Is the OC snitch scandal over? Why there’s no easy answer

Imagine you’re sitting on a jury, having been asked to judge a person’s guilt or innocence for a serious crime. You are supposed to base your decision solely on witness testimony and the evidence presented by prosecutors and the defense team.

But what if prosecutors have withheld evidence that could have helped prove the defendant’s innocence? What if they failed to tell the jury that some of the witnesses are actually government informants, perhaps getting money or favors in exchange for delivering the kind of testimony that secures a conviction?

That’s illegal. And that’s exactly what happened in dozens of criminal cases in Orange County over at least a decade — until an assistant public defender brought to light what’s come to be known as the “snitch scandal.”

The discovery unraveled what should have been a slam-dunk conviction in the county’s deadliest mass shooting in modern history, the 2011 Seal Beach salon shooting. The misconduct was so bad that a judge threw the entire O.C. District Attorney’s Office off the case and spared the perpetrator — who had already confessed — from the death penalty.

Sentencing was also delayed — for three, painful years for victims — while the court investigated police and prosecutor misconduct. But that’s not all.

Here’s a short list of some of the other consequences that have followed:

• The district attorney at the time was ousted from office in the next election. 
• The Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation — which resulted, just this month, in a settlement. 
• Dozens of serious criminal convictions were lessened or overturned.  

Now, we’re awaiting a judge’s decision in one of the cases unraveled by the scandal — a decision that could raise fresh doubts about whether the O.C. justice system’s lauded reforms are sufficient to rectify past injustices.

What’s this pending case all about?

Specifically, San Diego Superior Court Judge Daniel Goldstein must decide whether O.C. law enforcement can be trusted to fairly retry a man, Paul Gentile Smith, accused of stabbing his childhood friend Robert Haugen to death in 1988 and then setting the body on fire in the victim’s Sunset Beach apartment. Or, whether prosecutors have cheated so badly that Smith should be allowed to go free.

Smith was convicted of murder in 2010. But after it came to light that jailhouse informants were illegally used in his case, a judge threw out the conviction in 2021 and ordered a new trial after sheriff's deputies refused to testify about their use of informants in the case.

Prosecutors have admitted they failed to turn over evidence that they are legally required to disclose to the defense. But they say there’s DNA evidence tying Smith to the murder, and that they won’t use any tainted evidence involving informants to try to convict Smith in the retrial.

“The victim's family and society deserve justice and the Defendant can and will receive a fair retrial,” Seton Hunt, the deputy district attorney prosecuting the case, wrote in a December court filing.

Orange County assistant public defender Scott Sanders — the one who originally uncovered the snitch scandal and is defending the accused — says prosecutors can’t be trusted to turn over all of the evidence that could help Smith prove his innocence. In court documents and at hearings over the past year, he identified dozens of pieces of evidence in the case that hadn’t previously been disclosed by prosecutors.

“They will never tell the truth,” Sanders said at a December hearing. He’s asking the judge to dismiss murder charges against Smith.

The judge has already indicated he believes prosecutors acted badly.

“At the very least, there was misconduct,” Goldstein said at a December hearing in the case. “There’s no way we’re all leaving here at the end of the day thinking there was not misconduct.”

What’s so bad about using informants?

It's not illegal for authorities to use confidential informants or “snitches” — in or out of custody — to collect information. But once someone has been charged with a crime, the Sixth Amendment guarantees them the right to have an attorney present during questioning by a law enforcement representative, including an informant secretly working for law enforcement.

This is sometimes called the "Massiah" rule after a Supreme Court case.

Prosecutors must also turn over evidence from, and about, jailhouse informants used in a defendant's criminal case because it could help the defendant question the informant's credibility. Failing to do so violates the 14th Amendment and related court decisions, which require prosecutors to share with defendants any evidence they have that could help them prove their innocence.

This is sometimes known as the "Brady" rule after another Supreme Court case.

The origin of the OC snitch scandal

More than a decade ago, Sanders, the assistant public defender, discovered that local law enforcement had been strategically putting informants in jail cells with certain defendants from whom they wanted to get information and/or confessions. For years, they hid the entire program. When questioned about the use of jailhouse informants during the Seal Beach salon mass shooting case, several sheriff’s deputies lied under oath or refused to testify.

A federal civil rights investigation followed and concluded in 2022 that O.C. law enforcement “systematically violated” criminal defendants’ constitutional rights. Since then, the scandal has unraveled dozens of criminal convictions, including 35 homicide cases.

District Attorney Todd Spitzer, who was elected in 2018 on a promise of reform, beefed up training for prosecutors and implemented strict rules for jailhouse informants, including requiring his consent before they’re used. The DA also started something called a Conviction Integrity Unit — people who think they were wrongly convicted can request that the DA reexamine their case.

Spitzer also later fired one of his top prosecutors, Ebrahim Baytieh, after an independent investigation found that Baytieh had withheld evidence about informants in the Sunset Beach murder case — the same case awaiting a retrial decision from Judge Goldstein.

Baytieh went on to win election to the O.C. Superior Court a few months later, with endorsements from dozens of current and former judges and law enforcement leaders.

About the DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit

The Conviction Integrity Unit investigates claims of factual innocence and wrongful convictions in Orange County. The bulk of the case reviews are initiated by the 12-person unit (half of them part-time).

The entity’s work resulted in the DA dropping charges in 67 cases where evidence was improperly handled by the O.C. Sheriff’s Department, according to Kimberly Edds, a spokesperson for the DA’s Office. That issue, in which some deputies were waiting weeks to book evidence or not booking it at all, came to light in 2019.

Individuals can also request to have their case reviewed. If the Conviction Integrity Unit decides the application has merit, they’ll open an investigation. If the DA determines, based on that investigation, that they’ve lost confidence that a person was fairly and lawfully convicted, they’ll notify all parties and assist the defendant in reopening their case.

The Conviction Integrity Unit has received 296 applications for conviction review since it was established in 2020, according to Edds. She declined to say how many applications resulted in an investigation, saying the office doesn’t discuss investigations.

None of the applications for case review have resulted in the DA proposing a case be reopened, Edds told LAist.

In a statement to LAist, Spitzer wrote: “We are extremely proud that over the last few years and hundreds of case reviews by our Conviction Integrity Unit we have yet to discover a single instance when a convicted defendant was either wrongly convicted or was determined to have been factually innocent.”

So is the snitch scandal over?

Earlier this month, the Department of Justice announced it had reached settlement agreements with the O.C. District Attorney’s Office and Sheriff’s Department to remedy the injustices uncovered in the federal government’s investigation. The announcements came at the last minute — a few days later, Trump took office and froze the department’s civil rights division, which was in charge of the investigation.

In a news release announcing the settlement, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke commended the DA’s reform efforts: “The District Attorney’s proactive efforts, together with today’s agreement, will not only protect the constitutional rights of individual defendants; they will also help restore the public’s confidence in the fundamental fairness of the criminal justice system in Orange County.”

Spitzer wrote in a statement: “I am incredibly proud of the work that we as a team have done over the last six years to implement the positive, sustained reforms necessary to prevent the sins of the past administration.”

The settlement stipulates that the DA will continue implementing reforms, including:

• Reviewing cases, through the Conviction Integrity Unit, where defendants’ constitutional rights may have been violated by the use of informants. 
• Carrying out a “comprehensive historical case review” of prior investigations to determine whether informants were misused and whether action is needed in those cases to remedy any constitutional violations. The review is supposed to encompass all jailhouse informant activity at O.C. jails based on DA and Sheriff’s records. 

Edds, the DA spokesperson, wrote in an email that the office is committed to a “comprehensive, coordinated review of past investigations and prosecutions that involved custodial informants.”

It’s unclear how many cases could be subject to the kind of historical review called for in the federal settlement, but Sanders, the assistant public defender, called the work “massive in scope.”

In an email to LAist following the settlement announcements, Orange County Public Defender Martin Schwarz emphasized the need for an historical case review.

“Only once those cases have been re-evaluated, and those individuals afforded the due process guaranteed to them by our constitution, can we ever truly move past this,” he wrote.

Why the defense still has questions

Sanders is skeptical whether the measures laid out in the settlement are enough to right the wrongs of the past.

For one thing, when the Department of Justice first released its findings on the snitch scandal three years ago, it recommended the county establish an independent body to review past prosecutions involving jailhouse informants. To date, that has not happened.

It's been years since efforts first began to unearth evidence that should have been disclosed to defendants — the snitch scandal broke in 2014; the Department of Justice began its investigation in 2016; and Spitzer took office, with new reforms, in 2019.

And yet, over the past year’s worth of hearings in the Sunset Beach murder case, Sanders, in court filings, said he uncovered 23 pieces of evidence related to the use of an informant that had never been turned over to the defense.

Sanders and Schwarz said it would take major funding to review all the cases in which official misconduct might have led to a wrongful conviction. Sanders said that funding would likely have to come from an outside source — the public defender’s budget, set by the county, is currently a little over half the DA’s budget.

“There’s a lot of work to be done and time is running,” Sanders said.