While 40 of the defendants had been convicted of low-level drug crimes, such as possession, other convictions included carrying a concealed weapon and destruction of evidence.

According to court records, the alleged crimes and convictions occurred between 2015 and 2018. The longest sentence any defendant received was 90 days in the county jail. Other defendants received probation.

The vacations and dismissals occurred after the Orange County Register reported in November 2019 that the Orange County Sheriff’s Department conducted an audit of deputies and their compliance with an office policy requiring evidence to be booked by the end of each shift, unless a supervisor approved an extension at that time.

The audit began in January 2018 and examined 26,622 evidence bookings between February 2016 and February 2018. While deputies booked 85 percent of the evidence within five days, they booked more than 700 pieces of evidence at least 20 days late. The problem was widespread. At least 27 percent of the office’s 1,500 deputies held onto a piece of evidence for a month or longer. Much of the delayed evidence was electronic in nature, including cellphone photos of crime scenes.

The audit reported that deputies booked 30 percent of evidence outside of the written policy and that the system for booking evidence lacked accountability and consistency. Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said that he learned of the audit and the problems it detailed in the newspaper account. He acknowledged, however, that in the months prior to the publication of the article, his office became aware of problems with booking evidence.

As far back as 2017, the sheriff’s office referred a case to the district attorney’s Special Prosecutions Unit that involved a deputy who failed numerous times to book evidence. The sheriff’s office referred 16 other similar cases during the audit period. Some, but not all mentioned an “internal audit conducted of the department’s Property Evidence system.” Spitzer said there was no further explanation given, and he and Sheriff Don Barnes disagreed over whether these notices were sufficient to alert the district attorney about the scope of the audit.

The sheriff’s office began a second audit in August 2018, as it worked to compile information from the first audit. In the second audit, the sheriff’s office randomly selected 450 cases from the first audit in which no evidence was logged. That audit, completed in February 2019, found 57 instances where deputies noted in reports that they had collected evidence but did not actually enter the items into the Property Evidence system. Mary Izadi, an attorney and constitutional advisor to the sheriff, directed the second audit. The sheriff did not share the second audit’s results with the public until months later.

Scott Sanders, an assistant public defender with the office of the Orange County Public Defender, criticized the sheriff’s office for sitting on the findings of both audits. “What kind of constitutional adviser would look at 57 cases where evidence was missing and believe that the right path was to hide it from defendants?” Sanders asked. “It is absolutely unconscionable.”

Internal affairs reports disclosed by the sheriff’s office in response to pleadings filed by the public defender’s office documented the extent of the problem. One deputy booked drug paraphernalia 39 days after she made an arrest and 37 days after the defendant pled guilty. In another instance, Deputy Joseph Atkinson waited two weeks before logging heroin and drug paraphernalia into the evidence system and 156 days before logging in a cellphone. A review of his work found 26 instances where the evidence he documented in his reports could not be located in the property evidence system.

Mishandling of evidence creates a chain-of-custody issue at trial and raises concerns that the evidence logged is not the same as the evidence taken from a defendant at the time of an arrest or search.

While precise records are not available, nearly all of the defendants in these cases pled guilty, some as quickly as two days after their arrest. After the audit became public, the conviction integrity unit in Spitzer’s office began its own investigation, splitting cases into three groups: open cases; closed cases with late evidence; and closed cases with missing evidence. It also expanded the scope of inquiry to three years, from March 2015 to March 2018.

Prosecutors identified more than 2,300 cases where deputies booked evidence at least two days late and defendants pled guilty. It sent letters to all these defendants or their attorneys. Only one case was dismissed from that list.

The district attorney’s audit also found 562 cases where the evidence was either missing or never booked. It notified attorneys and defendants in those cases, and an additional 66 cases were dismissed in part or in their entirety. Sheriff Barnes fired four deputies for their misconduct.

Separately, Spitzer said his office looked at 31 cases where deputies appeared to have committed misconduct when booking evidence. Many of the acts of misconduct fell under the penal code for willful omission to perform a legal duty, but these violations had a one-year statute of limitation. The other applicable violation, according to Spitzer, was knowingly and intentionally making a false statement in a police report.

Three of the worst offenders – Atkinson, Bryce Simpson, and Edwin Mora – were each charged with filing false reports. Investigators found Simpson failed to book evidence in 56 cases. Atkins and Simpson pled guilty and received probation. Mora’s case is still pending.

Evidence of past misconduct by a law-enforcement officer can be considered so-called “Brady” evidence, named for the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland requiring the state to disclose exculpatory information to defendants. Spitzer’s office also created a list of deputies identified in the audit to provide to defense attorneys.

He wrote: “Notice will be provided to the defense in all cases where any of these deputies are a potential witness, as well as past cases that resulted in a conviction where any impacted deputy testified.”

The audit itself is considered a personnel record and cannot be released except by court order, according to the attorney for the sheriff’s office.

Spitzer said he also removed DNA samples from all the defendants for the cases he reviewed. These samples are normally added to the county’s database, similar to fingerprints. In a report issued on January 13, 2021, Spitzer said his investigation, including testimony by officers before a grand jury, identified several things that contributed to the breakdown in booking evidence in a timely manner.

First, he said, there had been inadequate training and supervision. Second, he said the department emphasized field work and making arrests, to the detriment of the paperwork required to document cases. “The pressure to return to the field as quickly as possible coupled with the reality that evidence lockers did not then exist at every Sheriff’s substation and deputies were forced to drive long distances to book evidence resulted in evidence not immediately being booked on multiple occasions,” Spitzer wrote. In addition, he said deputies were discouraged from using overtime to finish reports and book evidence after their shifts ended.

– Ken Otterbourg

Members of this group

Here are the defendants who had their convictions vacated and charges dismissed based on misconduct by sheriff's deputies in Orange County, California: 
​Jonathan Agajanian​, Jeffrey Austin,​ ​Christopher Bacalot​, ​​Emmanuel Bahena​, Thomas Benson, ​Joey Caban​, Miguel Calderon​, Nicole Cedillo​, ​Ernesto Chairez​, ​​Justin Danesh​, George Delgado​, ​​​Alexis Del Toro​, Thomas Evans​,​​Anselmo Garcia​, Alexander Gonzales, ​Joseph Griffin​, ​​Claire Griffiths​,​ ​ Edgar Guitierrez, Jeffrey Hardgrave​, ​​​Cale Hill​, ​​Huey Hoang​,​ Cristina Hurtado, Jeremy Immel​,​ ​Keith Jones​, ​​​Joseph Jordan​, Noe Lezema​, Richard Lopez​,  Pearl Mendez​, Saisha Miranda​, ​​Whitney Monk​, Alexis Murillo​, Ben Nguyen​, ​​Dora Ocampo, Paul Ogle, ​Ryan Oleson, Christopher Pena​, Victor Perez, ​Manuel Ramirez​,  ​Ismael Rodriguez​,​ ​Lydia Rodriguez​,​ ​Kyle Rusher​,​ ​Josezie Sanchez​, Erica Santos​, ​Tyson Shelby​, ​William Stanley, Derrick Stoelting, ​Kenneth Trumbull​, ​​Melina Vasquez​, ​Dylan Villamil​, Anthony Wager​, ​​Nicholas Walker​, ​​Stephen Walters​, ​​David Weatherford​, Pedro Zendejas​.