As Orange County Judge Michael Murray faces charges from a state commission that he withheld evidence, a public defender has alleged that he has a history of misconduct during his time as a prosecutor.
A prolific jailhouse informant who played a central role in the takedown of former Orange County Mexican mafia chief Peter Ojeda apparently took his own life in.
A prolific jailhouse informant who played a central role in the takedown of former Orange County Mexican mafia chief Peter Ojeda apparently took his own life in Huntington Beach last month, authorities confirmed.
An Orange County judge granted a new trial this week to a man convicted of stabbing a Sunset Beach man to death after sheriff's deputies declined to testify in court about their alleged misuse of illegal informants to obtain incriminating information from accused defendants.
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Even after the Orange County Sheriff’s Department discovered one of its investigators mishandled evidence and lied about it, the department still tasked him with probing into widespread evidence mishandling of his peers, according to a recent court motion.
Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders alleges in his motion that the Sheriff’s Department then tried to conceal information from the district attorney’s office to lessen the chances that Det. Matthew LeFlore would be prosecuted.
LeFlore is one of the subjects of the widely reported evidence mishandling scandal, where Orange County sheriff’s deputies were found to have booked evidence late or failed to book evidence at all but subsequently lied about it in reports. For more than a year, Sanders has been revealing details about the scandal in court filings critical of the Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney’s response to the scandal.