“The guiding light in that office is ‘How is it going to make Todd Spitzer look?’” one former prosecutor said.

 OC District Attorney Todd Spitzer is a Professional Criminal hiding with his immunity cloak! The United States’ Most Corrupt District Attorney To Date

The head of one of the largest district attorney’s offices in the US is tanking the local justice system with his ironfisted grip on the office, using fear and retaliation against subordinates and interfering in high-profile cases to boost his public image, according to internal documents and interviews with current and former employees.

Their accounts come as the district attorney for Orange County, California, Todd Spitzer, is facing a growing list of lawsuits and accusations of racism. More than 70 prosecutors — about a quarter of the office’s entire roster of attorneys — have left over the last three years. All of the alleged misconduct, current and former prosecutors and investigators who spoke to BuzzFeed News said, is to protect Spitzer’s public persona and political career, which they said has come at the cost of morale and the reputation of their office. Justice, they said, has come second to generating positive headlines and protecting the personal brand of the county’s top prosecutor.

“Sometimes that aligns with justice, sometimes it doesn’t,” a current prosecutor said.

BuzzFeed News spoke with 11 current and former law enforcement officials from the district attorney’s office who worked under Spitzer, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity citing a fear of retaliation. Even those no longer working within the prosecutor’s office said they were concerned that speaking out could lead to personal or professional repercussions within the small world of the Southern California legal system. BuzzFeed News also obtained internal memos, emails, confidential investigative reports, and public court records to corroborate many of their accounts. These interviews and documents show that, among other things:

• Spitzer launched internal investigations as payback against prosecutors and investigators who pursued cases that he wanted dropped or that posed a threat of revealing comments or decisions that he wanted hidden, according to three officials with direct knowledge.
• In spite of vowing to step back to protect the prosecution’s independence, Spitzer “shopped around” for a prosecutor who’d align with his personal view in the high-profile case of Grant Robicheaux, a wealthy surgeon accused of raping multiple women, according to two sources. At least one prosecutor refused to take it on because they felt Spitzer wanted charges reduced or dropped.
• Spitzer brought up race multiple times as he made decisions on criminal prosecutions and used Black prosecutors as the face of the office to deflect criticism of his record, former prosecutors said in interviews and documents.
• Two supervisors and an outside investigator have found the district attorney “not credible” when he was questioned in two separate investigations, according to reports obtained by BuzzFeed News. In one instance, Spitzer lied to his own homicide investigator, possibly obstructing justice and tainting two criminal cases, after having an “improper” conversation with the father of a young boy killed in a mass shooting, one former high-ranking prosecutor said in a legal claim.
• Though he touted himself as a victims advocate, some alleged victims have told BuzzFeed News they were publicly discredited, abandoned by Spitzer’s office, and verbally attacked by him behind closed doors.

In a statement to BuzzFeed News, Spitzer denied using the prosecutor’s office for his political benefit, interfering in criminal cases, and taking action to tip the outcome of investigations and trials to his liking. Instead, he accused critics of “coordinat[ing] efforts to embarrass me and deter me from my efforts.”

“This is no coincidence and the motive is clear,” Spitzer said in the statement. “Nothing will deter me from continuing my mission to clean up the public corruption in the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and safeguard the criminal justice system.”

He also denied an atmosphere of fear and retaliation in the prosecutor’s office, saying that incidents of discipline were meant to ferret out a “win-at-all-costs” mentality from a previous administration.

“Accountability cannot be confused for retaliation,” he said.

The district attorney was also critical of BuzzFeed News’ use of anonymous sources for this article, suggesting they were disgruntled employees looking for a payout.

“It is disingenuous to allow people speaking under the condition of anonymity to make allegations of this nature, especially when many of them have a vested financial interest in painting the office and the DA in the worst possible light,” he said in the statement. “There has not been a single sustained allegation of retaliation by the DA and to refuse to identify sources while they are allowed unfettered ability to make unsubstantiated and factually inaccurate statements is not only unfair, it is a disservice to the public we serve and the work that we do on a daily basis to pursue justice and give the voiceless a voice.”

Yet that daily work is now threatened by what insiders have called a mass exodus from the office. The office maintains a roster of about 300 attorneys on staff, and the district attorney’s office confirmed 73 prosecutors have left over a period of three years. (Fourteen returned to do part-time work on contract, the district attorney’s office added.)

But the result, sources said, has been a “brain drain” from the Orange County district attorney’s office of mid- and high-level prosecutors. Today, several officials said, prosecutors with less experience are handling bigger caseloads and more complicated cases than they would have before.

“Everybody is looking for an exit strategy because it’s just a rotten place to work,” one former prosecutor said. “That’s 100% Todd Spitzer’s fault.”

The district attorney’s office disputed the number of departures and, despite concerns from multiple supervisors and line prosecutors about attrition, said their rate was lower than other county agencies. Officials also pointed to a county program launched in 2020 that offered up to $100,000 in incentives for long-term employees to retire.

After being contacted for this story, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office asked prosecutors to reach out to BuzzFeed News to talk about their experiences.

Four people — including one who refused to identify themself and one person who declined to be named in this article, saying they were concerned they’d face blowback from coworkers for speaking positively about their boss — spoke highly of Spitzer and his handling of multiple scandals that have plagued the office in recent years. They also described what they said was a divided office, affected by the politics of an upcoming election.

“It is a toxic environment in the sense that if you’re pro-Todd [Spitzer], you can’t say that openly in the office because so many people are openly against him,” Jeri Katheryne Neff, a prosecutor who was asked to contact BuzzFeed News.

The recent headlines, lawsuits, and allegations raised against Spitzer have fractured the prosecution office, said Beth Costello, a senior assistant district attorney who was also asked to contact BuzzFeed News.

“If I say something good and my name is attached to it, then the other 50% of the office that’s disgruntled will have an ax to grind,” she said.

She and the others praised Spitzer for initiatives he’s launched since taking office, such as expanding the mental health and recidivism unit, as well as the veterans treatment court, which looks at providing additional services and support in select cases. He’s also directed more resources to address juvenile justice, they said.

“At the end of the day, he has a huge heart and cares about his office and its employees,” Costello said.

Todd Spitzer (center) gives the thumbs-up at his campaign headquarters in Santa Ana as election results showed he had closed the gap against his rival, incumbent district attorney Tony Rackauckas, in November 2018.

Questions about how politics have influenced investigative decisions began three days after Spitzer won the election for district attorney on Nov. 6, 2018, when Damon Tucker, an investigator within the office who suspected Spitzer of corruption, was suddenly removed from an internal inquiry. But Tucker continued to check on the inquiry, calling the new investigator on the case, according to an arbitrator’s report. At one point, he called a friend at a local police department to ask about the investigation, prompting accusations that he’d overstepped his duties in pursuing a “vendetta” against Spitzer.

In a scathing four-page memo obtained by BuzzFeed News, Spitzer called the entire incident an “accidental and completely unintentional exchange” and then blasted the accounts of his own investigator and two supervisors, calling their accounts of what happened “misleading,” “aggressive,” “biased,” and “agenda driven.”

For others who had direct knowledge about how the review was conducted, it wasn’t a surprise.

As ongoing DA cheating scandals continue to unfold, a pair of key endorsements in the campaign for District Attorney and judge have now been dropped.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer is losing his endorsement from his counterpart in neighboring San Diego County, as Spitzer faces accusations from within law enforcement that he improperly dropped the death penalty in a murder case to hide racial statements he made while discussing the case.

San Diego County DA Summer Stephan – who leads prosecutions in California’s second-largest county – rescinded her endorsement Thursday morning, according to Stephan’s campaign consultant.

“I can confirm San Diego DA Summer Stephan rescinded her endorsement of DA Spitzer,” her consultant Dan Rottenstreich said in a statement to Voice of OC.

Spitzer didn’t return a message for comment.

Chapman University professor Fred Smoller, who closely follows OC elections, said it’s “super uncommon” for endorsements to be pulled in DA and judge races.

Stephan was a registered Republican when she was elected in 2017, but later changed to “no party preference” in 2019, saying she was not a very political person.

Also losing an endorsement in recent days is Brahim Baytieh, a senior prosecutor whom Spitzer fired last week, citing an investigation into Baytieh allegedly unraveling a 2010 murder conviction by failing to turn over informant evidence.

Chapman University law professor Mario Mainero told Voice of OC he pulled his endorsement of Baytieh because the investigation report provided sufficient corroboration that Baytieh had failed to turn over evidence he was required to provide the defense in that case.

“I was under the same impression frankly that Todd was a year or two ago, that one of the clean ones, one of the ones who didn’t do anything like that, was Brahim Baytieh,” Mainero said in an interview Friday, referring to improper withholding of evidence.

“So when [Baytieh] asked me for an endorsement, I gave him one. But when an independent investigation suggests that is inaccurate, and when there’s been no response from Baytieh about it, I didn’t think I had a choice, if I was going to maintain my own standard here. So that’s why I pulled it.”

Baytieh didn’t return a message for comment.

Baytieh himself is a central witness to the racial remarks at the center of the death penalty controversy swirling around Spitzer that exploded into public view this week.

Baytieh wrote a pair of memos outlining how prosecutors objected when, during an Oct. 1 discussion on whether to seek the death penalty against a Black man, Spitzer made a comment about Black men advancing themselves by dating White women.

Spitzer has acknowledged making a statement about Black men dating white women during the meeting, but claims it was appropriate in the context of the death penalty discussion.

Yet prosecutors who were in the room considered it inappropriate to bring race into the death penalty deliberations, according to the internal memos.

The controversy over the memos was first reported on by Voice of OC last week. This week, Voice of OC and other media outlets obtained Baytieh’s memos, which were later unsealed by Judge Gregg L. Prickett on Thursday.

Among the documents unsealed Thursday is an explosive letter from the lead detective in one of Orange County’s most high-profile murder cases, in which Jamon Rayon Buggs is accused of murdering two people in Newport Beach in 2019 after breaking up with his White ex-girlfriend.

Newport Beach Lt. Court Depweg wrote that Spitzer had improperly ruined the death penalty case against Buggs, who is Black, by making inappropriate racial remarks and then trying to cover it up.

“It was disappointing that [a prosecutor] and so many of his colleagues would try and cover this matter up as we all know the ‘cover up is always worse than the crime,’ ” Depweg wrote.

“In my twenty plus years of law enforcement experience, I had never heard of an entire district attorney unit being removed from communicating with the lead agency in the prosecution of a homicide,” he added.

Depweg said he’s been told by multiple current and former DA officials that Spitzer “made an unsolicited, derogatory, and racist comment about Black men/persons” at an Oct. 1 meeting on whether to seek the death penalty against Jamon Rayon Buggs, who is Black.

[Click here to read the memos that were unsealed by Judge Prickett on Thursday: Internal DA memos and the letter from the lead police detective in Newport Beach.]

In response, Spitzer said there were legal reasons communication was cut off between the DA’s office and the police department, but would not address the cover-up allegations or how he treated the victim’s families.

“The District Attorney’s Office was very limited in what we could say because we had already gone to the judge and the issue was being litigated in Court,” Spitzer said in a statement provided by his spokeswoman Kimberly Edds.

Edds didn’t have an answer when asked if Spitzer would comment about the cover-up allegations, and why the victims’ families apparently were not informed that he decided against the death penalty, despite requirements under Marsy’s Law.

Voice of OC asked Spitzer and Edds on Friday why Spitzer decided not to pursue the death penalty against Buggs, and when he made that decision. They did not provide an answer.

Nick Gerda covers county government for Voice of OC. You can contact him at ngerda@voiceofoc.org.

sited https://voiceofoc.org/2022/02/cheating-scandals-trigger-dropped-endorsements-for-da-spitzer-baytieh-judge-campaigns%ef%bf%bc/

OC District Attorney Todd Spitzer is facing a new round of misconduct accusations, with a former homicide prosecutor alleging in a court filing that Spitzer lied to a judge to try to hide racially charged comments Spitzer made that impacted a high-profile murder case.

“I have come into possession of emails which reveal what I believe to be a fraud recently perpetrated upon this Court,” states a court filing late last week by Matt Murphy, who was a former star homicide prosecutor at the DA’s office who has now become one of Spitzer’s fiercest critics.

He accuses Spitzer – Orange County’s top prosecutor – of telling lies that violate his duties as an attorney under state law, including hiding the fact he decided to pursue the death penalty against Jamon Rayon Buggs, a Black man, after Spitzer made racially charged remarks to other prosecutors during an Oct. 1 discussion of the decision.

[Click here to read the court filing.]

Spitzer is denying the allegations, saying he was completely honest with the court.

“The District Attorney’s statement to the court was factually accurate and complete and any allegation to the contrary is simply not true,” Spitzer’s office said in a statement this weekend.

The emails Murphy submitted to court reveal Spitzer decided to pursue the death penalty against Buggs as of Oct. 28 – four weeks after his Oct. 1 racial remarks – but then changed course to life in prison after his prosecutors wrote memos in December saying they would have to disclose Spitzer’s racial remarks to the judge.

Murphy alleges Spitzer then lied multiple times to the judge in an effort to keep secret the memos about his racial comments.

Among them was when Spitzer told the court that he made a decision to only seek life in prison but not death after his Oct. 1 racial statements when debating whether to seek the death penalty against Buggs.

“The only subsequent decision that I made after October 1, 2021 was that I would be seeking LWOP in this matter and not death,” Spitzer wrote in a Jan. 30 memo he submitted to Judge Gregg Prickett on Feb. 4.

Yet the newly revealed emails show Spitzer told prosecutors on Oct. 28 he had “made the decision to seek DP” – using a common shorthand for “death penalty.”

Murphy says this shows Spitzer outright lied to the judge – in violation of state law requirements for attorneys to not mislead courts.

“Clearly, Mr. Sptizer’s memorandum was presented in an attempt to persuade the court to keep his racist remarks hidden from Mr. Buggs’ defense lawyers, as well as from the public at large,” Murphy states in his filing.

“The motive for Mr. Spitzer’s lie is obvious,” he continued:

“To try to convince the court that the racially-charged statements set forth in [then-prosecutor Brahim] Baytieh’s narrative were much ado about nothing, instead of what every experienced capital litigator can see that it represents — a blunder of immense magnitude, and a shameful expression of racial bias in a setting of such solemnity and importance, that Mr. Spitzer reversed his position on seeking the death penalty for the sole purpose of keeping the issue hidden from Mr. Buggs’s defense team and the public.”

Asked for Spitzer’s response to the allegations, his office said, “No official decision [was] made on the death penalty until the court was notified on January 28, 2022 that we would not seek the death penalty.”

“We haven’t been served with a copy of the motion,” added the statement, provided by Spitzer’s spokeswoman Kimberly Edds.

“Questions of the defendant‘s mental competency were brought up by the defense and his behavior in court on October 27, 2021 made it clear that it was an issue that needed to be considered,” the statement added.

As for Spitzer’s Jan. 30 memo to the court, Edds said, “The District Attorney made the right decision to inform the court and disclose this situation out of an abundance of caution.”

Murphy accuses Spitzer of telling an additional lie to the court by claiming no one raised any concerns about his Oct. 1 racial remarks until nearly 90 days later, which Spitzer cited to undermine the credibility of concerns about the remarks.

“The fact that nearly 90 days had passed, not one person of the [DA] Special Circumstances committee asked to reconvene, or asked me for clarification of my statements, or in any way beforehand communicated any potential issues with my statements was literally mind-blowing,” Spitzer wrote in the opening paragraph of his Jan. 30 memo he submitted to Judge Prickett.

Yet the emails show Spitzer actually was told about the racial bias concerns more than 60 days earlier than he claimed to the court, Murphy states in his filing.

One of those documents shows that on Oct. 28, Spitzer received an email noting that a prior death penalty conversation about Buggs had included discussion of the Racial Justice Act – the racial bias law that prosecutors said requires Spitzer’s comments to be turned over to the defense.

“What’s more, [then-prosecutor Brahim] Baytieh’s email goes on to say that he (Baytieh) ‘relied on [the Racial Justice Act] in making my recommendation [not to pursue the death penalty],’ ” Murphy wrote.

Spitzer responded to that email 17 minutes later without contesting it, writing he had decided to pursue the death penalty against Buggs, according to the documents Murphy filed in court.

“Mr. Spitzer’s unabashed attempt to perpetrate a fraud on the court—by claiming that no one who heard the racially biased comments on October 1 protested until December 22 (and thus, Mr. Spitzer argues, the racially biased statements must not have been made at all)—relied on the erroneous belief that nobody else maintained copies of this email exchange,” Murphy wrote.

“Fortunately, he was mistaken.”

Spitzer’s statement did not address this allegation.

Murphy’s contention of a cover-up of Spitzer’s racial remarks are supported by a lead detective in the Buggs murder case and the mother of one of the victims.

“It was disappointing that [a prosecutor] and so many of his colleagues would try and cover this matter up as we all know the ‘cover up is always worse than the crime,’ ” Newport Beach police detective Court Depweg wrote in a Feb. 3 letter to Judge Prickett.

Murphy also contends Spitzer lied to the court about “walling off” from the case everyone from the Oct. 1 meeting – including himself – to address the concerns that he made racial biased comments.

“This was intended to convey the impression that he would no longer take any action that might affect the case,” Murphy wrote in his filing.

But two days later, Spitzer informed Newport Beach’s police chief that people can talk to him about the Buggs case, according to Depweg’s Feb. 3 letter to the judge – something Spitzer later confirmed in a statement to reporters.

That makes Spitzer’s “walling off” statements to the court a “deception,” Murphy alleges.

Spitzer’s statement did not address this allegation.

Murphy contends Spitzer violated state law, which requires all attorneys to use “means only as are consistent with truth, and never to seek to mislead the judge or any judicial officer by an artifice or false statement of fact or law.”

“I believe that the submission of such a false writing to the court violates an attorney’s statutory and ethical duty ‘never to seek to mislead the judge’ through the use of ‘any false statement of fact or law,’ ” Murphy wrote in his filing.

The county’s top prosecutor has tarnished the integrity of the justice system, he alleges.

“In all of this, we respectfully submit that Mr. Spitzer has disgraced himself, betrayed the victims, the justice system, and the community at large, and further sullied the esteem of the office he was elected to lead,” the filing states.

“In short, Mr. Spitzer has attempted to perpetrate a fraud on this court, and we had a clear ethical duty to provide the attached documents.”

Nick Gerda covers county government for Voice of OC. You can contact him at ngerda@voiceofoc.org.

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sited https://voiceofoc.org/2022/02/emails-fuel-new-claim-da-spitzer-lied-to-court-about-his-death-penalty-decision-in-homicide/

District Attorney Todd Spitzer is facing explosive allegations from his own staff that he improperly made racial remarks when he and other prosecutors were deciding whether to seek the death penalty against a Black defendant – and then kicked everyone from the meeting off the case after they noted a legal obligation to disclose Spitzer’s remarks to the defense, according to internal DA memos obtained by Voice of OC.

Following news reports Wednesday about the documents, and calls from the county Democratic Party and his opponent to resign over the issue, Spitzer released his own four-page memo offering his opinion on the case.

[Click here to read Spitzer’s memo.]

In his memo, Spitzer acknowledged that at the Oct. 1 death penalty meeting, he asked prosecutors about the race of the defendants’ former girlfriends and said he had “seen Black men date White women in certain circles in order to have others around them be more accepting.”

But Spitzer contends that was entirely appropriate for him to bring that up when discussing whether to seek the death penalty, because he “simply was exploring [the defendant’s] ability to identify, properly or not, the race of the female victim in that moment before he executed two victims.”

Yet his comments were apparently not seen as appropriate by other prosecutors in the room, at least one of whom wrote a memo that has now been obtained by media outlets.

In a Dec. 3 memo, high-ranking prosecutor Ebrahim Baytieh – whom Spitzer fired last week – said the DA was called out by himself and the lead prosecutor on the case when Spitzer brought up race at the death penalty decision meeting two months earlier.

When discussing the defendant’s prior domestic violence history, according to Baytieh’s memo, Spitzer asked about the past victims’ race and made a generalization about Black men, before being challenged by prosecutors who later said those kinds of remarks had to be disclosed to defense attorneys under a new state law.

“I stated that the race of the victims is completely irrelevant and it will be inappropriate for the OCDA to consider or give any weight to the race of the victims,” Baytieh wrote in his memo.

But Spitzer allegedly saw it differently.

“DA Spitzer stated that he disagreed and he knows many black people who get themselves out of their bad circumstances and bad situations by only dating ‘white women,’ ” Baytieh wrote.

Baytieh – who oversaw special prosecutions at the DA’s office as a senior assistant DA – then pushed back again, according to his memo.

“I then specifically stated that we should not under any circumstances give any weight or even discuss the race of the victims when we are deciding about the appropriate punishment to seek because, among other legal and ethical reasons, doing so implicates the recently signed Racial Justice Act (AB 2542),” Baytieh wrote.

The DA responded with an alleged story about a Black man he once knew, according to the memo.

“DA Spitzer then stated that while he was a student in college, he knew as a matter of fact that one of his fellow black students who lived in the same location as DA Spitzer only dated ‘white women,’ and that DA Spitzer knew for sure that this black student did so on purpose to get himself out of his bad circumstances and situations.”

Later in December, Baytieh wrote that the DA’s office has a legal obligation to turn his memo about the meeting over to a judge to decide whether it has to be disclosed to the defense, under a law that requires prosecutors to turn over any evidence of possible racial bias in the handling of a case.

“In my opinion and in my legal judgment, the most prudent course of action, and the right thing to do, is for our office to discover to the defense attorneys the attached memo documenting the discussion in question,” Baytieh wrote in a Dec. 22 memo to Spitzer and Spitzer’s top deputy, Shawn Nelson.

Baytieh said he was guided by a Supreme Court ruling: “The prudent prosecutor will resolve doubtful questions in favor of disclosure.”

“By doing so, our office will be in full compliance with our discovery obligations under the Racial Justice Act as well as other statutory and constitutional mandates.”

Baytieh wrote that the prosecutor assigned to the case – as well as that prosecutor’s supervisor – agreed with his analysis.

A few weeks later, Spitzer pulled Baytieh and the other prosecutors who heard his alleged racial remarks off the case, assigned it to a new prosecutor, said he was not going to seek the death penalty and ordered those who were at the Oct. 1 meeting to not to discuss the case with the new prosecutor.

Those who were at the meeting – known as the Special Circumstances Committee – “are recused and walled off from any involvement in People V. Buggs,” Spitzer wrote in a Jan. 26 memo reviewed by Voice of OC.

Spitzer announced he would not seek the death penalty, allegedly without telling the victims’ families as required by Marsy’s Law, a victims’ rights law Spitzer has been a high-profile champion of.

The DA disputed Baytieh’s characterization of his race remarks, saying Baytieh’s allegations were nothing more than “an act of pure desperation by a prosecutor who knew” he was being investigated for misconduct in a separate case, and “was willing to do anything to protect himself, even fabricating facts to embarrass the District Attorney.”

Spitzer said no one – including Baytieh – raised concerns about his Oct. 1 comments until months later.

Spitzer also provided Voice of OC a portion of an email chain (LINK), in which Baytieh apparently wrote on Jan 21 he was following up on a conversation with Spitzer the day before about his memo describing Spitzer’s race-related comments at the death penalty meeting.

Baytieh wrote that the memo would “continue to be accurate” if it says Spitzer declared that “he knows many black people who enhance their status by only dating ‘white women.’ ”

That would be a change from the original memo, which said Spitzer said “he knows many black people who get themselves out of their bad circumstances and bad situations by only dating ‘white women.’ ”

Baytieh wrote his email to Spitzer, the DA’s top deputy Shawn Nelson and DA Special Counsel Pat Dixon, according to the document Spitzer provided.

[Click here for Baytieh’s email that Spitzer provided and here for a statement Spitzer issued Wednesday afternoon after this article was first published.]

Baytieh didn’t return a phone message seeking comment.

Buggs is accused of fatally shooting two people – Wendi Miller of Costa Mesa and Darren Partch of Newport Beach – in Partch’s Newport Beach apartment in 2019, and then showing up at an Irvine apartment with a gun while looking for someone connected to his ex-girlfriend.

Buggs’ ex-girlfriend had obtained a restraining order against him in the months before the murders, in which she alleged he broke into her home and made her fear for her life, according to records reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.

An attorney for Partch’s mother said she was never informed that the death penalty wasn’t being sought until after it showed up in public court records.

“She has told me that she received no word from the Orange County DA’s office prior to a decision on what sentence they would be seeking, death or life without the possibility of parole,” said Rick Welsh, who represents Darren Partch’s mother, Barbara Partch.

“She’s aware of the allegations in this memo about the statements attributed to Mr. Spitzer. And she is so angry and she is so saddened. And she believes that as a result of what has transpired, the man who killed her son has won,” he added.

Baytieh’s memos are now in front of a judge who’s deciding whether they have to be disclosed to the defendant’s attorneys under California’s new Racial Justice Act, which requires DAs to turn over all evidence relevant to whether prosecution decisions are being made based on race or ethnicity.

Judge Gregg L. Prickett could issue his decision any day.

Voice of OC first broke the story about the existence of the memo last week when Spitzer abruptly fired Baytieh.

The racism allegations are now impacting multiple separate campaigns in the June election.

Spitzer is running for a heated re-election as DA, while Baytieh seeks a competitive open judge seat.

Peter Hardin, a Democrat who’s challenging Spitzer in the DA race, as well as the county Democratic Party, called on Spitzer to resign over his racial statements during the death penalty deliberations.

“Todd Spitzer’s consideration of race while deciding whether or not California should execute a black man isn’t just appalling, it’s disqualifying,” Hardin said in a statement Wednesday after news broke about the memos.

“Our system of justice must be colorblind, and the chief law enforcement officer just showed himself to be anything but. Todd Spitzer’s racist remarks and dated thinking have infected cases across the office and cast a shadow over every prosecution involving a person of color.”

Meanwhile, Spitzer’s top deputy Nelson also is running for an open judge seat. He didn’t immediately return a message for comment.

The judge now deciding on disclosing the memos is not running for re-election, and one of the candidates running for his seat is Steve McGreevy, one of the prosecutors whom Spitzer says helped Baytieh with legal research about his comments at the death penalty meeting.

§

While Spitzer fired Baytieh on the heels of his memo, Spitzer has been painting a very different picture about why he fired the former high-ranking prosecutor.

In a statement last week to Voice of OC, Spitzer attributed Baytieh’s ouster to an investigation he commissioned into evidence that Baytieh improperly withheld evidence from defense attorneys in a more than decade-old case.

Last year, Judge Patrick Donohue tossed out a 2010 conviction of Paul Gentile Smith for a Sunset Beach murder after public defenders forced Spitzer to acknowledge that Baytieh had failed to turn over informant evidence that had to be legally disclosed to defense attorneys – the same allegation made by OC public defenders in previous years.

Last week, Spitzer told Voice of OC he took immediate action after those disclosures came out last August.

“I immediately hired an independent law firm to investigate whether there was a failure by the prosecutor to properly turn over discovery and whether the prosecutor was truthful in all subsequent and related inquiries by the United States Department of Justice,” Spitzer said last Wednesday.

“Yesterday, that independent investigation was completed,” he added.

“As a result of those findings, the prosecutor is no longer employed by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.”

Nick Gerda covers county government for Voice of OC. You can contact him at ngerda@voiceofoc.org.

sited https://voiceofoc.org/2022/02/oc-prosecutors-challenge-da-spitzer-for-bringing-race-into-death-penalty-decision/

Between San Diego and Los Angeles is Orange County, California. With more than 3 million residents, it’s larger than 21 states. If Orange County were a separate country, its economy would be the 45th largest in the world. Now known for Disneyland, the county may soon be known for having one of the most corrupt justice systems in the world. The width and depth and duration of the corruption truly boggles the mind. A case that should’ve been open and shut has blown the lid off some deep secrets.

Now known for Disneyland, the county may soon be known for having one of the most corrupt justice systems in the world. The width and depth and duration of the corruption truly boggles the mind. A case that should’ve been open and shut has blown the lid off some deep secrets.

California – Go figure…Read More Here

this post site from https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2015/05/29/1388819/-Judge-disqualifies-all-250-prosecutors-in-Orange-County-CA-because-of-widespread-corruption?detail=facebook_sf

https://komornlaw.com/judge-disqualifies-all-250-prosecutors-because-of-widespread-corruption/

Orange County District Attorney’s office vast years of corruption under more than just Todd Spitzer dating years back.

everything above cited from https://www.change.org/p/us-attorney-federal-investigation-of-orange-county-district-attorney

During Orange County’s infamous jailhouse-informant scandal, Todd Spitzer—a county supervisor eyeing the top prosecutor job—occasionally visited the courthouse when District Attorney Tony Rackauckas held press conferences. A natty, decades-younger Spitzer would stand behind the gaggle of print, radio and television reporters and watch an aging Rackauckas mumble semi-coherent answers or outright lies to questions. The supervisor’s presence unnerved the DA, who couldn’t compete with him rhetorically. Instead, he shot dead-eye expressions at his lurking, fellow Republican nemesis.

At one of these events in 2015, Bethany Webb, who’d lost her sister Laura in Orange County’s worse mass shooting, displayed disgust that Rackauckas defended once-secret law-enforcement corruption in hopes of securing the death penalty for the shooter. Those tainted government actions, which we’ve previously outlined, stalled the case for years and only prolonged trauma for Webb and other victims who wanted their criminal-justice-system nightmare over. But she was also not happy with Spitzer’s appearance.

“What is he doing here?” Webb asked Paul Wilson in what sounded more like a statement than a question. Wilson, who’d lost his wife Christy in the same 2011 mass killing, smiled awkwardly and shrugged his shoulders. At the time, he and Spitzer, who had spent years promoting himself as one of California’s leading victims’-rights advocates, were in the midst of forming a bond. He believed Spitzer sincerely felt Rackauckas had botched the case, though others disagreed.

“Most of the families [of the victims] hated Todd,” Wilson recently recalled. “They thought he was only around for the politics and said he was a bozo. I genuinely liked the guy. I thought if I helped put him in place at the DA’s office, he would right the wrongs.”

But the relationship has unraveled in anger for Wilson and frustration for Spitzer. There’s no mystery about the timing: It was in the wake of Spitzer’s impressive underdog November victory over Rackauckas, who’d been in office for two decades. Or the cause of their friction: Lingering issues from the government’s informant cheating as well as Wilson’s view he was used, then backstabbed by the incoming DA.

“He just became a different guy after he won,” said Wilson.

The rift underscores how swiftly relationships change in politics. Until the election, Wilson was a significant face and voice of Spitzer’s campaign. The two often chatted on the phone and attended events together. The challenger even convinced Wilson to use his weighty status in the victims’-rights community to do an anti-Rackauckas television commercial months before the election. Then, on the eve of the contest, Spitzer asked him to record a mass-produced robo-call ad.

“My name is Paul Wilson, and my wife and seven others were murdered in cold blood at the Seal Beach salon massacre here in Orange County,” Wilson read from a script written by the campaign. “The current DA, Tony Rackauckas, told me to my face that he would have my back during the trial. Instead, he cheated on the case and got caught. The judge kicked him off the case. Rackauckas betrayed us, and he is a complete failure in every regard. Crime is off the charts. We are not safe. We must elect Todd Spitzer as our new and vibrant DA. Todd Spitzer is a tireless victims’-rights advocate and has handled thousands of criminal cases as a veteran prosecutor. . . . Join me in fighting to restore justice in Orange County. I’m urging you to vote for Todd Spitzer on Nov. 6.”

At an election-night rally, Spitzer invited Wilson onto the stage. “He’s been through so much,” Wilson remembered Spitzer saying.

Within weeks of the election, however, Spitzer made a series of moves that alarmed his buddy. He kept longtime Rackauckas loyalist Ebrahim Baytieh—an accomplished homicide prosecutor but a Machiavellian bureaucrat who helped run taxpayer-funded publicity downplaying informant-scandal cheating—in a top management position.

“I know the protection that guy gave Tony,” Wilson explained. “Baytieh stood side by side with him. He delivered a more articulate version of Susan Kang Schroeder’s usual nonsense media spin. Keeping him in the new administration was a bad choice.”

(Schroeder served as Rackauckas’ reality-adverse, hot-headed media flack.)

Tensions grew worse when word leaked that Spitzer was also protecting Dan Wagner, who’d worked as the lead prosecutor of Scott Dekraai, the killer in the salon massacre. For several years, Wilson believed every word out of Wagner’s mouth, especially that he cared about the victims’ families. But over time, he became convinced the prosecutor was remorseless about his role in the informant scandal. Wagner had even self-demoted as head of the homicide unit into a lower-ranking post with greater civil-service protections from firing if Rackauckas lost. Spitzer then surprised everybody by promoting Wagner to run DA operations at North Court in Fullerton.

“There’s a major guy in the snitch scandal, and he’s able to teach all of his bad habits to the young people in the office,” Wilson said. “Wagner lied to us. He caused me and the families pain and suffering. Him getting promoted by Todd was a slap in the face. Remember, he told me that Wagner and the other DAs involved in the scandal were guilty and that it wouldn’t have happened under his watch.”

A chronic court watcher nowadays as he works to expose dirty law-enforcement officials, Wilson believes Spitzer is continuing Rackauckas’ efforts to block public accountability for the snitch controversy. On numerous occasions since the new DA’s swearing-in ceremony, Wilson has witnessed deputy DAs pretend the scandal (which wrecked at least 20 felony cases) didn’t happen. He’s also watched them work to keep embarrassing records secret from defense lawyers such as Scott Sanders, the assistant public defender who revealed the systemic snitch-related cheating after intensive investigations.

Unwilling to ignore what he sees as flip-flops, Wilson confronted Spitzer in text messages and phone calls. Emotional sentiments flew back and forth. He says the DA dismissed Rackauckas’ snitch-scandal woes, and thus him, as a reason for his victory. “It got pretty bad,” Wilson said. “I’m just blown away that he could so quickly turn on me. He told me that I needed to be more trusting of him now that he’s in the politics game.”

Those conversations heightened distrust. “There are more important things than politics, like making sure we have an honest criminal-justice system,” Wilson said.

For his part, the DA feels saddened by the feud, believes he is truly an agent for reform, and says he’s blocked from fully airing his side.

“I’ve spoken to Paul directly, but I’m not in a position to talk about anything at this time while I’m in the middle of the Department of Justice [DOJ] inquiry [into informant-scandal cheating],” Spitzer said. “So, you’re just going to have to print whatever you have to print with a clear understanding that while this is pending, I’m not able to say anything.”

In February, Spitzer—a former state assemblyman, school-board member and reserve Los Angeles cop—was willing to talk extensively with the Orange County Register where he complained about the DOJ probe. He said it was too time-consuming for his rookie administration, wanted federal officials to stop demanding access to records, and called on them to quickly issue findings before moving on elsewhere. That announcement caused Wilson to chuckle.

“He just doesn’t want to give up any more documents because it’s going to hurt,” he said. “The funny thing is I still think Todd is better than Rackauckas. But I’m not fooling myself. It’s business as usual inside that DA’s office. There’s no real sign of change. I thought this guy was a friend, and now I feel manipulated.”

On March 25, fate put Spitzer, his armed security entourage and Wilson in the same cramped Santa Ana courthouse elevator. The DA shook Wilson’s hand, hugged him and tried small talk. But this victim—a life-long law-enforcement champion before seeing criminal-justice-system warts up close—wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries. And he still has the same question: How can Spitzer employ prosecutorial scoundrels while declaring his agency cleansed?

R. SCOTT MOXLEY

CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.

cited from https://www.ocweekly.com/todd-spitzer-paul-wilson-murder/

Claim alleges Todd Spitzer knew of his friend’s bad behavior but promoted him to one of the highest positions in the office

By TONY SAAVEDRA | tsaavedra@scng.com | Orange County Register

A fourth sexual harassment claim has been filed against a retired high-level prosecutor in Orange County, alleging that District Attorney Todd Spitzer witnessed the misbehavior but protected and even promoted the offender.

The newest claim, filed Tuesday, against Spitzer and former Senior Assistant District Attorney Gary Logalbo — Spitzer’s former roommate and best man at his wedding decades ago — typically is a precursor to a lawsuit. Attorney Matt Murphy, a former prosecutor, is representing the four claimants, all deputy district attorneys. Murphy spends much of the latest document blasting Spitzer for promoting to management his so-called best friend — known among veteran female employees as “Scary Gary.”

The claim says Spitzer’s tough talk against harassment in the workplace doesn’t apply to those closest to him and alleges he tried to retaliate against one of the four Jane Does who filed claims.

‘Denials’ and ‘victim blaming’

The accusations have been met with an “angry tone, denials and overt victim blaming” by Spitzer, said the claim.

“The reason people were so deeply reticent to complain of this behavior was not fear of Mr. Logalbo, but because they feared, and continue to fear, the well-documented wrath of Todd Spitzer,” said the document, which like the first three seeks unspecified damages.

Kimberly Edds, a spokeswoman for Spitzer, responded that the claim mischaracterizes the district attorney.

“We are incredibly disturbed by the allegations being made by several women in the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. No one should have to suffer in silence and these women will be protected,” Edds wrote in a prepared statement Wednesday. “As soon as allegations of misconduct and inappropriate behavior came to our attention, we handled them immediately and lawfully. This fact is indisputable. … We do not need lawsuits to tell us to do the right thing. The right thing is already being done.”

Spitzer added that no official complaints were made against Logalbo — nor were any in his employment file — until November.

Logalbo was first promoted to management in 2019 and then to senior assistant district attorney in early November. Shortly afterward, the allegations against him began to surface, Spitzer has said. Logalbo resigned abruptly on Dec. 11. Spitzer has acknowledged his personal relationship with Logalbo, but denies he is his “best friend.”

Teen intern harassed?

The claim mentions another unnamed, extra-help prosecutor — a former volunteer in Spitzer’s 2018 election campaign — who allegedly harassed a 16-year-old intern. Jane Doe 4 witnessed the harassment and reported it to management, but Spitzer interceded on behalf of the prosecutor, the claim says. The alleged harasser was later “released from OCDA employment” after failing a second background check, Murphy wrote.

“Two men, each with personal relationships to the district attorney, acted with impunity when it came to the pervasive sexual harassment of at least four adult women and one teenage girl,” the document said.

The system worked

Edds responded that the system worked and the extra-help lawyer was let go.

As far as Logalbo, Jane Doe 4 describes one incident in which she was discussing a child annoyance case with him when he said, “Talking about all this sex stuff makes me horny.”

The document alleges that Chief Assistant District Attorney Shawn Nelson and Spitzer witnessed Logalbo’s misconduct but did nothing. Spitzer even raised Logalbo to the highest management post in the office, despite protests from supervisors aware of his antics, the claim said.

Before he left, Logalbo was allowed to conduct a promotion interview of one of the claimants, Jane Doe 2. She didn’t get the job.

Murphy, in the claim, also accused Spitzer of sidestepping government procedure and leaking the first three claims to the media in an effort to “control the narrative.” Edds, however, said the claims are public documents that must be released upon request. They were filed with the county and therefore public, Spitzer said.