Jill Replogle covers Orange County.
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"Either an innocent person was charged or a guilty person went free, neither of which we like as a society," said Maurice Possley, senior researcher at theThe tally was done by Scott Sanders, the O.C. assistant public defender who, nearly a decade ago, was largely responsible for exposing the county’s notorious"snitch scandal." The number of cases tainted by the scandal is much higher than previous, publicly released estimates. And Sanders said there could be many more.
"The failure to protect these basic constitutional guarantees not only deprives individual defendants of their rights, it undermines the public’s confidence in the fundamental fairness of criminal justice systems across the county,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke wrote last year when Prosecutors must also turn over evidence from, and about, jailhouse informants used in a defendant's criminal case because it could help the defendant question the informant's credibility. Failing to do so violates the 14th Amendment and related court decisions, which require prosecutors to share with defendants any evidence they have that could help them prove their innocence.
Others came to suspect there might be evidence about informants used in their case that hadn't been turned over to their defense team. Spitzer fired Baytieh in February 2022, but the former prosecutor went on to win election to the O.C. Superior Court a few months later, with A spokesperson for Orange County Superior Court has said the court and judicial officers are prohibited by ethical rules from discussing active cases. The district attorney's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.
The researchers didn't specifically look at how often the use of jailhouse informants was tied to the misconduct. But a review of the registry'sturns up 164 out of 3,385 cases in which official misconduct and jailhouse informants played a role in a person's exoneration. Why the apparent difference? Possley said a big reason is Sanders. In L.A., there was no similarly determined defense attorney working to identify and revisit cases that may have been tainted.He said there has historically been resistance among criminal justice officials to make the kinds of misconduct connections that Sanders has among disparate cases.
Incarcerated people — and most anyone who's spent time in custody — also understand"that if they can produce information about a cellmate or someone else in the jail, that a reward will be forthcoming," Natapoff added. But as informant scandals have emerged over the years, an increasing number of jurisdictions have enacted reforms, which Natapoff chronicles on hermass incarceration
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