Orange County prosecutors are urging a judge not to conduct an evidentiary hearing on allegations that a former high-level district attorney’s official hid evidence in a murder case and covered up the illegal use of jailhouse informants by law enforcement.
In a court motion, Senior Deputy District Attorney Seton Hunt said the extensive allegations against former Senior Assistant District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh — now an elected Orange County judge — were “conjecture” and “unsupported conclusions.”
The allegations were made by Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders during retrial proceedings against Paul Gentile Smith, who is accused of killing and burning the body of a childhood friend and marijuana dealer in Sunset Beach. Smith was initially convicted in 2010 and sentenced to life without parole. But the conviction was overturned in 2021 partly because Baytieh did not turn over evidence that might have helped Smith’s defense.
Smith’s pending retrial was transferred in October to San Diego County Superior Court Judge Daniel Goldstein after Sanders accused Baytieh of “outrageous government conduct” and sought to have the murder charge dismissed.
Prosecutors said that whether Baytieh withheld evidence or was guilty of other allegations lodged by Sanders is irrelevant because Smith has already been granted a new trial and no evidence from jailhouse informants will be used this time.
“We have already agreed to the only remedies that exist for this injustice,” said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer. “The dismissal of a murder case involving the heinous torture inflicted on this victim would be unconscionable.”
Hunt’s motion added that Baytieh’s conduct in the previous trial doesn’t matter in the current case.
“The relevant inquiry is whether Defendant can receive a fair re-trial, not if the prior trial prosecutor was a ‘bad guy,’ ” Hunt wrote. “This is not the appropriate venue for resolving what appears to be a very personal conflict … between defense counsel and a sitting Superior Court judge.”
Hunt added: “Letting the Defendant get away with murder, however, is not only not supported by the law, it would constitute a mockery of justice.”
Sanders responded that the prosecution’s stance is reminiscent of the previous district attorney’s denial 10 years ago of allegations that county law enforcement secretly used jailhouse informants to coax confessions from defendants who could not be legally questioned. After years of Superior Court hearings, an appellate court ruling and a federal investigation, the surreptitious use of jail informants was deemed to be true.
“The DA’s office claimed a decade ago that our allegations of a jailhouse informant scandal were mere speculation, that it was all just personal attacks on prosecutors, and that the court shouldn’t grant a hearing because we’d never win,” Sanders said. “(Now) here we are, with a different district attorney in charge of the office, facing nearly identical arguments.”
He added that it was the “height of hypocrisy” to terminate Baytieh and then characterize the allegations as conjecture and personal attacks.
Baytieh was fired from his powerful job in the district attorney’s office in February 2022, two days after an independent probe ordered by Spitzer showed that evidence — a recorded interview detailing how informants and sheriff’s deputies allegedly violated Smith’s rights — was not disclosed to the defense.
Baytieh was elected to the bench in June 2022 with strong support from other judges. He did not return a request for comment and a spokesman for the court has said judges are not allowed to respond to media inquiries.
In the Smith case, Baytieh is accused of withholding evidence that showed multiple jail informants — not just the one disclosed to the defense — worked at the behest of law enforcement to get information from the defendant.
Sanders said Baytieh also concealed the existence of the secret network of informants at the jail used in violation of defendants’ civil rights. Sanders alleged the cover-up affected nearly 100 cases.
Prosecutors, in their motion, said the informant scandal should not be an issue in Smith’s retrial, which will focus, among other things, on key DNA evidence showing that blood found at the murder scene and on a towel belonged to Smith.
“The People are confident the Court will conclude the Defendant has received the appropriate remedy and/or any discovery issues can be resolved without resorting to dismissing this murder,” Hunt wrote. “The Court should not, therefore, order an evidentiary hearing on this issue.”
