The Orange County Grand Jury released a report last week entitled “The Myth of the Orange County Jailhouse Informant Program.” Defense attorney allegations of misuse of jailhouse informants by the DA and Orange County Sheriff’s Department deputies ultimately led the trail judge in the Salon Meritage murder case to replace local prosecutors with the California Attorney General. The trial judge’s continuing frustrations with the defense allegedly not receiving documents from the prosecution have recently led the trial court to consider taking the death penalty off the table in the case against Scott Dekraai, who stands convicted in the 2011 mass murder at Salon Meritage.
Defense attorneys in the Joint Forces Training Base murder case against Daniel Wozniak also accused prosecutors and the Sheriff’s Department of illegally misusing informants. However, the trial judge in that case rejected the defense claims.
When the 28-page report was released, the DA’s office issued a statement essentially calling reports of an informant program at the county jail fake news and characterized the news reports as a “witch hunt.”
The Grand Jury report said, “Significant media coverage, finger pointing, and speculative rhetoric have been published about the alleged jailhouse informant program that is said to exist in the Orange County jails.”
The report said that any violations of “discovery,” the legal process that requires the prosecution to show their evidence to the defense, were “limited to the actions of a few members of the OCDA and a few OCSD personnel.”
The report said: “However, the OCGJ found no evidence to support claims of a systemic, widespread informant program, and reports of such have been exaggerated in the press.”
The Grand Jury report was highly critical of news media coverage of the informant controversy. However, the report also criticized the DA’s Office and the Sheriff’s Department
The report said, “In spite of no official completed investigations, the OCSD has proactively made structural and organizational changes to address the issues that arose as a result of the informant controversy.”
According to the District Attorney’s Office, the defense claimed that the OCDA and OCSD intentionally placed an informant next to Wozniak in order to get information from him. However, the OCDA openly notified the defense in the early stages of the case that they did not find the informant, who independently contacted a special handling deputy from OCSD, to be credible and therefore the informant would not be used in any capacity at trial.
According to the Grand Jury, “Ultimately, the court, in this case, did not find the defense’s argument compelling and Wozniak was found guilty and sentenced to death in September 2016.”
This article appeared in the June 21, 2017 print edition of the News Enterprise.
