SANTA ANA (CNS) - A retired Orange County sheriff's sergeant testified Monday in an evidentiary hearing alleging prosecutorial misconduct he was never able to track down evidence a decade following a conviction in a 1988 killing, apparently contradicting a former prosecutor who is now an Orange County Superior Court judge.
The testimony from Eric Hatch came as attorney Scott Sanders of the Orange County Public Defender's Office filed a new motion on Monday alleging another audit of the case of Paul Gentile Smith, 64, showed more evidence has surfaced that was not turned over to the defense.
In 2019, Baytieh asked Hatch to track down some evidence in the case, but Hatch said he couldn't recall that. After showing Hatch an email exchange about it, he was asked about Baytieh's claim that Hatch found reports and recordings on informant Jeff Platt.
"Did that maybe happen," Sanders asked Hatch.
"I don't think so," he said. "I don't remember going into any (confidential informant) files. I don't think I ever went through any CI files (in his career). I don't recollect that."
Hatch said he was only involved in one case that included a confidential informant and "it didn't work out."
Smith was convicted in 2010 of killing 29-year-old Robert Haugen in Sunset Beach on Oct. 24, 1988. Sanders is trying to get the case against Smith dismissed or some other sanction related to allegations of outrageous governmental conduct in the use of jailhouse snitches.
The case was reassigned before San Diego County Superior Court Judge Daniel B. Goldstein because of the claims against Baytieh, who won election to his post after Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer fired him for failing to turn over evidence to the defense in Smith's first trial, which resulted in a conviction in 2010 for murder and special circumstance allegations of torture and robbery.
After the conviction, Smith pleaded guilty to soliciting an attack on the lead investigator in the case, sheriff's investigator Raymond Wert, but those charges were later dismissed by prosecutors after they agreed to a retrial of Smith's murder case in 2021.
Sanders said his defense team this month reviewed the physical case files from the sheriff's department and the evidence booked in the case.
"The inspections confirmed that even after 14 years after the conviction, three years after a new trial was ordered, and two months into evidentiary hearings, there is no end in sight to the concealment and deception by the prosecution team," Sanders wrote in the court filing.
Sanders said his team has uncovered "seven additional investigative reports and transcripts related to jailhouse informants Jeff Platt and Paul Martin, which were concealed prior to defendant's conviction."
He added that "neither error nor incompetence can explain why a total of 18 reports, recordings and transcripts related to informants Platt and Martin were withheld prior to Smith's 2010 trial, particularly considering the prosecution seamlessly discovered nearly 2,000 pages of pretrial discovery to defendant Smith."
Sanders argued that the withheld evidence "paved the way for what should have been inadmissible testimony by informant Arthur Palacios while also protecting Palacios from deserved attacks on his credibility."
Sanders has alleged that the informants were used to solicit evidence against Smith even though the law prohibits it when a defendant is represented by an attorney.
Sanders also cast doubt on Baytieh's earlier testimony in the hearings "about how he purportedly first came into possession of multiple reports and recordings pertaining to long-hidden informant Jeffrey Platt."
Sanders added in his motion that "Baytieh claimed that he learned for the first time that Platt had worked with his own prosecution team during a June 2019 interview with the (U.S. Justice Department) when he was shown an interview report written by former Sgt. Donald Voght regarding Voght and former Sgt. Raymond Wert's recorded interview of Platt's July 28, 2009 interview."
Baytieh turned to Hatch to track it down because Voght, who was the investigator on the case at the time, was out of the country.
Sanders also argued there was evidence of an "undisclosed (sheriff's) probe into whether evidence was hidden from the prosecution" as well as information provided for two documentary movies about the case that was never given over to the defense.
Testimony is expected to continue Tuesday.
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