In a reprimand of one of California Atty. The most politically tense tense prosecutions of General Rob Bonta, a state of state appeals moved on Thursday to dismiss the remaining criminal charges against a main advisor to former ex-Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón.
Diana Teran was accused last year of 11 incorrectly discharge charges of confidential police discipline records when she was a constitutional surveillance advisor in the department of the Sheriff of the Los Angeles County, and then “inadmissibly” using the data while working for Gascón.
Teran and his legal team have argued for a long time that the records were public judicial records, and he was simply sending them to a colleague as part of an effort of the DA office to track the police with disciplinary stories.
In a unanimous 26 -page ruling issued Thursday morning, the Court of Appeals knocked down the arguments of the Attorney General that TERAN's actions were penalties despite the fact that the information he accessed was publicly available.
“These judicial documents do not convey anything that a member of the public could not learn sitting in a court room attending judicial procedures or reviewing the publicly available information of the file and the archives of the court,” said the court.
Computer crimes have noticed that the Bronta Statute invoked mainly focused on piracy and illegal access to computer systems, not the type of behavior that Teran was accused. The Court of Appeals took that position on Thursday.
Teran's main defense lawyer, James Spertus, said he was “very grateful” for the Court's decision.
“These are very important problems that affect thousands of residents in California, and it is good to have the clarity offered by the court,” he said.
The Office of the Attorney General has not indicated if it will attract. “We are reviewing the opinion,” said a spokesman.
A spokesman for the Sheriff Department did not provide comments immediately.
The decision occurs six months after the Court of Appeals took the unusual step to ask state prosecutors to appear in person and justify the prosecution before deciding whether to let it advance, and followed months of hearings where the case of Bont seemed to be eroded.
The prosecutors launched three of the charges against Teran before a preliminary hearing last year, and the judge of the Superior Court of the County of the, Sam Ohta, expelled two more. During the hearing, the Ohta normally stoic put his eyes blank and groaned for the attempts of the prosecutors to justify the case.
The testimony at the audience showed that Teran did not download the information system information system of the Sheriff's department. In most cases, he learned of the alleged misconduct when the colleagues sent their copies of the judicial records of demands filed by the deputies of the Sheriff who hope to revoke the discipline against them.
The accusations in the center of the Datan case of 2018, when Teran worked as a constitutional surveillance advisor for the then Sheriff Jim McDonnell, who is now head of the Los Angeles Police. Its usual duties included access to confidential attachments and internal affairs investigations.
After leaving the department of the Sheriff, Teran joined the district prosecutor's office. In April 2021, he sent judicial records related to approximately three dozen deputies to a subordinate to evaluate the possible inclusion in the internal databases that prosecutors use to track officers with a history of dishonesty and other misconduct.
One is known as Brady's database: a reference to the decision of the 1963 United States Supreme Court Brady vs. Maryland, who says that prosecutors must deliver evidence that could be favorable for a defendant, including evidence of police misconduct.
The fiercest critics of Gascón, including current distributions. Atty Nathan Hochman and former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, hurried to fall into charges against Teran, which Hochman used against Gascón in a successful campaign to expel the progressive positions of the position.
During the campaign, Hochman questioned whether Gascon “blessed” the supposed illegal conduct of Tran.
“Did she take her to explicitly take advantage of the illegal discharges she had already done in the department of the Sheriff?” He asked, although the evidence in the case never reflected that accusation.
A Hochman spokesman did not immediately respond to a comment request. Villanueva did not respond to a request for comments.
The activists of the Reform of Criminal Justice have accused for a long time that Teran was being persecuted by the Police to advance in the broader police responsibility platform that helped clarify it in their charge in 2020, a feeling that echoed after the ruling on Thursday.
“The use of scarce fiscal resources to present criminal charges against a public servant committed to police responsibility was disappointing, unfounded and inexplicable from the beginning,” said Miriam Krinsky, former federal prosecutor and founder of the Defense Group of the Reform of Reform of Criminal Justice and only prosecution.
Keri Blakinger is a former Times writer.
