by Bert | May 21, 2019 | California
It feels like the Orange County Snitch Scandal has been going on for years without real accountability. The only concrete actions the public has seen anybody with a position of authority take against the prosecutors were Judge Goethals’s groundbreaking decisions to...
by Bert | Aug 23, 2017 | California
It took some time, but Judge Thomas M. Goethals in Orange County finally resolved a defense motion to preclude capital punishment against the defendant in People v. Dekraai. James Queally of the LA Times put it well: “The county’s beleaguered law enforcement leaders...
by Bert | May 22, 2017 | California
The Open File has taken stock of the ongoing jailhouse informant scandal surrounding the Orange County District Attorney’s office and the Orange County Sheriff’s office with some regularity over the past few years. Remarkably, the fallout continues three years after...
by Bert | Dec 22, 2016 | California
The long-running Orange County informant scandal has taken a sharp turn towards reform and accountability this week. Last month, we compiled coverage of a California appellate court’s decision to affirm a trial judge’s removal of the entire OCDA office from a...
by Bert | Nov 23, 2016 | California
We have been following the long-running, slow-motion train-wreck of a scandal unfolding in the Orange County criminal justice system for a few years now. We began covering the exposure of the county’s massive undisclosed snitch network in 2014, explored how its...