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Homicide case tainted by 'OC Snitch Scandal' ends in reduced prison sentence
Former Orange County Asst. Public Defender Scott Sanders questions former prosecutor Ebrahim Baytieh, now an O.C. Superior Court judge, in 2024.
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Nick Gerda
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LAist
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The Orange County District Attorney dropped murder charges in a decades-old case tainted by the so-called jailhouse snitch scandal, instead accepting a lesser guilty plea of voluntary manslaughter.
Why it matters
A decade ago, in the wake of the county’s biggest mass murder, the O.C. Public Defender’s Office discovered that local law enforcement had been illegally using informants — sometimes called snitches — to get information and confessions from defendants in jail. The discovery has unraveled close to 60 criminal convictions to date and tainted the reputations of the O.C. District Attorney’s Office and Sheriff’s Department.
What's the backstory?
Paul Smith was convicted of murder in 2010 for stabbing his childhood friend Robert Haugen to death in 1988 and then setting the body on fire in the victim’s Sunset Beach apartment. A decade later it came to light that O.C. law enforcement illegally used jailhouse informants to bolster their case against Smith, and then hid that from the defense, ultimately leading a judge to throw out the conviction and order a new trial.
Now that trial won’t happen. Under a plea deal struck with the current District Attorney’s office, Smith pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Monday and will serve another five years in prison before being released.
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‘Reprehensible’ behavior from prosecutors
In a ruling last year, a San Diego judge overseeing Smith’s case said Orange County prosecutors had shown “reprehensible” behavior in pursuit of convicting Smith. He also said Ebrahim Baytieh, a former prosecutor and, now, Superior Court judge, was “not truthful” during court proceedings.
The takeaway?
Current District Attorney Todd Spitzer has repeatedly said his office has implemented reforms to ensure the rights of criminal defendants to a fair trial. He released a statement saying his office has taken steps to reverse the "cheat to win" missteps of an earlier administration and lamented that a murder defendant will now have an easier path to release:
"There are serious consequences when a prosecutor does not comply with his legal obligations to turn over evidence. There is no doubt that Paul Gentile Smith committed the most heinous of murders when he tortured and killed his victim 37 years ago. After a full and exhaustive hearing held by Superior Court Judge Daniel Goldstein, former Orange County prosecutor and current Orange County Superior Court Judge Brahim Baytieh was found, as a matter of law, to have failed to disclose exculpatory evidence regarding a jailhouse informant in this case.
This is a defendant who should be spending the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole, but instead he will spend a total of 21 years and seven months in prison for taking the life of another human being because of the misconduct committed by the prosecutorial team under the prior administration.
This is why I have said for the last seven years since I became the District Attorney that I will not tolerate the 'win at all cost' mentality of the prior administration, and that there are serious consequences when you cheat to win convictions."
What does the defense say?
Scott Sanders, Smith’s attorney and the former assistant public defender who uncovered the so-called “snitch scandal,” says not enough has been done to reexamine cases in which tainted evidence may have been used to convict people. "Discovering the true expanse of [Judge] Baytieh's damage to fair trials should be an urgent concern," Sanders wrote in an email to LAist. "The clock is ticking on people's lives."
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