Share This Facebook Twitter News The OC Jailhouse Snitch Scandal Is Back In Court — And Here's Why It Matters

Los Angeles Times ^ | April 29, 2024 | Jill Repogle

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One of the biggest law enforcement scandals in Orange County history could resurface in a hearing set for Monday.

The Orange County Public Defender's office is accusing Ebrahim Baytieh, a former high-profile prosecutor who's now an Orange County Superior Court judge, of being at the center of an "enormous web of deception" designed to cover up misconduct that helped prosecutors win cases while cheating defendants out of their right to a fair trial.

A spokesperson for the Orange County Superior Court said sitting judges are prohibited from commenting on active cases.

The allegations came in a 424-page court motion filed last year by Scott Sanders, the assistant public defender who first uncovered what's come to be known as the O.C. jailhouse informant or "snitch" scandal.

In the hearing Monday, a judge will consider Sanders' request to drop charges in a murder case because of the misconduct. In that case, Paul Gentile Smith is accused of stabbing Robert Haugen to death and setting his body on fire in Haugen's Sunset Beach apartment in 1988.

Sanders says the new evidence of alleged wrongdoing could also taint dozens of other criminal cases, potentially leading them to be overturned or reconsidered.

O.C. District Attorney Todd Spitzer wrote in a statement that his office had already addressed misconduct by Baytieh in the Smith case and that dropping charges against Smith would be "unconscionable."

Here's a closer look at the complicated and twisted years-long series of events that have led up to this point.

A decade ago, Sanders exposed the widespread and abusive use of jailhouse informants by Orange County prosecutors and law enforcement.

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Prosecutors offer an inmate a reduced sentence if he will inform on another inmate. Often the snitch will say the other inmate confessed to a crime, sometimes murder. This sort of evidence is often, maybe usually fabricated. Some people have been convicted just on it. In many of the cases where people were released due to DNA evidence, they were convicted partly based on snitch's testimony.

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The use of plea bargains leads to widespread abuse of the whole criminal justice system.

In essence, prosecutors offer bribes and punishments in order to coerce people to plead guilty.

If they don’t plead guilty to they face years in the court, possibly in confinement while they go through the trial, and face much higher sentences than they otherwise would.

It is inherently corrupt. Even the “offers” are not enforceable, because judges do not have to accept plea bargains.

[usurper]

The use of plea bargains leads to widespread abuse of the whole criminal justice system.

You are not wrong. That's the way the system functions. If today every defendant refused to take a plea the entire court system would crash in 48 hours.

Its an assembly line and only functions with predicable inputs and out puts. If it gets out of balance it crashes.

[Jeff Chandler]

Its an assembly line and only functions with predicable inputs and out puts

That sounds like the medical industry.