In a stinging rebuke of one in every of California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s most politically fraught prosecutions, a state appeals courtroom moved Thursday to dismiss the remaining felony prices towards a high advisor to ex-Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón.
Diana Teran was charged final yr with 11 counts of improperly downloading confidential police self-discipline information when she was a constitutional policing advisor on the L.A. County Sheriff’s Division, after which “impermissibly” utilizing the information whereas working for Gascón.
Teran and her authorized workforce have lengthy argued that the information had been public courtroom information, and he or she was merely sending them to a colleague as a part of an effort by the D.A.’s workplace to trace cops with disciplinary histories.
In a unanimous 26-page ruling issued Thursday morning, the appeals courtroom shot down the legal professional common’s arguments that Teran’s actions had been felony despite the fact that the data she accessed was publicly accessible.
“These courtroom paperwork convey nothing {that a} member of the general public couldn’t be taught by sitting in a courtroom attending the courtroom proceedings or reviewing publicly accessible data from the courtroom’s docket and recordsdata,” the courtroom mentioned.
Laptop crime consultants have famous that the statute Bonta invoked primarily centered on hacking and unlawful entry to laptop methods, not the kind of conduct Teran was accused of. The appeals courtroom adopted that place Thursday.
Teran’s lead protection legal professional, James Spertus, mentioned he was “very appreciative” of the courtroom’s determination.
“These are essential points that have an effect on 1000’s of residents in California, and it’s good to have the readability the courtroom supplied,” he mentioned.
The Lawyer Normal’s Workplace has not indicated whether or not it is going to enchantment. “We’re reviewing the opinion,” a spokesperson mentioned.
A spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Division declined to remark.
The choice comes six months after the appeals courtroom took the weird step of asking state prosecutors to seem in particular person and justify the prosecution earlier than deciding whether or not to let it transfer ahead, and adopted months of hearings the place Bonta’s case appeared to be eroding.
Prosecutors dropped three of the counts towards Teran earlier than a preliminary listening to final yr, and L.A. County Superior Court docket Decide Sam Ohta threw out two extra. In the course of the listening to, the usually stoic Ohta repeatedly rolled his eyes and groaned at prosecutors’ makes an attempt to justify the case.
Testimony on the listening to confirmed that Teran didn’t obtain the data from the Sheriff’s Division personnel file system. Generally, she realized of the alleged misconduct when colleagues emailed her copies of courtroom information from lawsuits filed by sheriff’s deputies hoping to overturn the self-discipline towards them.
The allegations on the heart of the case date to 2018, when Teran labored as a constitutional policing advisor for then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell, who’s now Los Angeles police chief. Her normal duties included accessing confidential deputy information and inside affairs investigations.
After leaving the Sheriff’s Division, Teran joined the District Lawyer’s Workplace. In April 2021, she despatched courtroom information associated to roughly three dozen deputies to a subordinate to judge for doable inclusion within the inside databases prosecutors use to trace officers with histories of dishonesty and different misconduct.
One is called the Brady database — a reference to the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court docket determination Brady vs. Maryland, which says prosecutors are required to show over proof that might be favorable to a defendant, together with proof of police misconduct.
Gascón’s fiercest critics — together with present Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman and ex-Sheriff Alex Villanueva — had been fast to pounce on the fees towards Teran, which Hochman used towards Gascón in a profitable marketing campaign to oust the progressive from workplace.
In the course of the marketing campaign, Hochman questioned whether or not Gascón “blessed” Teran’s supposed unlawful conduct.
“Did he deliver her on to explicitly reap the benefits of the unlawful downloads that she had already completed within the Sheriff’s Division?” he requested, although proof within the case by no means mirrored that allegation.
A spokesperson for Hochman didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
In an e mail, Villanueva mentioned, “Teran was caught illegally downloading confidential personnel recordsdata, together with that of my complete transition workforce, for political functions which have completely nothing to do together with her job on the time. This final result doesn’t change that primary truth.”
Legal justice reform activists have lengthy charged that Teran was being pursued by regulation enforcement for advancing Gascón’s broader police accountability platform that helped vault him into workplace in 2020, a sentiment some echoed after Thursday’s ruling.
“The usage of scarce prosecutorial sources to pursue felony prices towards a longtime public servant dedicated to police accountability was disappointing, unfounded and inexplicable from the outset,” mentioned Miriam Krinsky, a former federal prosecutor and founding father of the felony justice reform advocacy group Honest and Simply Prosecution.
Keri Blakinger is a former Instances workers author.
