California AG faces skeptical judge in case against Los Angeles assistant DA

LOS ANGELES (CN) — Prosecutors from the California Department of Justice faced off with a skeptical judge on Thursday in their bid to put a Los Angeles assistant district attorney on trial.

Thursday’s hearing came as state prosecutors accuse that assistant DA, Diana Teran, of illegally using information she obtained while working for the LA County Sheriff’s Department. They say that without permission, Teran used nonpublic information from an internal database regarding deputies who had been subject to disciplinary proceedings.

The California AG’s office says Teran violated confidentiality rules by sharing this information with another official in Gascón’s office. And yet from the outset of the hearing, California Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta seemed skeptical that prosecutors even had probable cause. He expressed reservations about the AG’s legal theories.

In addition, there is barely any case law that deals with the unique set of circumstances in the case, the judge observed.

“We are in uncharted territory,” Ohta said. “We will see where the case goes.”

Prosecutors say that Teran, who worked as a constitutional policing advisor to the sheriff’s department in 2018, improperly obtained sheriff department information, including documents from civil court proceedings in which deputies challenged disciplinary actions the department took against them. She did so, they say, in a “surreptitious attempt” to add some of these deputies to a database at the DA’s office.

Prosecutors maintain these type of databases because under federal law, they are required to share potentially exculpatory information with defendants — such as, for example, if a police officer has a history of filing false reports.

Typically, authorities first share such info with a judge, who then decides if it needs to be given to the defendant. Ohta noted that Teran would have just been doing her job if she shared information about deputies with problematic track records with DA officials who maintain these records.

The unusual felony charges against Teran come as current DA George Gascón faces reelection in November amid criticism of his progressive criminal justice agenda. Detractors blame the district attorney, who has been particularly active in bringing charges against law enforcement since taking office in 2021, for an uptick in crime.

Gascón’s challenger, former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman, has accused the district attorney of presiding over a spike in violent and property crime  — but those stats are debatable. While the California Department of Justice has reported increases in crime in Los Angeles County since 2020, LAPD statistics from earlier this year suggest that serious crimes like homicide are way down in the city itself. Hochman has cited the former statistics.

Regardless, Ohta said at the start of Thursday’s hearing that none of the political turmoil and heightened public interest in the case mattered to him.

“What matters to me is the law and the facts,” he said.

Teran’s attorney, James Spertus of the LA firm Spertus Landes & Josephs, has argued that the documents Teran forwarded to her colleague at the DA’s office were public court filings. The case only pertains to Teran’s use of the information, as any possible charges she could have faced for accessing the information have already passed the statute of limitations.

The first witness to testify at the hearing was a sheriff’s detective who has helped the AG with its case against Teran. He said that in 2018 alone, she had accessed around 1,600 personnel files.

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