Sheriff Admits Improper ​“Activity” in Orange County, California Snitch Scandal

Orange County, California Sheriff Sandra Hutchens appeared before Superior Court Judge Thomas M. Goethals (pic­tured) on July 5 to explain her depart­men­t’s 4 – 1/​2‑year fail­ure to com­ply with court orders direct­ing the depart­ment to pro­duce doc­u­ments relat­ed to a mul­ti-decade prac­tice in the coun­ty of mis­us­ing prison infor­mants to ille­gal­ly obtain incrim­i­nat­ing state­ments from accused defendants. 

In May 2015, Judge Goethals barred the entire Orange County District Attorney’s office from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the sen­tenc­ing of Scott Dekraai — who has plead­ed guilty to eight killings in a Seal Beach salon in 2011 — for with­hold­ing evi­dence about the infor­mant pro­gram and lying about its exis­tence. Hutchens — who was appoint­ed sher­iff in 2008 fol­low­ing the con­vic­tion of the pri­or sher­iff on cor­rup­tion charges — denied that her office had sys­tem­i­cal­ly housed infor­mants with tar­get­ed defen­dants, call­ing the descrip­tion of the office’s prac­tice ​“a mat­ter of seman­tics.” ​“There is no pro­gram, per se,” she said. ​“There is activity.” 

Deflecting respon­si­bil­i­ty for the ille­gal ques­tion­ing of defen­dants by infor­mants and the destruc­tion of logs describ­ing the infor­mant pro­gram, Hutchens said ​“There may have been a few deputies who took their duties to dif­fer­ent lev­els than were autho­rized.” She explained her depart­men­t’s fail­ure to turn over doc­u­ments whose pro­duc­tion had been ordered by the court by say­ing of her sub­or­di­nates, ​“They pos­si­bly did not look hard enough.” 

Hutchens tes­ti­mo­ny came a week after Sheriff’s Deputy Jonathan Larson tes­ti­fied that offi­cers in the Sheriff’s Department’s Special Handling Unit had been tasked with devel­op­ing snitch­es and inten­tion­al­ly plac­ing them near pre­tri­al pris­on­ers to obtain con­fes­sions. Larson said he had ​“assumed” the prac­tice was allow­able because it was ​“approved by our sergeants and lieu­tenants.” Larson also tes­ti­fied that he was cer­tain he had made entries in the Special Handling Unit’s log dur­ing a four-month peri­od in 2011 that is now miss­ing from the record. 

Lieutenant Mike McHenry had pre­vi­ous­ly tes­ti­fied that per­haps all of the deputies in the unit sim­ply for­got to make entries dur­ing that period. 

Orange County was one of the 6 most pro­lif­ic pro­duc­ers of death sen­tences in the U.S. from 2010 to 2015, a peri­od includ­ed in Judge Goethals’ inves­ti­ga­tion into mis­con­duct by the Sheriff’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office. The sen­tenc­ing of Dekraai, which brought the infor­mant scan­dal to light, is now being han­dled by the California Attorney General’s Office, which intends to con­tin­ue pur­su­ing the death penalty. 

Bethany Webb, whose sis­ter, Laura Webb-Elody, was alleged­ly killed by Dekraai, wrote an op-ed for The Los Angeles Times oppos­ing the death penal­ty in the case. ​“Over and over again, the author­i­ties have tried to bring fam­i­lies clo­sure through the death penal­ty, but have suc­ceed­ed only in keep­ing old wounds open,” she wrote. ​“Through these painful years, it’s become clear that per­son­al and polit­i­cal ambi­tion have so cor­rupt­ed the death penal­ty process that it does not serve us, nor does it serve the inter­ests of justice.”