SANTA ANA, Calif. (KNX) — Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer has been on the receiving end of significant public backlash after internal memoranda surfaced earlier this week containing what have been described by critics as racist comments.
The memos in question were written by former Senior Assistant D.A. Ebrahim Baytieh in connection with an Oct. 2021 meeting to discuss whether the office would pursue the death penalty against a Black defendant accused of killing a white couple in Newport Beach.
Baytieh was fired a week ago as a result of an investigation into whether he withheld evidence in a 2010 murder case. The conviction in that case was ultimately overturned. Baytieh’s allies say he was fired for blowing the whistle on Spitzer’s allegedly racist remarks.
According to the memo, obtained by The Orange County Register, Jamon Buggs’ record of domestic violence was discussed during the meeting, with Spitzer inquiring about the race of the defendant’s ex-girlfriends.
Baytieh and fellow prosecutor Eric Scarborough told the D.A. his line of questioning was irrelevant and inappropriate. Spitzer disagreed, and said “he knows many Black people who get themselves out of their bad circumstances and bad situations by only dating ‘white women.’”
In a Dec. 21 correction, Baytieh amended the memo to say Spitzer knew “many people who enhance their status by only dating ‘white women.’”
The memo also alleged that Spitzer said he knew a Black student in college who only dated white women to get himself out of “bad circumstances and situations.” That line too was later amended to say Spitzer said he knew a Black student who only dated white women to “enhance his status.”
Spitzer has contended he was misquoted, his remarks taken out of context.
“My questions were directly related to the entire question of identification or misidentification by Buggs. There was literally no other reason to bring race into the conversation except the facts of this case were that Buggs wanted to kill the man he believed was dating/sleeping with his former girlfriend — a white, blonde woman,” Spitzer said in his memo.
“My questions about Buggs and […] the race of former girlfriends was simply to address the issue of cross racial identification, the single biggest reason for murder convictions to be overturned,” Spitzer said. “I simply was exploring Buggs’ ability to identify, properly or not, the race of the female victim in that moment before he executed two victims.”
In his memo, Baytieh insisted Spitzer’s comments be turned over to BUggs’ defense team under the Racial Justice Act, which allows lawyers to challenge a conviction based on racial bias.
Scarborough and a fellow A.D.A., Steve McGreevy, said Spitzer’s comments were “potentially discoverable” and should be referred to the judge presiding over the case under seal.
Spitzer disagreed. He removed all nine people who were at the Oct. 2021 meeting, including himself, from the case and assigned it to a new prosecutor.
“This was an act of pure desperation by a prosecutor who knew had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and was willing to do anything to protect himself, even fabricating facts to embarrass the district attorney,” Spitzer said in a statement about Baytieh.
“The prosecutor knew he was under investigation for failing to properly disclose evidence and every day that went by was another day closer to investigators finding out the entire truth,” he wrote.
Spitzer’s opponents in the June 7 primary for the Orange County D.A.’s seat have called on him to resign.
“Todd Spitzer’s consideration of race while deciding whether or not California should execute a black man isn’t just appalling, it’s disqualifying,” said former Marine Judge Advocate Pete Hardin, a Democrat. “Our system of justice must be colorblind, and the chief law enforcement officer just showed himself to be anything but.”
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