Orange County District Todd Spitzer is failing his legal duty to report police officers with questionable conduct to defense lawyers, alleges a court document filed this week by Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders.
Sanders, in his court motion, said Spitzer is protecting such cops rather than placing them in the Brady notification system — a list of officers who are found to be not credible. The list is named after the 1963 Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland and is considered a warning to prosecutors and defense attorneys that these officers are unreliable to testify. In Orange County, the list is maintained by the District Attorney’s Office.
Sanders’ allegation stems from a joint investigation by prosecutors and Orange County sheriff’s officials that found property evidence was booked late or not at all by about 1,400 deputies in some 40,000 cases — meaning those deputies had lied in their crime reports to cover up their mishandling of evidence. But less than 40 deputies and no investigators are on the Brady list, according to Sanders.
Sanders added that Spitzer overstated the number of examined police cases by 17,083 — not a number that could be written off as an oversight.
“The failure to add personnel … to the Brady investigation, despite having clearly committed qualifying conduct, corroborates the allegations made in this brief,” wrote Sanders.
Spitzer responded to what he called Sanders’ “ridiculous, baseless motions.”
“I’m putting Orange County on notice that Scott Sanders’ primary focus of filing these ridiculous, baseless motions is not the defense of his client. It is solely to bring the chaos of the Los Angeles criminal justice system here to Orange County.,” Spitzer said, a nod to the progressive movement there under newly elected District Attorney George Gascon. “Our job is to ensure that never happens.”
Responded Sanders: “After all the talk of reform, we get a sliver of sad truth — Mr. Spitzer sees a world in which defendants are fully informed about the lies of police officers as chaos.”
Sanders’ accusations are being made in the case of Victor Soto, who is facing felony gun charges.
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