Orange County D.A.’s office was mired in snitch scandal. Now DOJ says monitoring no longer needed

More than a decade after a jailhouse snitch scandal rocked the Orange County district attorney’s office and nearly upended the prosecution of the deadliest mass shooting in county history, federal officials announced they’ve ceased overseeing the department’s informant program, citing recent reforms.

The decision, announced Dec. 23, ends a yearlong agreement between the Department of Justice and local prosecutors who were tasked with reforming the way they use informants in criminal cases.

“The Orange County District Attorney’s Office has implemented and sustained extensive reforms that demonstrate an enduring commitment to protecting the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights of those in its jurisdiction,” said Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

According to a 2022 DOJ report, Orange County’s district attorney’s office and its sheriff’s department systematically used informants as “agents of law enforcement to elicit incriminating statements” from at least 2007 to 2016, and hid evidence of the practice in dozens of trials, including possibly exculpatory evidence obtained by informants.

The practice came to light during the trial of Scott Dekraii, who in 2011 killed his ex-wife and seven others during a shooting in Seal Beach, and sparked questions about how some evidence in that trial was obtained. The subsequent scandal loomed over the final years of Sandra Hutchens’ time as Orange County sheriff and Tony Rackauckas’ reelection bid as the county’s top prosecutor.

When he was voted into office as district attorney in 2018, Todd Spitzer vowed to reform the practice.

“After nearly a decade of investigation by the Department of Justice, the ‘win at all costs mentality’ chapter of the prior administration can finally be closed once and for all,” Spitzer said in a statement. “The violation of a single defendant’s constitutional rights calls into question the fairness of the entire criminal justice system.”

California

Snitch scandal agreement reached between Orange County Sheriff’s Department, D.A. and feds

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office have reached an agreement with federal officials over their illegal use of informants in county jails, a scandal that upended the justice system in the Southern California county.

Jan. 17, 2025

The use of jailhouse informants is not an uncommon or illegal tactic used by law enforcement. But informants can’t be used once a defendant has been charged and represented by an attorney. Investigators and prosecutors also are required to disclose to defense attorneys during trial all of the information obtained through the use of informants.

Scott Sanders, a former longtime Orange County public defender, is credited with uncovering the use of jailhouse informants during the Dekraii case. As a public defender, Sanders helped convince a judge to toss out the 2010 murder conviction of Paul Gentile Smith and order the special circumstances struck because of “reprehensible conduct” by prosecutors. A total of 23 informant-related pieces of evidence were found to be concealed or withheld during the trial. The case is set to be retried in February.

Sanders has since retired from the public defender’s office but continues to practice law and represents defendants affected by the snitch scandal. He said the Orange County district attorney’s office under Spitzer made noticeable improvements in the use of informants but criticized the Department of Justice’s decision to drop its oversight because of the possibility that more cases tainted by the scandal still might be uncovered.

So far 61 cases have been affected by the questionable use of informants and lack of evidence disclosed during trials, Sanders said. Many were homicide trials.

“This is the nation’s largest snitch scandal by far,” Sanders said. “So if the DOJ really wants to stand for justice, it doesn’t flee the scene of the crimes but rather demands that Orange County stakeholders create a meaningful review for the dozens of additional cases likely infected by those who wantonly committed prosecutorial law enforcement misconduct.”

More work needs to be done not only to prevent future cases, Sanders said, but also to bring justice to all past defendants whose cases were affected by the unlawful use of informants.

Kimberly Edds, spokesperson for the district attorney’s office, said cases in which an informant was used continue to be reviewed.

“We are reexamining or in some cases have already reexamined all cases identified with [the D.A.’s office] in the course of the investigation that involved an in-custody informant” at the county sheriff’s department, she said.

Attorneys who believe a defendant was wrongfully convicted also can request that the case be reviewed by the D.A.’s office, she said.

Since the scandal, the D.A.’s office has created and required additional training for prosecutors, paralegals and investigators. The office also has improved how informant records are stored and retrieved, enhanced its conviction integrity review process to broaden the scope of cases that could be eligible to be reviewed for claims of innocence, and drafted a new policy governing confidential sources.

A spokesperson said the office also conducts annual audits with the county sheriff’s department for custodial informant files to make sure records on both ends are complying with policy.