By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday released a scathing new report which found that prosecutors and sheriffs in Orange County, California had improperly used a jail house informant program in ways that routinely violated the constitutional rights of criminal defendants.
The 63-page report caps a nearly six-year civil rights investigation, known as a “pattern or practice” probe, by the Civil Rights Division into the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
The probe, which was started in December 2016, focused on local law enforcement’s use of a jail house informant program and whether those informants were used improperly to elicit incriminating statements from other criminal defendants.
The Justice Department’s report concludes that from 2007 through 2016, Orange County violated criminal defendants’ constitutional rights to be represented by counsel, as well as their 14th Amendment due process rights in which prosecutors are required to disclose to them any evidence that is exculpatory and could assist with their defense.
Although the investigation focused on prior misconduct, the report said that to this day, Orange County has still not corrected all of the problems.
“Restoring trust in Orange County law enforcement will require recognition and remediation of the harms caused by the law enforcement practices described in this report,” the report says.
It adds that although Orange County has taken some steps to better handle its informant program and provide better disclosures to defendants, “more work remains to be done.”
“It has been eight years since much of the misconduct came to light,” the department added, saying that the district attorney’s office “has still not taken adequate steps to ensure that prosecutors understand and carry out their constitutional disclosure obligations.”
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch)
