Wait, What? Why Is An OC Judge On The Witness Stand In A Murder Case?

A prominent Orange County judge finds himself in an unusual position this week — on the witness stand and facing pointed questions from a defense attorney.

The questions revolve around this one key point: Why were there multiple failures to disclose all the details about the use of informants back when the judge was still a high-profile prosecutor overseeing a particular murder case?

Those failures led to that 2010 murder conviction being overturned after the evidence emerged years later, and two sheriff investigators refused to testify about it, asserting their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

It’s the latest twist in the sweeping O.C. jailhouse informants scandal, which has led to overturned convictions and dropped or lessened charges in dozens of criminal cases.

Let’s recap a bit:

On the witness stand Monday, Judge Ebrahim Baytieh acknowledged it was his responsibility as prosecutor to ensure all favorable evidence was turned over to the defendant, Paul Smith, before Smith’s 2010 murder trial. Smith was accused of killing his friend and marijuana dealer, Robert Haugen, and setting his body on fire back in 1988 in Sunset Beach.

Prosecutors want to retry Smith. Sanders wants the case dropped over the misconduct. The judge will decide whether to allow a new trial.

What's a 'jailhouse snitch'?

Federal investigators found that evidence was withheld from Smith that a crucial witness used in his case was a jailhouse informant. It’s a problematic law enforcement practice where so-called snitches are used to press accused jail inmates to confess without their attorney present, often in exchange for favorable treatment in the snitch's own pending cases. Courts have repeatedly found this to be unconstitutional, and that its usage needs to be revealed by prosecutors to defendants before trial.

On Monday, Baytieh insisted that he did indeed fulfill all of his ethical duties in the Smith case. He said he turned over everything he had at the time, and that he then disclosed any previously undisclosed info including jailhouse snitch intel — including reports, log entries and interview audio CDs — as soon as he learned of them from outside investigations in 2016 and then again in 2019.

But he faced sharp questioning from a defense attorney — and the judge presiding over the hearing — about why he didn’t do more to ensure he was collecting all of the evidence and disclosing it before the trial.

The current hearing is before Judge Daniel B. Goldstein of San Diego County Superior Court. It’s being heard in a neighboring county because Baytieh is now a judge in O.C.

Even the judge had questions

While most of the questioning Monday was by Sanders, the judge himself has jumped in several times to question Baytieh as well.

Goldstein asked Baytieh whether he’d felt a need to go look at the evidence in the murder case.

“I never felt that I needed to see it myself,” Baytieh responded. He said the case was based largely on DNA, and that there were photographs of the physical evidence.

Judge Goldstein, himself a former prosecutor in San Diego, responded that there’s a saying among new prosecutors to “always go to the scene” and “always go to the evidence.”

“You’re prosecuting some pretty high-profile homicide cases, and you don’t go look at the evidence?” Goldstein asked.

Baytieh reiterated his earlier answer.

Who is Ebrahim Baytieh?

Baytieh was a star homicide prosecutor at the DA’s office, rising up the ranks to oversee the special prosecutions unit that manages decisions on whether to disclose police misconduct to defendants.

After undisclosed evidence emerged in the Smith case, Baytieh was fired in 2022 by District Attorney Todd Spitzer, citing the findings of an investigation he commissioned into the evidence issues in the Smith case.

Baytieh, who had major support among O.C. judges, prosecutors and other attorneys, went on to be elected judge a few months later.

Backstory on the snitch scandal

The OC “jailhouse snitch" scandal stretches back over a decade, when Sanders uncovered what he believed were widespread and abusive use of jailhouse informants by Orange County prosecutors and law enforcement, violating defendants' rights.

A federal civil rights investigation followed, and ultimately concluded the Orange County District Attorney's Office and Orange County Sheriff's Department had indeed "engaged in a pattern or practice of conduct … that systematically violated criminal defendants’ right to counsel."

The Smith case featured prominently in that investigation report, which determined that law enforcement failed to disclose that Smith’s alleged confession was obtained through an illegal informant operation coordinated by the Sheriff’s Department.

That investigation found that numerous pieces of evidence favorable to Smith were not disclosed until outside probes unearthed them years later in 2016 and 2019. That evidence, investigators wrote, “all tended to show a Sixth Amendment violation that could have led to Smith’s alleged confession being excluded” from the 2010 trial.

The misconduct took place under O.C. District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, who in 2018 lost his re-election bid to Spitzer, the current district attorney. Spitzer has sought to assure the public that these violations were in the past. He has implemented reforms and pledged not to tolerate cheating among prosecutors and law enforcement.

But, years later, Sanders says he's still uncovering misconduct that prosecutors haven't owned up to. Just one example, says Sanders, is the Smith murder case at the center of this week’s hearing.

"It sometimes feels like we haven't made an inch of headway," Sanders has told LAist.

What’s next?

Baytieh is on the witness stand again today. Ultimately, Judge Goldstein will likely issue findings about the evidence failures, and decide whether Smith goes on trial again for murder.