The principal member of the committee that oversees the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department resigned Monday after the county’s attorneys tried to file a summary of the law filed against nine members in a politically charged criminal case against the former consultant of George Gascohen Legal summary.
Sean Kennedy Facing six felony charges.
Last year, California. General Rob Bonta claims Teran violated state hacking laws in 2021 when she sent records of litigation related to alleged misconduct of the sheriff’s representative from the lawsuit as an effort to track the problematic police part of.
State prosecutors argued that Tran knew only the court records because she had access to confidential discipline while working in the sheriff’s department three years ago. They said she later shared the law with a prosecutor, thus breaking the law.
Tran No guilty Last summer. In December, California Court of Appeal accepted It is important to ask Bonta’s office to attend the April hearing and show why the justice should let the case go on, rather than end with the defense team’s request.
Last week, the Civilian Oversight Commission held a special meeting to discuss the trade-offs of the case by submitting a legal application called Amicus Summary, which would explain to the Court of Appeal why the Commissioner said the case was hampering their work.
In recent months Brief introduction, The Sheriff’s Department has been using “excuses” to withhold documents, including records of false statements about shootings, assaults, deputy gang activities and representatives.
“We have heard from leaders of the department that they cannot give confidential documents to the COC interim committee,” Kennedy said at a special meeting on Thursday. “They are worried that their employees will be prosecuted by the California Attorney General, just like the special Ms. Lan was sued. “
During the meeting, a county attorney told the committee that it was not authorized to submit a briefing without permission from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. However, former federal judge Robert Bonner, the committee chair, objected to this and said the oversight committee had not had any back pressure before.
After the animation discussion, the committee voted unanimously to authorize Kennedy to submit the summary.
But Sunday, Attorneys in the county were fired A four-page letter said they, rather than Kennedy, were the committee’s official legal counsel. They said that if he filed the summary, it would be a “misrevolution” and they threatened to write to the Court of Appeal, telling the judge that he did not have a real “representative COC” in “representative COC”.
“With that being said, we believe Commissioner Kennedy can submit it to the court in a personal capacity to achieve the same goal.”
Apparently, one day later, Kennedy and Bonner both submitted a summary.
Kennedy later resigned, who told the Times Tuesday morning.
“The independent oversight decision by county attorneys to control the COC is inappropriate because county counsel represents sheriffs engaged in misconduct and because they helped hide the misconduct of deputy gang misconduct for decades,” Kennedy said.
Bonner, who had not resigned, said he could not accept Kennedy’s resignation letter because he did not appoint him to the committee and did not want him to resign.
“I need to speak Sean Kennedy,” he told the Times Tuesday, adding that the efforts of county attorneys to block the filing of the profile were “not a hill to die.”
The county lawyers’ office declined to comment. The California Department of Justice did not immediately comment. The District Attorney’s Office said it does not comment on pending litigation or personnel matters.
Meanwhile, the Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday afternoon that it is addressing the issue by asking Bonta’s office to share legal opinions on whether confidential deputy records are legal with the interim committee, which is not subject to the same public meeting requirements as a complete Oversight Committee.
“Under my guidance, LASD has produced hundreds of pages of non-confidential related information, but we refuse to produce the required confidential peace officer records without assurance that it is legal,” said Sheriff Robert Luna ) Letter shared with the times. “We have been told and independently understand the law simply isn’t clear.”
The county legal counsel added in a 17-page memorandum that there are some legal reasons to believe this is acceptable, but the law does not explicitly allow it.
The allegations against Teran’s Case Center date back to early 2018 when she was a constitutional police adviser to then-official Jim McDonnell. Her usual responsibilities include access to confidential deputy records and internal affairs investigations. When Alex Villanueva took office in December of that year, the sheriff’s department stopped hiring Teran Start an investigation she.
The investigation began after Villanueva’s transition team reviewed personnel records to determine the previous events to be rehired and noticed “abnormality”, resulting in allegations that Teran downloaded confidential personnel records from Villanueva and its top associations.
At some point, the investigation expanded its initial investigation line to Teran Download and began to explore other issues and a number of other suspects, including former journalists.
As The Times reported last year The department brings the findings of the investigation to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI and the State Attorney General’s Office. Federal and State Officials In conclusion, no crime In this case, and told the sheriff’s officials that they will not be investigated.
Despite initial lack of interest, in early 2022, Bonta’s office agreed to review the case. Two years later, state prosecutors formally refused to move on, as the Times previously reported.
Instead, they filed criminal charges based on allegations that she visited or learned of records from confidential personnel in the sheriff’s department, and then, three years later, she illegally shared the information while working in Gascón.
In April 2021, Teran sent court records related to about thirty representatives to subordinates to assess the internals of the persons prosecutors used to track dishonest and other misconduct. Database. A person known as the Brady Database, which is a reference to Maryland in 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Brady’s reference to Maryland, which says it constitutionally requires prosecutors to transfer any evidence in favor of the defendant, including police. Evidence of misconduct.
witness At the preliminary hearing in August It shows that in most cases, colleagues were informed of alleged misconduct when they emailed a copy of her court records to a lawsuit in which deputies wishing to overturn the department’s discipline.
“There’s an irony there,” Kennedy said at a meeting Thursday. “The department actually lobbied and planned a very problematic prosecution against the district attorney,” and then “cited the prosecution it wanted” to deny Commission request for information.
Governor Max Huntsman – County regulators that have been around for several years It is also the target of the investigation by the same sheriff’s department – Calling the case a “false prosecution” and urging the commission to “ignore the advice of county lawyers” and to vote to submit a summary.
“this [U.S.] The Supreme Court has said that when the DA knows that there is a limiting evidence, no matter how they learn it, they are absolutely responsible. ” he told the committee.
When Bonner imposes trade-offs, the former famous teacher, who is usually directly confronted, publicly mocks the county attorney’s advice that the supervisory commissioner should ask the board of supervisors to allow the submission of a brief and then have the county attorney submit it to them.
He said that considering how long the county will take to deal with other committee issues and how long the appeal court sets it, “the county can even act quickly enough to submit a summary of the committee quickly” is “amazing”.
The Oversight Committee’s summary is a series of submitted documents that raise concerns about Tran’s prosecution. In recent days, A group of law professors The Los Angeles County Public Defender also submitted a profile. Previously, the case was also put pressure on the case by the coalition of prosecutors and the fair and impartial prosecution projects.
James Spertus, one of Teran’s lawyers, told Times this week. “Every brief writer is unified in one message: the Attorney General’s decision to file the case threatens all aspects of criminal justice administration.”
In response to Kennedy’s resignation, Hunsman compared the situation to the federal government on Tuesday morning.
“Sadly, Los Angeles is reflecting on Washington to eliminate the source of independent analysis and when constitutional assurances should be defended,” he told the Times. “The public will suffer for it.”
