fifth Amendment rights in refusing to testify.

    Deputy Seth Tunstall is expected to do the same thing when he is called to testify next week.

    Garcia's attorney, Bob Gazley, told City News Service his client has not been told why he was put on leave.

    Tunstall and Garcia have previously asserted their Fifth Amendment rights in another murder case involving a jailhouse informant last year. That prompted an Orange County Superior Court judge to order a new trial for Eric Ortiz, who was again convicted of murder and is awaiting sentencing next week

    Most of the testimony Thursday came from employees in the sheriff's department who handle legal records. They testified to the process of keeping the records and when and why decisions are made to shred them due to a lack of storage space.

    Dekraai's attorney, Scott Sanders, has raised concerns that records regarding the jailhouse informant program have been improperly destroyed.

    Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals, who has recused the Orange County District Attorney's Office from prosecuting the case, is now considering a motion to dismiss the death penalty against Dekraai, which would spur an automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole

    Dekraai pleaded guilty to eight counts of murder and one count of attempted murder for killing his wife, her boss and six others, and wounding a 77-year-old woman who survived the Oct. 12, 2011, bloodbath at a Seal Beach beauty salon.

    https://patch.com/california/fountai...s-murder-trial
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  2. #42
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Judge will determine whether Seal Beach mass murderer will face death penalty

    In a Santa Ana courtroom Friday morning, Scott Evans Dekraai will learn whether he could face execution for the worst mass killing in Orange County history.

    After six years of delay and a series of controversies that rocked the county’s criminal justice system, Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals has two options. He can open the way for a jury to decide 47-year-old Dekraai’s fate.

    Or Goethals could become one of the rare judges to take execution off the table for a convicted murderer because of law enforcement misconduct. In that case, Goethals would likely sentence Dekraai to eight consecutive life terms without parole.

    “It’s a notable case because it’s a serious crime and there is unparalleled prosecutorial misconduct,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a non- profit organization that tracks capital cases nationwide.

    Goethals’ decision will hinge on his judgment of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and whether it can be trusted to hand over evidence that could benefit Dekraai’s defense. Goethals’ decision also will be based on whether he believes the department withheld and destroyed documents showing jailhouse informants were used improperly. Goethals had issued a 2013 court order to turn over the documents.

    Dekraai’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, recently argued before Goethals that “the sheriff’s department has attempted to create a false and misleading narrative about this case…They are content to let this defendant be misled.”

    But state Deputy Attorney General Michael Murphy, the current prosecutor, reminded Goethals that his job isn’t to punish law enforcement for any misdeeds.

    “(This is) not a forum for the defense to investigate the sheriff’s department…nor is it a government oversight hearing,” Murphy said. “It’s about the prosecution of (Dekraai) for murders he’s admitted.”

    For more than four years, the October 2011 shooting rampage that killed eight people at a Seal Beach beauty salon has taken a back seat to the legal jousting over the use of jailhouse informants to improperly secure confessions from targeted inmates.

    Ironically, Dekraai’s guilt was never really in doubt. Within minutes of the shooting, he confessed to Seal Beach police, and then pleaded guilty in 2014. Dekraai appeared to be on the fast track to join the 748 prisoners on California’s Death Row, and about 2,900 nationwide.

    But his case got derailed when Orange County prosecutors and sheriff’s deputies made what they contended was an honest mistake days after the shooting. They bugged Dekraai’s jail cell and sent a prolific informant to get him talking. That was a violation of Dekraai’s constitutional rights, because he had a lawyer and had been formally charged, Sanders said.

    Prosecutors maintained it wasn’t a violation because they instructed the informant to listen and not to ask any questions about the case. The gambit came back to haunt them.

    Sanders had the reputation in the district attorney’s office as a courtroom Chicken Little, constantly accusing prosecutors of misconduct. But the accusations not only stuck this time, but generated more evidence.

    Sanders learned of the informant and realized the same inmate had been used with another of his clients, Daniel Wozniak, who killed two people to fund his wedding. Sanders figured it was not a coincidence, but a sign that police and prosecutors had forged a surreptitious network of jailhouse informants, and he set out to press his concerns with Goethals.

    From that point on, Dekraai’s punishment was delayed as the so-called “snitch scandal” unfolded. With legal scholars and the media watching nationwide, Sanders uncovered evidence that prosecutors and deputies had cheated for up to 30 years, misusing jail informants and not telling the defense.

    For instance, Sanders recently obtained a Dec. 27, 2009 sheriff’s department email detailing how the jail’s color-coded security wristbands were changed for informants, to make them more credible to targeted inmates. Eight deputies participated in the scheme against an inmate accused of attempted murder — a scheme requested by a Santa Ana Police investigator, according to the email.

    District Attorney Tony Rackauckas has fought back, saying any misconduct was unintentional and that the controversy was overblown. Sheriff Sandra Hutchens has said there was no sanctioned informant network operating in her five jails, putting the blame on some rogue deputies.

    And the 2016-17 Orange County Grand Jury called the scandal a “myth,” spread by an uninformed media.

    But the state’s 4th District Court of Appeal, in November 2016, found cheating by Orange County prosecutors and sheriff’s employees was real and systemic. Appellate justices upheld a 2015 decision by Goethals to take the case away from the district attorney’s office because he did not trust local prosecutors to ensure Dekraai a fair penalty trial.

    The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating both the district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s department’s handling of informants. Meanwhile, at least six murder and attempted murder cases have unraveled in Orange County because of informant issues raised by Sanders.

    One of those cases involved Isaac John Palacios, who pleaded guilty in 2014 to killing a rival gang member. He was released from jail within hours of that plea, serving only 3 ½ years on what could have been a life sentence.

    The reason for the plea deal: prosecutors said they did not want to open the case up to the same scrutiny as Dekraai because of informant concerns.

    Since 2013, 60 witnesses have testified in three special hearings before Goethals, with the case growing worse for local law enforcement.

    During the current proceedings, a half dozen deputies refused to testify, invoking their 5th amendment rights against self-incrimination. Three of the deputies are being investigated by the state Attorney General’s Office for suspected perjury during prior hearings.

    Goethals has voiced anger and frustration over what he calls the sheriff’s department’s apparent inability or unwillingness to produce documents ordered by the court.

    The drip, drip of the release of documents has kept the focus on the role of the sheriff’s department and away from Dekraai’s crime and the suffering of the victims’ families.

    After assuring the judge that no documents existed, the sheriff’s department in late 2014 turned over TRED records, which document the movement of inmates inside the jail. Deputies admitted trying to keep those records confidential during a previous hearing .

    Then Sanders learned of computerized “special handling logs,” notes kept by deputies about their interactions with informants. After more prodding by Sanders and the judge, the department eventually found 1,157 pages of those notes, which officials said were unauthorized and unread by sheriff’s department brass.

    And thousands of pages of additional notes and 68 boxes of documents that had not been looked at were uncovered. Finally, prosecutor Murphy’s team found 30,000 emails and notes in sheriff’s department computers, but decided not to give them to Sanders.

    “They (sheriff’s employees) are not giving answers that make sense and neither is the attorney general,” Goethals said during the current hearing.

    On Friday, the legal maneuvering finally returns to Dekraai and the lives he took: Victoria Buzzo, 54; David Caouette, 64; Randy Lee Fannin, 62; Michele Daschbach Fast, 47; Michelle Marie Fournier, 48; Lucia Bernice Kondas, 65; Laura Webb Elody, 46; and Christy Lynn Wilson, 47. Hattie Stretz was also shot, but survived.

    Goethals has said he will take into account the families’ feelings. Some are encouraging him to block the death penalty, so they will not have to attend more court proceedings.

    Other relatives of the victims want Dekraai to die.

    What’s clear is that Orange County’s justice system has been altered in many ways.

    Rackauckas has added a new training workshop at the sheriff’s academy on using informants and the rights of inmates; as well as preserving defense evidence.

    Defense attorneys are scouring their cases for informants, demanding more information on their histories and how they were used. Attempts are being made to reopen cases based on the improper use of informants.

    And there is heightened sensitivity about the potential for prosecutors and law enforcement to improperly seek an edge in criminal cases.

    “When the prosecution engages in misconduct designed to give a tactical advantage, the judge will remove the advantage,” said Dunham, of the Death Penalty Information Center.

    http://www.sgvtribune.com/article/LC...NEWS/170819529

  3. #43
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    O.C. mass shooter could be spared death penalty as judge rules on fallout from jail informant scandal

    For years, allegations that Orange County law enforcement officials repeatedly violated inmates’ constitutional rights by recruiting a network of jailhouse informants have roiled the region’s criminal justice system.

    The scandal has led to retrials for several convicted killers, sparked waves of criticism aimed at Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas and outgoing Sheriff Sandra Hutchens and led a judge to bar county prosecutors from trying the case of a man responsible for one of the area’s worst instances of violence — the 2011 massacre of eight people inside a Seal Beach salon.

    On Friday, Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals will decide whether law enforcement’s blunders were severe enough to spare the confessed killer from a death sentence.

    Scott Dekraai, the former tugboat captain who carried out the shootings, pleaded guilty to the murders in 2014. But the penalty phase of his trial has been in limbo for years as evidence surfaced that sheriff’s deputies housed a longtime informant near him in the hopes of extracting evidence that could lead to a death sentence.

    That discovery set off a chain of events that led Goethals and an appellate court to rule that the Sheriff’s Department was running a “sophisticated” jailhouse informant network in order to coax confessions out of people held in the county’s jail system.

    Since then, a number of high-profile murder convictions have been tossed on the basis that authorities violated the rights of defendants by using secret informants to gain incriminating information from them without their lawyers present or because prosecutors failed to disclose an informant’s history of cooperating with law enforcement.

    Dekraai’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, is arguing that the death penalty should be tossed out because authorities cannot be trusted to turn over relevant evidence.

    The ruling might be largely symbolic, since California has not executed anyone in decades. But it would be latest in a series of stinging rebukes for Orange County’s beleaguered law enforcement community.

    Earlier this year, the Orange County grand jury released a report that the jailhouse scandal was a “myth,” finding that the misconduct was limited to a few “rogue deputies.” Hutchens and Rackauckas said the report vindicated what they’ve been saying all along — that there is no organized informant program. But defense attorneys panned the report as a “whitewash.”

    Meanwhile, the California attorney general’s office and the U.S. Department of Justice are running separate investigations into the matter.

    The Orange County district attorney’s office was blocked from trying Dekraai’s case in 2015, and the attorney general’s office is now leading the prosecution. In evidentiary hearings that have dragged for years, Goethals has repeatedly faulted Hutchens and her deputies for failing to provide logs regarding the use of informants.

    Sheriff’s officials have repeatedly told the judge there were no more records to be found — only for other material to be subsequently discovered.

    “How does this happen?” Goethals asked the sheriff when she testified last month. “They were dead wrong.”

    “They possibly did not look hard enough,” replied Hutchens, who acknowledged that informants had been placed near targeted inmates in the Orange County jail for years, with the aim of eliciting incriminating statements. She testified that some of her deputies may have flouted rules regarding jailhouse informants, but that such conduct was committed only “by a few.”

    In closing arguments last week, Sanders said the prosecution’s repeated failure to turn over evidence that could be favorable to his client is more than enough reason to take capital punishment off the table.

    “Removal of the death penalty is a reasonable response to outrageous conduct,” he said.

    Michael T. Murphy, the deputy attorney general handling the case, has tried to disconnect the jailhouse scandal from Dekraai’s actions.

    “This is not about what did the Sheriff’s Department do right or wrong,” Murphy said last week, adding that Goethals should focus on “what did this man do and what does he deserve?”

    http://fw.to/e9d6ykC

  4. #44
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    Judge Removes Death Penalty As Possible Sentence For Mass Killer

    By CBS News

    SANTA ANA (CBSLA.com/AP) — A judge in Orange County ruled Friday that death penalty will not be an option in the sentencing of mass shooter Scott Dekraai.

    Judge Thomas M. Goethals opted to remove the death penalty as a sentencing option for 47-year-old Dekraai, who pleaded guilty to killing eight people in a 2011 shooting rampage at a Seal Beach salon, over the Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s use of jailhouse informants.

    Defense lawyers had argued that repeated failures by sheriff’s authorities to reveal records related to informants show the agency can’t be trusted to turn over evidence favoring their client.

    The ruling comes amid an uproar over the use of jailhouse informants in this Southern California county. The U.S. Department of Justice and state Attorney General’s office are each investigating the county’s practices and prosecutors have seen at least four murder cases upended by the scandal.

    Dekraai has pleaded guilty to killing his hairstylist ex-wife Michelle Fournier before turning his gun on her co-workers and others at the salon where she worked in Seal Beach. He was arrested minutes after the rampage that left eight dead and one wounded.

    Dekraai’s lawyer Scott Sanders began asking questions about the use of jailhouse informants after noticing the same snitch had chatted up Dekraai and another one of his clients. Authorities can use informants but can’t have them deliberately elicit information from defendants once they are represented by lawyers.

    After finding sheriff’s authorities lied or withheld snitch-related information, Goethals yanked the district attorney’s office off Dekraai’s case in 2015. He also ordered authorities to release jailhouse records. Documents have been released bit by bit.

    “The concealment has gone on forever,” Sanders said during closing arguments last week. “When people don’t tell the truth, we really have no sense of where it stops.”

    Deputy Attorney General Michael T. Murphy said misconduct may have occurred in the case but Dekraai needs to be punished for his crimes. He said the government holds no documents that will prove relevant to penalty hearings focused on the killings and Dekraai’s comments immediately after his arrest.

    “The defense has failed to show that any actions of the government in the past have eliminated the possibility of getting a fair penalty trial,” Murphy told the court.

    Orange County sheriff’s officials declined to comment before the ruling.

    Goethals has said he will not impose punitive measures on authorities but rather seek to determine whether a remedy is required to ensure justice is
    served.

    Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, said cases where prosecutors are barred from pursuing capital punishment are rare and any decision by Goethals will likely be appealed.

    “This case is notable and is being watched because of the severity of the offense, but it is also notable and being watched because of the unparalleled nature of the government misconduct,” he said.

    http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/...scott-dekraai/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  5. #45
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    Killer In Seal Beach Salon Massacre Sentenced To 8 Life Terms

    SANTA ANA (CBSLA) – Scott Dekraai, who gunned down his ex-wife and seven other people at a Seal Beach beauty salon, was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole, ending a legal odyssey that sparked a sweeping probe into the misuse of informants in the Orange County jail system.

    Dekraai, the worst mass killer in Orange County history, originally faced the death penalty, but Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals removed capital punishment as an option in response to the prosecutorial misconduct allegations stemming from the snitch scandal.

    Dekraai was given eight consecutive life sentences — one for each of his victims — plus an additional 232 years to life.

    Dekraai’s ex-wife, 48-year-old Michelle Marie Fournier, was the first victim the then-42-year-old gunman killed on Oct. 12, 2011, at the Salon Meritage at 500 Pacific Coast Highway, where she worked. The couple had been locked in a bitter child custody dispute.

    Also killed in the salon were the shop’s owner, 62-year-old Randy Lee Fannin, Laura Webb Elody, 46, Wilson, 47, Victoria Ann Buzzo, 54, Lucia Berniece Kondas, 65, and Michele Dashbach Fast, 47. After leaving the salon, Dekraai gunned down his last victim, 64-year-old David Caouette, as the victim sat in his Range Rover, parked next to the gunman’s vehicle.

    Hattie Stretz, now 79, survived the bloodbath.

    Goethals tried to reassure victims’ relatives in court that sparing Dekraai the death penalty was not a victory for the defendant. The judge told the courtroom that a maximum-security prison is the “definition of hard time.”

    Goethals called Dekraai, 47, the “face of evil” in the community.

    During an emotional sentencing hearing, relatives of Dekraai’s victims repeatedly lashed out and insulted the bespectacled defendant.

    Paul Wilson, the husband of Christy Wilson, who was among the first to be gunned down in the Salon Meritage, told the court Dekraai had been to his home in the past at salon social gatherings, but none of that mattered.

    “He was intent on killing,” Wilson said.

    Dekraai tried to apologize to Wilson, saying, “I’m sorry Paul,” but his words drew an immediate outcry from the courtroom audience, with his victims’ relatives telling him to shut up.

    One of the speakers told Dekraai his apologies “are worthless, like you.”

    When he had a chance to speak, Dekraai again tried to apologize, saying he wished he could “turn back the hands of time.”

    “I truly am sorry,” he said.

    Dekraai pleaded guilty May 2, 2014, knowing at the time he faced a possible death sentence. His plea came amid evidentiary hearings into allegations that his constitutional rights were violated by a jailhouse informant who heard him make damning comments about the murder spree.

    At issue was whether the comments were “overheard” by the informant or if he worked Dekraai to get the information, which led to prosecutors having the defendant’s cell wired in hopes of obtaining more damaging comments to be used in the penalty phase of trial.

    Informants are not allowed to question defendants who are represented by an attorney, as Dekraai was at the time. They are free, however, to pass along overheard comments to their handlers.

    Dekraai’s attorneys, led by Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, unearthed a trove of cases involving jailhouse informants who they claimed were being used in ways that violated the constitutional rights of many inmates.

    The allegations led Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals to boot District Attorney Tony Rackauckas’ office off the case. The state Attorney General’s Office then took it over.

    The Fourth District Court of Appeal upheld Goethals’ ruling, concluding there was institutionalized corruption in the way jailhouse snitches were used and that Dekraai could never be certain he would receive a fair hearing with Rackauckas’ office prosecuting the case.

    After numerous ensuing problems and delays in turning over evidence to defense attorneys, Goethals ordered another round of evidentiary hearings and then dropped his bombshell ruling eliminating the death penalty as an option for Dekraai.

    Before the hearings, Goethals called such a move “unthinkable,” but in the end, he felt Dekraai could never get a fair trial in the penalty phase, despite a new team of prosecutors, and laid the blame at the feet of Dekraai’s jailers.

    The fallout from the Dekraai litigation also helped get one killer out of custody and another one off the hook on a life sentence. Two other convicted killers won new trials. Sanders estimates 16 defendants have either won new trials or received reduced punishments as a result.

    Michelle Van Der Linden, a spokeswoman for Rackauckas, said only four cases were affected.

    http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/...ler-sentenced/

  6. #46
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    A Mass Shooting Tore Their Lives Apart. A Corruption Scandal Crushed Their Hopes For Justice.

    As prosecutors fixated on the death penalty for a killer, some family members of his victims found solace in an unlikely figure... the gunman’s attorney.

    By Matt Ferner
    HuffPost

    LOS ANGELES ― One morning last March, in an overlit courtroom in Orange County, the lawyer for the man who killed Bethany Webb’s sister walked over to her and put his hand on her shoulder.

    “I’m so sorry for putting you through this,” public defender Scott Sanders told her.

    Webb was moved. In the six years since a man named Scott Dekraai had confessed to killing eight people, including Webb’s sister and a close friend, at a beauty salon in Orange County, Sanders was the only official involved in the case who had offered her any personal consolation.

    The sheriffs and prosecutors, who were supposed to be on Webb’s side, had devoted over half a decade to the pursuit of one goal: winning the death penalty for Dekraai. Webb had begged prosecutors — first District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, and later, when his office was thrown off the case, the California prosecutors who replaced him — to stop seeking death. They ignored her. And Sanders had thwarted them at every turn, revealing egregious prosecutorial misconduct and uncovering a major scandal involving the illegal use of informants inside county jails.

    Defense lawyers and families of murder victims do not, typically, become allies. But by that March day in court, Webb’s faith in the prosecution was long gone, eroded by years of hearings, years of excuses from prosecutors, and years of false testimony from the DA’s allies in the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. And as Webb’s support for the prosecution declined, she’d developed a deep respect for Sanders, the man defending her sister’s killer. She, and other victims’ relatives, just wanted the case to end. They wanted closure. Webb and other victims’ family members now blamed the prosecution, not the defense, for the years of delays.

    “They are not doing this for my family,” she remembers thinking. “They are doing this to my family.”

    Thomas Goethals, the judge who presided over the case, seemed to agree.

    “I have seen some extraordinary events in my time, but nothing like what has unfolded in this courtroom ― crimes and investigative conduct like I’ve seen here,” Goethals would later say during his final ruling on the case.

    Webb and other victims’ relatives were hoping the prosecution would finally change its strategy.

    But Michael Murphy, the California deputy attorney general tasked with taking over the case, dashed their hopes. His office would continue to seek capital punishment for Dekraai, he told the court that March. Webb’s nightmare — and the years-long fight over whether to execute Dekraai — would continue.

    The Deadliest Mass Shooting In Orange County History

    It took Webb just a split second on Oct. 12, 2011, to realize her life had forever changed. She was watching “General Hospital,” taking a 30-minute break from monitoring interest rates as part of her work as a loan officer, when a breaking news alert warned her nine people had been shot at a hair salon in the quaint seaside town of Seal Beach. Webb looked up at the TV and instantly recognized Salon Meritage, where her sister Laura worked.

    In an office 25 miles away, Paul Wilson understood something had gone horribly wrong the moment he picked up the telephone and heard Gordon Gallego’s voice. Wilson had known the hairstylist for 15 years ― ever since his wife, Christy, had started working at the salon. “Gordon, you have to tell me Christy’s OK,” Wilson remembers pleading. “I can’t do that, Paul,” Gallego softly replied.

    Wilson and Webb were both regulars at Meritage. In fact, Wilson had been at the salon on the morning of the shooting. Sitting in Gallego’s chair, he had watched Michelle Fournier walk in. Fournier, a hairstylist and Christy’s high school friend, was embroiled in an increasingly bitter custody battle with her ex-husband, Scott Dekraai. Now, Dekraai wanted to meet for coffee, Fournier explained. Just the thought of it made Gallego cringe.

    “That guy Scott is so crazy, he could come in here and shoot up the place,” he said that very morning.

    About two hours later, Dekraai would do just that. Wearing body armor and carrying three guns, Dekraai burst into the salon and opened fire. He first shot Fournier in the head and chest. In the barrage that followed, Christy Wilson, Laura Webb and six others lost their lives. Seventy-three-year-old Hattie Stretz, Bethany and Laura’s mother, was at the salon that day to get her nails done. She was shot and left fighting for her life.

    Dekraai was pulled over by a Seal Beach police officer just minutes after he sped off in his pickup truck. Still wearing body armor, his pockets stuffed with ammo and loaded magazines, he surrendered. “I know what I did,” he told the arresting officer. Later that day, Dekraai confessed to a police detective ― describing his morning argument with Fournier, his weapons, and each of his victims, by name.

    The first time Wilson and Webb saw Dekraai after the shootings was two days later, in court. Orange County Assistant District Attorney Dan Wagner, the lead prosecutor on the case, and Deputy District Attorney Scott Simmons told a jam-packed courtroom on Oct. 14 they would be seeking the death penalty. Their boss, Rackauckas, tearfully said at a press conference that same day that the Seal Beach murder case was “so depraved, so callous, so malignant” that only the most severe punishment would fit the crime. Privately, Rackauckas told the families they could rest assured he had their backs.

    A Snitch Scandal Is Born

    Rackauckas has been Orange County’s top prosecutor for two decades, reigning over county law enforcement in the longtime Republican stronghold.

    Like thousands of his colleagues across the U.S., Rackauckas has a remarkable set of tools at his disposal. District attorneys are among the most powerful government agents in the American criminal justice system. They have complete and unrivaled access to the evidence that can determine a person’s guilt or innocence, and it’s on them to share it with the defense. They can cut deals with witnesses, co-conspirators and defendants. They determine the charges a defendant will face, and therefore set the parameters for the eventual punishment a suspect might receive.

    The case in front of Rackauckas’ prosecution team seemed like a slam-dunk.

    Scott Dekraai was a poster child for the death penalty, Webb thought at the time. “He shoots eight people, wounds a ninth,” she recalled. “A dozen people see him. They run into a bar next door that has a big open window. All the patrons in the bar watch him walk out, with a gun in his hand. They watch him shoot a guy in a car. People are screaming, calling 911. He gets in his car and slowly drives away. A brave man runs out and takes a picture of his license plate as he’s leaving. He’s pulled over just blocks away with the gun and says he knows what he did and then goes on to confess.”

    “Clear as day,” she concluded. “You can’t mess this up.”

    But the prosecution team did just that, from the very start of the investigation, Wilson and Webb say.

    Just days after the murders, sheriff’s deputies who supervised the county jail Dekraai was housed in moved him into a section known as Mod L., officially used as a mental health housing unit. As Dekraai struggled to adjust to life behind bars in those initial days, he found support in the inmate housed next to him ― Fernando Perez. A 30-something former Mexican mafia leader, Perez faced a possible life sentence and had already spent much of his life in jail. The pair started talking about the Seal Beach case, discussing Dekraai’s mental state at the time of the shootings, meetings with his attorney and interactions with the prison’s mental health staff.

    Three months after the killings, prosecutors revealed that they, too, had met with Perez, discussed his numerous conversations with Dekraai, and asked the sheriff’s department to bug Dekraai’s cell. For about a week, that device captured numerous conversations between the pair.

    To Dekraai’s lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, these meetings raised disturbing questions.

    Informants play a significant role in the criminal justice system. They offer a critical way for prosecutors around the nation to help bolster their cases, because they can, and do, produce testimony that is damning. But there are significant risks. Because informants always operate in the shadows, their work, and the agreements they cut with police and prosecutors, frequently escape public scrutiny. Very often, snitches face lengthy sentences. That may motivate them to engage with prosecutors, but it can also be an incentive to provide prosecutors with false or dubious information. False snitch testimony has been identified as a key cause of wrongful convictions in murder cases. In the Dekraai case, where prosecutors were concerned Dekraai might mount an insanity defense in an attempt to avoid the death penalty, an informant could potentially help to prove he was of sound mind.

    But the Sixth Amendment strictly prohibits the use of government-directed informants to question defendants who have already been charged, as Dekraai had been. If Perez had worked as a government informant, Sanders realized, it meant the prosecution team had violated his client’s rights.

    So, much to the chagrin of the victims’ families, Sanders began a lengthy effort to get all the materials from the sheriff and the prosecution about Perez. It took Sanders about a year, with multiple requests, hearings and finally an order from then-Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals, to compel prosecutors to hand over what would amount to thousands of pages related to Perez.

    From the documents, Sanders learned that Perez was a seasoned informant who had been cooperating with law enforcement on various cases for more than a year in hopes of reducing his own time behind bars. The notes Perez kept on his conversations with dozens of inmates ― a project he called “Operation Daylight” ― proved just why prosecutors found him so valuable. He quickly built trust with his targets, consistently detailed what he learned, and was eager to please the police and prosecutors.

    However, Rackauckas and his prosecutors maintained that Perez had come forward of his own volition, having become so personally troubled by Dekraai’s revelations that he felt compelled to speak up. They also claimed that the gang leader had recently retired as a snitch and that his long history with the department hardly mattered. It was pure coincidence, they said, that the two inmates ended up in nearby cells.

    But Sanders wasn’t buying it. And, increasingly, neither were Wilson and Webb.

    ‘Anybody Following This Case… Could See They Cheated.’

    Sanders spent months studying the thousands of documents and hundreds of hours of jail recordings regarding Perez. What he found would ultimately turn the Orange County criminal justice system on its head.

    In January 2014, Sanders filed a blistering 505-page motion that outlined how the illegal use of jailhouse informants went far beyond the Dekraai case.

    The public defender argued that sheriff’s deputies used housing units like Mod. L as “informant tanks,” where inmates who were secretly working with the government targeted specific defendants and tried to obtain information that could bolster the prosecution’s case in court. Furthermore, Sanders alleged, prosecutors and sheriff’s officials had consistently worked to conceal the program’s existence, and had held back evidence from it that could potentially have been beneficial to defendants.

    Sanders’ findings radically changed the focus of the Dekraai hearings, moving them away from the shooting to an investigation of wider government misconduct. County prosecutors and the sheriff’s department adamantly denied the allegations ― Wagner, the senior prosecutor, called them “scurrilous and unfounded” and said Sanders’ motion was “filled with untruths” ― but Judge Goethals ordered the first of what would ultimately be three sets of hearings.

    Throughout the following months, Wilson and Webb looked on as a prosecutor and sheriff’s deputies took the stand to discuss their work with informants, delivering testimony that would later prove to be false. A trio of deputies in the Special Handling unit of the sheriff’s department — Ben Garcia, Seth Tunstall and William Grover — denied that there was a jailhouse informant program, said they never kept any records about their use of informants, and downplayed ever working with informants inside the jail.

    Tunstall and then-Deputy District Attorney Erik Petersen, a veteran of the gang unit of the district attorney’s office, claimed that law enforcement officials had refused to hand over records to defense lawyers because a former federal prosecutor had ordered them not to disclose critical evidence. But the prosecutor later testified that she never gave any such order. In addition, Sanders showed she had turned over the same evidence in her own federal cases.

    Wilson and Webb heard law enforcement officers’ tortured arguments over semantics (there weren’t any “informants” in the jail at all, they claimed, just “sources of information”) and their repeated refusals to shed light on the work inside the jail or, at times, to testify at all. With each new claim, Webb and Wilson grew more dismayed.

    “I was there for years... I saw that testimony. I saw the district attorneys and deputies not answering questions,” Webb said. “Anybody following this case, paying attention with critical thought, could see they cheated ― this is me sitting in the court listening to them cheat, listening to them lie.”

    The hearings took a heavy toll. Each time, it took Webb days to mentally prepare to be in Dekraai’s presence. Goethals did his best to allow the victims’ families to address the court, but legal formalities meant they could make their voices heard only rarely. “You just sit there and hope,” Webb said. “Every three months or so, you may able to say a word, try and get your thing in. But most of the time you don’t. Most of the time you just sit there.”

    Being in the courtroom was painful, but missing a day often felt worse.

    “Those days would rip my heart out, knowing that Christy didn’t have any representation there,” Wilson said. “I felt like I was the worst guy in the world. It was gut-wrenching.”

    With every new allegation of malfeasance, the possibility of a straightforward sentencing for Dekraai seemed to grow more remote. And the lack of transparency from law enforcement stood in stark contrast to the mountain of evidence Sanders was producing in court ― document after document that clearly demonstrated the existence of a longstanding and vast informant program in the jail.

    As the hearings dragged on, the families of Dekraai’s victims grew divided over how they wanted the case to proceed. Some wanted the prosecution to carry on with seeking the death penalty. Others weren’t sure what the path forward should be. And some, like Wilson and Webb, were ready to drop the idea of the death sentence if it would mean a speedier end to the trial. At this point, they just wanted it to be over.

    Meanwhile, even as Wilson and Webb’s faith in Rackauckas and the sheriff’s department crumbled further week after week, their appreciation for Sanders’ efforts to uncover the truth grew stronger.

    “He did it the right way, the way it’s supposed to be done,” Wilson said of Sanders. “He did it the way I wanted the district attorney to do it. If he would have been on our side, my family would have been able to heal. And we’d be in a much better spot than we were almost six years after the fact.”

    An Ending Deferred

    In May 2014, Dekraai unexpectedly pleaded guilty to the killings, pre-empting the jury trial that would have determined his guilt, which was set to begin just months later. Sanders told the court that Dekraai was ready to be sentenced immediately to eight consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole, and that he would not file an appeal. If Rackauckas was willing to stop seeking a death sentence, the case could be brought to a swift conclusion.

    When considering whether to pursue a death sentence in a case, prosecutors like Rackauckas have wide discretion. They must consider various formal legal factors, like the nature of the crime and the number of victims. But they can also be influenced by factors like local politics, public perception and personal philosophy. In Orange County, Rackauckas’ office has regularly sought the death penalty for its most serious homicide cases, obtaining the sentence for nine defendants since 2010.

    After Dekraai pleaded guilty, some members of the victims’ families, including Wilson and Webb, urged Rackauckas to accept Dekraai’s offer and drop his pursuit of the death penalty. The prosecutor wasn’t moved. He told Wilson it was his decision, not theirs. “This case deserves the death penalty and that’s what we’re going to get,” Wilson remembers Rackauckas saying.

    For Wilson, it was a defining moment. “I learned that they weren’t working for me,” he said. “These guys who I thought were protecting me weren’t protecting me. They weren’t protecting Christy, they weren’t doing what’s best for Christy. They weren’t doing what was best for my family.”

    Rackauckas met with the victims’ loved ones several times throughout the legal process, said Michelle Van Der Linden, spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office.

    “Clearly, their opinions mattered to the DA and through these discussions he found there were loved ones on all sides of the death penalty issue, with some being for it, while others were against,” Van Der Linden said. “Ultimately, DA Rackauckas told them that our justice system vests the final decision whether to seek the death penalty upon the elected District Attorney. DA Rackauckas believed, and continues to believe, that if there was ever a case in Orange County where it was appropriate to seek the death penalty, it was this case.”

    So the case continued. And the revelations of misconduct piled up.

    Throughout the hearings, deputies had insisted they had no records or notes that would help remind them why inmates were moved to particular locations. But later in 2014, Sanders found that the sheriff’s department had been using an internal database to document movements of jail inmates and informants. The records, which went back decades, showed the scope of the informant work was much larger than previously thought. They also provided evidence that sheriff’s deputies had intentionally placed Fernando Perez next to Dekraai, Sanders said.

    Asked why they hadn’t turned over these key records, Tunstall ― who’d authored thousands of entries in the database ― said he’d never thought to mention them. Garcia admitted he had been trained never to speak of them in court.

    On March 12, 2015 ― over three and a half years after Dekraai killed eight people in Seal Beach ― Judge Goethals had heard enough.

    That day, the judge issued a scathing ruling that recused Rackauckas’ entire office from further prosecuting the case. He forcefully chastised Tunstall and Garcia, saying they “either intentionally lied or willfully withheld information” during their testimony, and called out Petersen by name for misleading the court. He acknowledged that there was no direct evidence Rackauckas had actively participated in the concealment of evidence ― but he faulted the top prosecutor for “chronic failure” to comply with his court orders to produce evidence, which resulted in the violation of Dekraai’s constitutional rights.

    “Certain aspects of the District Attorney’s performance in this case might be described as a comedy of errors but for the fact that it has been so sadly deficient,” Goethals wrote. “There is nothing funny about that.”

    ‘The Magnitude Of The Systemic Problems Cannot Be Overlooked.’

    Still, prosecutors weren’t done fighting. The office of California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who’s now a Democratic senator and potential 2020 presidential candidate, took over the prosecutorial duties for the Dekraai case when Rackauckas’ team was ejected. Although serious allegations of misconduct against Rackauckas’ office were clear, Harris appealed Goethals’ decision to remove county prosecutors from the case. And instead of conducting a vigorous inquiry into the snitch program and the role of prosecutors in concealing it, she launched a narrower criminal investigation that purported to examine the role of wrongdoing by members of the sheriff’s department.

    In early 2016, while Harris’ appeal was still under review, Sanders discovered during his litigation of another capital case an enormous work log, maintained by sheriff’s deputies from 2008 to 2013, that had never previously been disclosed to the court. The 1,157-page log described numerous interactions with inmates and informants. The entries detailed how deputies recruited and used informants, collaborated with prosecutors and other local law enforcement agencies, and ran scams to gather further evidence from inmates. The document trove contained numerous entries from Grover and Garcia, the deputies who had testified under oath they didn’t have notes about their work with informants. Tunstall, the third deputy from the Special Handling unit, didn’t author any entries in the log, but he is referenced throughout.

    After years of denials, the discovery of the log forced Rackauckas’ office to finally acknowledge that, yes, a jail informant program did exist, and yes, sheriff’s deputies actively “recruited and utilized” informants and rewarded them in exchange for information. County prosecutors also admitted that the log contradicted statements made by several of the sheriff’s deputies who had testified in earlier hearings.

    The sheriff’s department, however, continued to deny the existence of the program, as it does to this day.

    By the end of 2016, California’s 4th District Court of Appeal rejected Harris’ appeal of Judge Goethals’ ruling. The three-justice panel affirmed his decision and agreed with his findings ― there was indeed evidence of an informant program in Orange County’s jails, and it was appropriate to recuse Rackauckas’ prosecutors from Dekraai’s case. The justices found that the DA’s office was more interested in being loyal to the county sheriff’s office than in upholding the law, and that this misplaced loyalty came at the expense of Dekraai’s rights.

    “The magnitude of the systemic problems cannot be overlooked,” the justices wrote of the crisis in Orange County. Rackauckas and his prosecutors would not be returning to the Dekraai case.

    Dekraai’s Fate

    The victims’ families didn’t always agree on the death penalty. But by the end of 2016, they were growing increasingly aligned ― and they wanted the case to come to a close. On a Saturday afternoon in December, the families gathered at a park in Seal Beach, home to a memorial for the victims of the salon massacre, and delivered a very public message to California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who had taken over from Kamala Harris: Abandon the effort to execute Dekraai. It wasn’t out of sympathy for Dekraai, they said. It was out of a desire to gain some sense of closure in a case that had already taken up five years of their lives.

    “We have no choice but to collectively agree we do not want the death penalty pursued,” Paul Wilson said, speaking on behalf of the group. “We are exhausted from this continuous pain, and this has got to be over with. Life will never be the same for us, but we should have the chance to move on.”

    Their hopes were dashed three months later. In March 2017, California prosecutor Michael Murphy, Becerra’s deputy, told Goethals’ courtroom that the AG would continue to seek capital punishment for Dekraai.

    Webb and Wilson were stunned. They had begged the state prosecutors not to do it. “They wanted to do the political thing, so they went for it. And they took another nine months of our time,” Webb said.

    Becerra’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Harris’ office declined to comment.

    Meanwhile, Goethals had spent months examining the thousand-plus pages of the Special Handling log, along with a trove of other previously undisclosed internal sheriff’s department memos and documents. The fact that informant-related evidence was still trickling in ― more than three years after his original court order mandating that these materials be immediately disclosed ― deeply troubled the judge. In court, he openly questioned whether the sheriff’s department could be trusted to ever turn over all relevant materials in the case. So he ordered new hearings once again, in an effort to determine just that.

    Beginning in May 2017, Goethals heard from dozens of sheriff’s department staff ― deputies, supervisors, commanders and eventually Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens herself ― and a new line of defense emerged. Although there was no formal jail informant program, the sheriff’s officials said, there was a small group of rogue deputies who illegally worked with informants behind the backs of their supervisors. “There may have been a few deputies who took their duties to different levels than were authorized,” Hutchens said on the stand.

    But the “rogue deputy” narrative disintegrated by the end of the hearings, after two key deputies and a retired supervisor indicated that the department’s upper management was aware of the program. The evidence Sanders produced in this round of hearings was clear: There was an understanding of widespread use of jailhouse informants, all the way up the chain of command at the sheriff’s department, for over a decade.

    In August, with the hearings concluded, Goethals would again issue a stunning decision. In a rare move, he ruled that due to “ongoing prosecutorial misconduct,” and the prosecution team being “unable or unwilling” to provide all relevant records to ensure that Dekraai would get a fair penalty trial, he would exclude the death penalty as a punishment option.

    A month later, with the death penalty off the table, Dekraai was sentenced to eight consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole. It had been six years since he’d opened fire in the Seal Beach salon.

    Becerra’s office announced it would not appeal. It was finally over.

    When Webb walked out of the courtroom, she felt worn out. But the next day, she began to feel some sense of consolation. And every day since then, she has felt a little less burdened. She knew, at least, she never had to go back.

    Wilson, too, was relieved knowing he’d never have to set foot in that courtroom again. “I don’t have to sit 10 feet from that coward and look at him,” he said. “I don’t have to listen to these arrogant district attorneys and high-ranking police officers sit there and tell their lies and think they are above the law, and get immunity for whatever they are doing that they know is wrong.”

    Still No Accountability In Orange County

    The revelations in the Dekraai case have led to the unraveling of 18 other high-profile cases in the county and threaten to upend still more. But to Webb and Wilson’s great frustration, there been little accountability for the law enforcement agents involved.

    “I want to see every one of those people who broke the law ― anybody who perjured themselves on the stand, anybody who withheld evidence ― they all need to be held accountable, absolutely, 100 percent accountable,” Wilson said.

    Of the three government probes into the allegations of misconduct in the county ― brought by the Orange County Grand Jury, the California attorney general’s office, and the U.S. Department of Justice ― only the grand jury has produced a report on their findings. Their conclusions only exacerbated the controversy around the county’s criminal justice system. The scandal was not a scandal at all, the grand jury argued ― it was a “myth” and a “witch hunt.” And anyway, they said, Goethals’ courtroom wasn’t a proper venue to examine the allegations of misconduct. But the report never addressed the evidence that for years poured into the Dekraai hearings, clearly contradicting their conclusions, nor did it present any analysis of the many cases influenced by informants. The foreperson later acknowledged that the panel relied almost entirely on interviews with prosecutors and sheriff’s staff.

    Legal experts blasted the report, saying it was proof of the need for an outside, truly independent investigation.

    The other two investigations, by the DOJ and the state attorney general’s office, are still underway. To this day, no charges have been filed against any government official accused of wrongdoing linked to the jail informant scandal.

    The sheriff’s department has acknowledged deficiencies in its policies and protocols involving jailhouse informants. The agency has also implemented changes regarding the handling of inmates, sheriff’s department public information officer Carrie Braun said. It has disbanded the Special Handling unit at the center of the scandal, replacing it with a new unit that has many of the same duties as the old one but which, the sheriff’s department claims, is better equipped to respond to court orders.

    “A small number of deputies may have improperly utilized informants,” Braun said, echoing Hutchens’ testimony. “Neither the sheriff nor any sheriff’s department executive staff were aware of the cultivation or improper utilization of informants.”

    Braun also said that the deputies accused of misconduct remain under criminal investigation by the California attorney general’s office. When that investigation is complete, the sheriff’s department will conduct a full internal affairs investigation, she said.

    Sheriff Hutchens announced her retirement in 2017, but claimed it wasn’t related to the informant scandal. Grover, Garcia and Tunstall are all on paid administrative leave from the sheriff’s department.

    Meanwhile, Rackauckas’ office maintains that none of its prosecutors intentionally behaved inappropriately. The office also said new policies and training regarding the use of informants have been implemented. “As we have previously expressed, the OCDA was frustrated with the OCSD’s failure to provide to the court all required, relevant information during the Dekraai proceedings,” Van Der Linden said. “However, the OCDA acted in good faith throughout the proceedings.”

    Petersen, the prosecutor Goethals called out for misconduct, resigned from Rackauckas’ office, but found a new job as a prosecutor in Omaha, Nebraska shortly thereafter.

    The lack of serious repercussions isn’t entirely surprising. Prosecutors generally operate without fear of accountability for their misconduct. Because so much of what they do is behind the scenes ― gathering evidence and working with police and investigators as they build their cases ― malfeasance is often not discovered until years, sometimes decades, after a person has been convicted. In many cases, it’s never discovered at all. And even when cheating is found, prosecutors are rarely punished criminally or by state bar associations. Partly in response to the Orange County scandal, California’s legislature passed a law subjecting prosecutors to felony charges if they withhold or falsify evidence. But the actions of the state AG’s office in the Dekraai case have have only increased skepticism that the agency will actually bring charges against fellow prosecutors. Moreover, in 1976, the United States Supreme Court granted “absolute immunity” to prosecutors, shielding them from civil liability even for “malicious or dishonest conduct.”

    Dekraai is now in prison, serving out eight consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. Rackauckas is running for re-election this year. He’s seeking his fifth term.

    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...b02b66c512a049
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  7. #47
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    Report: Prosecutors mishandled California mass murder case

    California prosecutors committed malpractice and were negligent in their use of a jailhouse snitch in the case of a man convicted of killing his ex-wife and seven others at a Seal Beach hair salon in 2011, the Orange County district attorney concluded in a report released Monday.

    District Attorney Todd Spitzer said prosecutors in his office showed signs of engaging in misconduct in the way they handled the case of Scott Dekraai, a former tugboat operator, who is serving life in prison for the county's largest mass killing.

    The review found prosecutors erred in using a longtime snitch to get a tainted confession from Dekraai and did not properly disclose that information to a defense lawyer.

    "Prosecutors handling People v. Dekraai violated discovery laws and rulings from the court, trampled defendant rights, and denied the full imposition of justice for the victims and their families," Spitzer's office said.

    The discovery of the use of the informant by Dekraai's lawyer, Scott Sanders, unearthed what became known as the "jailhouse informant scandal" that went beyond just the salon shooting case. It ultimately derailed the prosecution of Dekraai as prosecutors were seeking the death penalty.

    Courts removed the Orange County district attorney's office, then headed by Tony Rackauckas, from the case and ruled that the death penalty couldn't be sought. Dekraai ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight life terms with no chance of parole.

    Sanders said the report simply blamed two prosecutors no longer with the office but failed to address the pattern of abuse he found in the use of informants by prosecutors and sheriff's deputies that is now under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

    "It accurately identifies the miscount by the Dekraai prosecutors and then completely ignores the decades of misconduct involving jailhouse informants," Sander said. "It's a great headline grabber, but the problem is that no other prosecutor is identified as doing anything wrong. ... We know this has been going on for decades."

    https://www.kob.com/national-news/re...00503/?cat=600
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