Trial of former prosecutor’s adviser put on hold after appeal court intervenes

A California appeals court is scrutinizing the criminal prosecution of a former top district attorney’s office consultant and asking state attorneys. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office is in court to further justify the case before deciding whether to move forward.

Earlier this year, then-DA adviser Diana Teran was indicted on 11 counts. Felony State prosecutors said she violated California hacking statutes. Tran is accused of sending court records to a colleague in 2021 to track down police officers with disciplinary records. The state argued that Tran only knew about the records because she had access to confidential disciplinary files while working for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department three years ago.

State prosecutors expect the trial, which was originally scheduled to begin in January, to take three weeks. But on Monday, the Court of Appeal postponed proceedings for at least three months and left open the possibility of dismissing the case entirely.

The court issued a two-page order setting out its reasons and scheduled a hearing for prosecutors in April to argue why the high court should let the case proceed rather than uphold the defense team’s request to dismiss it.

“We are grateful that the appeals court agreed to evaluate this issue before trial,” James Spertus, one of Tran’s attorneys, told The Times on Monday. “I said it at the beginning of the case: The only things she shared were public court records. Public records belong to the public, not the LASD.

Bonta’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Miriam Krinsky, a former federal prosecutor and founder of Fair and Equitable Prosecution, a nonprofit group that advocates for criminal justice reform, said the appeals court’s decision was a rare move.

“The Court of Appeal does not normally get involved at this stage of the case,” she told The Times on Monday. “Now the attorney general’s office is on the defensive.”

The allegations at the heart of the case date back to 2018, when Tran served as a constitutional policing adviser to then-Superintendent Jim McDonald. Her day-to-day responsibilities include access to confidential deputy records and internal affairs investigations.

After leaving the Sheriff’s Department, Tran later joined the District Attorney’s Office. In April 2021, she sent court records related to about three dozen deputies to a subordinate to evaluate whether they could be included in an internal database used by prosecutors to track officers with a history of dishonesty and other misconduct.

One is called the “Brady database,” a reference to the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brady v. Maryland, which stipulates that prosecutors must turn over any evidence favorable to a defendant, including evidence of police misconduct.

The attorney general’s office claims several of the names Tran sent to subordinates were in the files of deputies she had accessed years ago while working for the Sheriff’s Department.

However, testimony At a preliminary hearing in August It showed she did not download information from the Sheriff’s Department’s personnel records system. In most cases, she learned of the alleged misconduct when colleagues emailed her copies of transcripts of lawsuits filed by representatives seeking to overturn the department’s discipline against them.

State investigators said they found 11 of the names were not mentioned in public records or major media outlets. Prosecutors said they believe they would not have been able to identify the deputies or know the court records in which they were found were it not for the special access Tran had while working for the Sheriff’s Department.

Prosecutors eventually dropped three of the charges without explanation, and Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta dismissed two of the charges, saying there was no evidence Tran tracked or examined the officers’ disciplinary cases during his tenure with the Sheriff’s Department. .

Regarding the six charges that remain pending, Ohta said Tran could have searched for the deputy’s name in the department’s confidential personnel data system after the relevant records were emailed to her. He said the searches could reveal links between public records and confidential information.

In October, Tran’s lawyers argued in papers filed with the Court of Appeal that there were insufficient grounds to proceed with the prosecution. The 54-page document says Ohta agreed that the records Teran sent to her colleagues were public documents and claimed she did not need permission from the Sheriff’s Department to use them.

The Attorney General’s Office responded, calling the records “LASD data” and saying “Logically, the LASD is the only entity that can grant anyone a license to use LASD data.”

A person in Tran’s position “knows as a matter of course that she cannot use LASD data at other agencies without LASD’s permission,” the state’s attorney wrote.

On Monday, just a week before the trial was scheduled to begin, the appeals court issued an order setting the hearing for April 2 in Los Angeles.