Sheriff's Department employees changed stories and compared notes during the probe into the death of inmate John Derek Chamberlain.
4-13-2008 California:
They lied, they changed their stories and they compared notes even after being ordered not to by a special Orange County grand jury investigating a deadly beating at Theo Lacy Jail, the testimony shows.
During 45 days of grand jury prodding, members of the Sheriff's Department repeatedly hindered the probe, according to thousands of pages of transcripts made public last week. Then-Sheriff Michael S. Carona refused to answer a single question, including whether he was the county's sheriff the day John Derek Chamberlain was killed by other inmates.
Chamberlain, a Mission Viejo computer technician who was being held on suspicion of possessing child pornography, was beaten by fellow inmates over a 50-minute period near a glass-walled guard station while the ranking jailer watched television and exchanged cellphone text messages with friends, according to the grand jury transcripts.
Although the grand jury probe did not lead to criminal charges against any sheriff's employees, the transcripts show the hurdles that prosecutors faced as Carona and his troops took the witness stand.
Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas and acting Sheriff Jack Anderson agreed that the testimony painted a deeply unsettling picture of a law enforcement agency that had broken down. One expert said the findings could erode the public's confidence in the department, the second largest in the state.
"A great part of law enforcement is public trust," said former San Francisco Police Chief Anthony D. Ribera, director of the International Institute of Criminal Justice Leadership at the University of San Francisco. "Given the awesome authority that law enforcement has in our society, the issue of integrity has to be totally part of the fabric of the organization."
The special grand jury impaneled by Rackauckas spent nine months trying to get answers in the October 2006 beating at Theo Lacy Jail in Orange. Among the questions the grand jury sought to answer was whether deputies helped instigate the attack and why the Sheriff's Department decided to take the lead in the homicide investigation -- breaking a decades-old policy under which the district attorney reviewed inmate deaths.
From the outset, grand jurors were so worried about leaks from the secret proceedings that they convened at the federal courthouse in Santa Ana because the nearby Superior Court is served by sheriff's bailiffs. But transcripts show it didn't take long for testimony to be discussed among witnesses. Several had to be called back to the witness stand after prosecutors discovered they were allegedly sharing information with Deputy Kevin Taylor, who was accused by an inmate of wrongly identifying Chamberlain as a child molester -- an open invitation in jail and prisons for trouble.
Deputy Sonja V. Moreno, for example, was ordered to return two times before she finally confessed to lying repeatedly to the grand jury and passing along information to Taylor, according to the testimony. By that time, five of Moreno's friends had testified that she discussed her testimony with them too.
Moreno, a close friend and neighbor of Taylor, testified that she drove to his home and told him she was asked about 22 text messages that he exchanged with her and others during the Chamberlain attack. She said she also told Taylor that jurors asked her whether she and Taylor were more than friends. She denied any romance but later admitted to prosecutors they had once kissed but that it was not intimate, according to testimony.
Asked why she had lied, Moreno testified that she thought the information was important to Taylor, that she has a hard time keeping secrets from friends and was under stress. "I didn't go there so that I can taint an investigation or interfere with something," she said.
Special Officer Phillip Le, who was on duty with Taylor during the attack at Theo Lacy, told the grand jury that instead of refreshing his memory about the incident by reviewing his own statements to homicide investigators, he asked for Taylor's incident report instead. He said that sheriff's Det. Ken Hoffman, who was investigating the homicide for the department, gave him a copy.
Le also testified that he made a "command decision" to record over the first seven to 10 minutes of videotape he was using to document the scene after guards discovered Chamberlain had been beaten. His decision effectively erased the initial reaction to Chamberlain's injuries.
Le testified that he realized he was about to run out of videotape and decided to record over the beginning of the tape.
The grand jury was routinely stymied in its efforts to obtain records because sheriffs' officials refused to produce batches of documents, including simple policy manuals, without a legal battle. Many records that were eventually turned over had portions blacked out and hadbeen screened first by a sergeant who handled civil claims against the department. According to testimony, he admitted instructing employees how to answer certain questions.
When prosecutors asked for Taylor's background file, they were told it was missing.
Taylor had been the subject of at least two internal affairs investigations for allegedly beating one inmate and breaking the arm of another, according to prosecutors. According to the testimony of Capt. Davis Nighswonger, that is the kind of information that should have been included in his background file.
Dan Martini, then the assistant sheriff overseeing the department's estimated 7,000 background files, testified that the disappearance of Taylor's file made no sense and that he had considered bringing in the state attorney general's office to investigate. Martini was removed from his position by Carona two days before he appeared before the grand jury.
"It came to my attention that there was a, quote, 'missing' file that involved Kevin Taylor," Martini said. "It rose me out of my seat, and I said, 'We do not have missing files.' "
One of the goals of the grand jury was to determine why the Sheriff's Department chose to lead the investigation of a death in custody rather than turn the case over to the district attorney, in keeping with a 1984 agreement aimed at avoiding a conflict of interest. But their efforts were frustrated.
Prosecutors expressed exasperation with the testimony and foggy memories of then-Undersheriff Jo Ann Galisky and Assistant Sheriff Steve Bishop. Both said they could not remember who made the final decision to let their own department investigate.
Contrary to earlier testimony, Galisky and Bishop told jurors that after Chamberlain died they were informed by their subordinates that the department had previously taken the lead on custodial deaths.
During her testimony, Galisky admitted she changed a memo she'd provided to an earlier grand jury that was also examining Chamberlain's death. Once changed, according to transcripts, the memo stated that the Sheriff's Department was always the lead investigative agency in jail homicides and that the district attorney played a secondary role.
During questioning, Deputy Dist. Atty. Keith Bogardis pressed Galisky on the memo.
"That's an outright lie," Bogardis said to her, according to transcripts. He then asked her to defend her actions.
"I don't think it was my intention to mislead the grand jury. I believe I was trying to respond and give them the information," she said. "Whatever changes I made in there, there was no intention to lie to them."
On her second day of testimony, according to transcripts, Galisky realized she was now not just a witness but a target of the grand jury. She immediately asserted her 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination and declined to answer further questions. She and Bishop were forced out of the Sheriff's Department in February shortly after the grand jury briefed Anderson on the findings.
Last week, Anderson suspended Taylor, Le and fellow jailer Jason Chapluk, along with Moreno and an internal affairs investigator who allegedly pressured a witness to reveal her grand jury testimony. He has promised more punishments as the department launches what he has described as the biggest internal investigation in its history.
"The fundamentals of our profession are based on truth," said Anderson, who took charge of the beleaguered department after Carona stepped down in January.
"We must collect facts accurately and present them accordingly," he said. "Anything less is unprofessional, and anyone who would engage in that should be removed from the profession and shouldn't be a cop anymore." ..more.. by Christine Hanley, Stuart Pfeifer and Christian Berthelsen, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
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