Speaker 1: Please be advised this story contains adult content and graphic language.
Speaker 1: It's not justice at all to know that the respect
Speaker 1: that I had for these guys and what I thought
Speaker 1: they would produce for me and do for me, they
Speaker 1: did the complete opposite, and they they made my pain worse.
Speaker 1: And they continued to do that by not admitting what
Speaker 1: they did and not just holding themselves accountable. Welcome to Sleuth.
Speaker 1: I'm Linda Sawyer. We hope you recognize our effort throughout
Speaker 1: this podcast to shine a light on just how justice
Speaker 1: is dispensed and determined in Orange County, California. With the
Speaker 1: checks and balances a platform like Sleuth has brought to
Speaker 1: bear on this subject, there is now a new day
Speaker 1: in town. On November six, the people of Orange County
Speaker 1: spoke and voted in new d A Todd Spitzer, who
Speaker 1: dethroned a twenty year incumbent in Tony Rococcus, Mr Spitzer one,
Speaker 1: on a platform of cleaning up corruption in the Orange
Speaker 1: County d A's office. With that, we have invited a
Speaker 1: timely roundtable discussion welcoming back our trio of guests, which
Speaker 1: include Wosniak defense counsel Scott Sanders, victim advocate Paul Wilson,
Speaker 1: who lost his wife of twenty six years to Mr Sanders,
Speaker 1: clients Got to Cry, and a thirty year award winning
Speaker 1: veteran journalist Scott Moxley. Mr Moxley, through his weekly Moxley Confidential,
Speaker 1: informs the public by consistently keeping an eye on the
Speaker 1: political and legal maneuvering taking place in the Orange County
Speaker 1: justice system. Welcome to Sleuth again, gentlemen, and thank you
Speaker 1: for being here today. For this past season of Sleuth,
Speaker 1: the focus has been on the Dan Wozniak case because
Speaker 1: I believe Dan was not alone in committing the murders
Speaker 1: of Sam Hair and Julie Kibuishi, and I've shared with
Speaker 1: listeners my work in support of this theory. There are
Speaker 1: others involved in these murders who should have been charged
Speaker 1: as accomplices, but we're not due to perhaps political expediency,
Speaker 1: with the d a's office seemingly consumed by a win
Speaker 1: at all costs mentality, So the narratives seem to be
Speaker 1: get the death penalty for Dan Wozniak, and the others
Speaker 1: will simply be summed up as collateral damage. Therefore, I
Speaker 1: wanted to invite all three of you, gentlemen, back to
Speaker 1: the program today, so each of you can discuss some
Speaker 1: of your concerning issues that your work has revealed regarding
Speaker 1: the shortcomings of the Orange County justice system, not only
Speaker 1: you covering them, Mr Moxley, but you experiencing them from
Speaker 1: a personal standpoint as of the MS family member, and
Speaker 1: of course Mr Sanders experiencing it as a as a
Speaker 1: public defender in the county for over twenty six years.
Speaker 1: So with that, let's talk about the election. We just
Speaker 1: had an election and an incumbent of twenty years was
Speaker 1: basically ousted. The people spoke and uh, I know that
Speaker 1: you had a lot to say about it in your coverage,
Speaker 1: So why don't we start with you, Mr Moxley. Sure,
Speaker 1: as we film this or record this, it looks like
Speaker 1: Mr Spitzer, the challenger, is up by forty votes and
Speaker 1: which is a trouncing and particularly given the history of
Speaker 1: the office. Racoccus one in June the first time and
Speaker 1: has been openly seeking a six four year term and
Speaker 1: I think entered into the year believing he would be
Speaker 1: the next district attorney and was stunned that the voters
Speaker 1: in the June primary wanted someone other than him, And
Speaker 1: I think you could look at what the office did
Speaker 1: in the following weeks leading up to the election and
Speaker 1: wonder whether decisions were made in the interests of justice
Speaker 1: or attempted to be made to an influence an election.
Speaker 1: I'd like to know, Mr Sanders. I know that I've
Speaker 1: heard that in fact, Mr Spitzer really was running on
Speaker 1: it clean up the d a's office platform. Do you
Speaker 1: feel like all your work and the informant scandal had
Speaker 1: the results that you were looking for in this election? Well,
Speaker 1: we weren't doing it for the election, first of all,
Speaker 1: so it really wasn't part of the analysis. Never was
Speaker 1: I ever doing work and going out there and LiTi
Speaker 1: getting these issues thinking that Mr ra Caucus would would
Speaker 1: be replaced. It's happened, and now we'll look forward to
Speaker 1: see if Mr Spitzer brings in a new thinking about
Speaker 1: how to deal with issues of misconduct, both within the
Speaker 1: office and outside of it. So it's really in his
Speaker 1: ball field. Now he can he can assuring a whole
Speaker 1: new era that looks nothing like the one we've seen
Speaker 1: for the last couple of decades. But on the campaign,
Speaker 1: he was touting all your work and he was giving
Speaker 1: you credit for what you uncovered. I don't know how
Speaker 1: much he was directly recognizing our work, but I think
Speaker 1: he was speaking to at least what the work had
Speaker 1: done to show that there were problems that he believed
Speaker 1: needed to be changed or responded to. So he's talked
Speaker 1: a lot about it. It's been a big issue for him.
Speaker 1: I think it was an issue that did move people, unquestionably.
Speaker 1: I think it's just you know, and and the writing
Speaker 1: people like Scott Mr Moxley covered it. How many articles
Speaker 1: would be he wrote over a hundred, He's written over
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty. I know on the that's a
Speaker 1: lot of articles on the informant. How many words is that?
Speaker 1: Have you ever figured it out? I don't want to
Speaker 1: really know, it's a lot. Mr Wilson, I know you
Speaker 1: had firsthand experience and got involved with Mr Spitzer's campaign
Speaker 1: to the point where you just spoke about your firsthand experience.
Speaker 1: Why don't you tell my listeners about sure? Well, I'm
Speaker 1: at Todd six years ago. Seven years ago. Todd gave
Speaker 1: me a platform to speak. He was a lot of
Speaker 1: victims rallies and it was instrumental in helping me heal.
Speaker 1: At that time. I give thought a lot of credit
Speaker 1: for that, and he was very kind to me, and
Speaker 1: like I said, he gave me that that platform that
Speaker 1: I very much needed at that time. And in context,
Speaker 1: how how long ago was that? It's uh spent seven years?
Speaker 1: So Todd reached out to me, and my first victims
Speaker 1: rally would have been probably six months after Christie was
Speaker 1: shot and killed in Seal Beach. I Scott to Cry
Speaker 1: who was one of Mr Sander's clients. Correct, So Todd
Speaker 1: is he ran on victims rights and and cleaning up
Speaker 1: that office and everything I know about Todd, he's been
Speaker 1: true to his words. So he's got a large clean up.
Speaker 1: And so was there a commercial that you did with
Speaker 1: him or what I did? I did do a commercial
Speaker 1: for Todd. I wanted the voters to know the corre
Speaker 1: option and the scandal that I experienced with Tony Rococcus
Speaker 1: in that current District Attorney's office, and that's basically what
Speaker 1: the commercial was about. Did you want to share with
Speaker 1: listeners your experience when you did actually meet with Tony directly?
Speaker 1: It's time with that When you said that you sat
Speaker 1: down with Mr Roccoccus and you could tell that it
Speaker 1: was his choice. Yeah, well, I had numerous meetings with
Speaker 1: Tony over the course of six and a half years,
Speaker 1: so many of those were face to face, and um,
Speaker 1: they were very heated. What were they heated about? Well,
Speaker 1: because I was contesting his decisions and what he was
Speaker 1: doing and didn't agree with them, and we basically just
Speaker 1: decided we didn't like each other. So definitely a different
Speaker 1: experience than you had with Mr Spitzer. Completely different. But
Speaker 1: but again, I mean, Toodd's giving me a platform to
Speaker 1: speak on it as a victim, and Tony Roccoccus is
Speaker 1: out there cheating and lying to me and doing things
Speaker 1: that I don't agree with. So I held Tony accountable
Speaker 1: and I knew he was lying and he was cheating,
Speaker 1: and he didn't like that very much. Do you have
Speaker 1: a sense, Mr Moxley, of your readers how they feel
Speaker 1: about perhaps this new administration? Was it just time? I mean,
Speaker 1: tell me, what, if anything, you're getting any feedback. The
Speaker 1: Weekly's readership is twenty to forty market essentially, so it's
Speaker 1: younger people, and they're always suspicious of law enforcement, particularly
Speaker 1: political law enforcement. Let me go back to something about
Speaker 1: how he won or how he ended up losing this contest,
Speaker 1: I think you have to start the very beginning is
Speaker 1: that Tony Corococcus abandoned his public oath. And without him
Speaker 1: doing that repeatedly, nothing else would have fallen into play.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have written certain articles, uh Todd would have
Speaker 1: been struggling in a way, but just repeatedly abandoning his oath.
Speaker 1: And then give us an example of that, well, I
Speaker 1: think in the in the in the Ry case, where
Speaker 1: it was very evident by two thousand fourteen, and let
Speaker 1: me just say for listeners, Scott to Cry was the
Speaker 1: largest mass shooter in Orange County history, and one of
Speaker 1: his victims was your wife, Mr Wilson. That's so the
Speaker 1: key was in a place like Orange County, where there's
Speaker 1: largely suburban juries who are not hesitant to vote for
Speaker 1: the death penalty. This was considered a slam dunk death
Speaker 1: penalty case. And yet they violated the defendants constitutional rights constantly.
Speaker 1: They had records covered it up in light about it right,
Speaker 1: and then they committed perjury. And in the process of that,
Speaker 1: Tony could have gone the high road and ended the
Speaker 1: cheating and fired the people on his staff who were
Speaker 1: cheating and go after the deputies a committed perjury in
Speaker 1: a death penalty case. He did none of that. So
Speaker 1: that's the basic right there. In fact, even said they
Speaker 1: didn't agree with Judge Goethe's ruling. Right. I mean, I
Speaker 1: remember the sheriff saying that she bloody overstepped himself. You
Speaker 1: had a speaking engagement, I believe it was at a
Speaker 1: competing tabloid, and you spoke with and she was there sheriff,
Speaker 1: and they've they've she and Mr ra Caucus have repeatedly
Speaker 1: talked about their frustration with what happened. I don't know
Speaker 1: that people listening understand that we had a debate that
Speaker 1: got spurred by an informant that was both on the
Speaker 1: Wasnia case and the Decry case. And in the Decry
Speaker 1: case we ended up writing a lengthy motion of five
Speaker 1: page motion analyzing what we believed was a hidden informant program.
Speaker 1: That's how it all came to pass because you had
Speaker 1: both clients, so you all of a sudden saw things
Speaker 1: happening in both cases that ultimately drew you into the
Speaker 1: informant scandals. So the line of the Sheriff's department, District
Speaker 1: Attorney's office is that this informant ended up in these
Speaker 1: locations next to high profile defendants by accident. It was
Speaker 1: just a coincident. You represented two of those high profiles
Speaker 1: and that then Wosnia and Scott to Cry and Judge
Speaker 1: Gouldals in the Decry case did some miraculous, really incredible things.
Speaker 1: First of all, he told the D's office to turn
Speaker 1: over materials they didn't want to turn over, and then
Speaker 1: he allowed us to have hearings over three years in
Speaker 1: which more and more evidence poured into the courtroom. Prosecutors
Speaker 1: took the stand, which was very different in Judge Connolly's
Speaker 1: courtroom because he wrote similar motions, but there was no hearings. Well,
Speaker 1: they were just a decision was made, that's right, and
Speaker 1: Judge Goltals moved over time. He first denied our recusal,
Speaker 1: then looked at more evidence and granted it, then dismissed
Speaker 1: the death penalty. Judge kindly didn't allow any hearing. And
Speaker 1: by the way, what's kind of important is the Wosnia
Speaker 1: case actually led to some of the most important evidence
Speaker 1: in the Decry case. So, for example, when we lost
Speaker 1: and Decry, we went and got records in the Wosniak case,
Speaker 1: and those records with Judge Statler as a matter of fact.
Speaker 1: He then ordered some records. I don't think he knew
Speaker 1: what they were, but they were devastating to what witnesses
Speaker 1: had said in the Decry case. He saw a similar
Speaker 1: name coming up, Is that right? Similar names, informant names,
Speaker 1: informant names, and evidence we had never seen before. An
Speaker 1: evidence had contradicted what witnesses had said on the standover months,
Speaker 1: and Mr Moxley was covering it like incredible, Yeah, yeah, incredible,
Speaker 1: award winning incredible. And not to speak for Paul, but Paul,
Speaker 1: who started as someone who couldn't have been more opposed
Speaker 1: to what we were doing, I would say, was watching
Speaker 1: you would had not a happy relationship, nothing, no cooperation.
Speaker 1: It was very contankerous. First, he was rightfully angry. Right,
Speaker 1: you were representing his wife's killer. This is the guy
Speaker 1: that's defending the guy that part of your life away.
Speaker 1: Changed my life. I was married for twenty six years,
Speaker 1: three children, it's a sky changed the course of my life.
Speaker 1: And here's the guy defending him. And how could you
Speaker 1: not how could you not feel the way you felt?
Speaker 1: But I also want to talk about the conversation stion
Speaker 1: you had with the prosecutor. I think it was Dan Wagner.
Speaker 1: You told me that you went right up to him
Speaker 1: and and said, is are the things that Mr Sanders
Speaker 1: saying in court about this informant scandal? Are they true?
Speaker 1: What was that correct? I mean, when all of this
Speaker 1: started coming out and we noticed that Judge Goethe's was
Speaker 1: allowing this to go on and happen in the courtroom,
Speaker 1: we would ask the public appropriate questions, and the Wagner's
Speaker 1: answer was, that's just the public defender throwing up smoking
Speaker 1: mirrors and trying to dance around this thing, and extended
Speaker 1: out that's none of that's true. They're all lies, nothing
Speaker 1: you need to worry about. So no ownership. No, he's
Speaker 1: sitting there lying to families that are all murder victims
Speaker 1: and he's lying to us. Was that the inciting incident
Speaker 1: for you was that when it all turned was already
Speaker 1: starting to turn. I think there was about about years two,
Speaker 1: about two thousand fifth, maybe about two thousand fifteen, that
Speaker 1: I started to see this thing unhinging and asking why
Speaker 1: why is you know, this is a very simple case.
Speaker 1: Why is the judge allowing all this? Common sense has
Speaker 1: to tell you that there's a reason why. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a very good judge, and he's allowing it.
Speaker 1: So something's not something's not sitting something legitimate about what
Speaker 1: Mr Sanders is discussing. Your listeners should know that in
Speaker 1: the early years of the case, the prosecutor's office went
Speaker 1: out on a pr mission to blame Mr Sanders for
Speaker 1: all the delays in the case, as they did in
Speaker 1: Lasniak and as as it turned out, as which judge
Speaker 1: was determined, it was actually the Sheriff's department and the
Speaker 1: prosecutors that had delayed the whole time because they were
Speaker 1: hiding stuff that should have come in along a lot earlier.
Speaker 1: So they weren't they weren't submitting what the court was
Speaker 1: asking for, coming up with all kinds of excuse. You've
Speaker 1: can understand. I mean that when I talked about this,
Speaker 1: sometimes on the defense side it can be difficult. This
Speaker 1: is a case were ultimately, when we had marshaled all
Speaker 1: the evidence and gone through everything and spending year study,
Speaker 1: we owned the facts. When we walked into the courtroom,
Speaker 1: we had documents that showed the movements of informants and
Speaker 1: the concealment of it and how it wasn't coming forward
Speaker 1: in cases, So you would be asking witnesses questions and
Speaker 1: their answers would be ridiculous. And I remember at some
Speaker 1: point Paul and I have talked about this. I would
Speaker 1: look back at him, can you believe it? Kind of
Speaker 1: a little bit like this is this is absurd and
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to see his reaction. And I did
Speaker 1: see the reaction. Again, that's before we were friendly. I mean,
Speaker 1: we were still but it's starting to unravel. And he
Speaker 1: notices that I'm noticing that it's unraveling, and he's like
Speaker 1: watching an Abbot and Costello show. Absolutely and something that
Speaker 1: two days after the shooting happened, we were all summoned
Speaker 1: down to the d a's office and it brought us
Speaker 1: all upstairs and Tony's up there telling us what he's
Speaker 1: going to do and how he's going to do it,
Speaker 1: and the news media is assembling downstairs. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a huge news comp of course, UM, and he says
Speaker 1: to us, I don't want you guys exposed to the
Speaker 1: media at this time. This is something that I'm going
Speaker 1: to carry and I've I've got your backs and I'm
Speaker 1: going to take care of you guys. And he did
Speaker 1: anything but take care of us, and UM did you
Speaker 1: feel like, right, then there was something funny that No. No,
Speaker 1: I mean this is two days. This is my first
Speaker 1: exposure to the system. Right, the system is gonna work
Speaker 1: because we all wanted to labor, all Americans, and it's
Speaker 1: the best system in the world. Never been in court,
Speaker 1: never had any exposure to it. Here's the top law enforcement.
Speaker 1: Certainly not to be there, you didn't want to be there.
Speaker 1: I'm a hundred percent convinced that they're going to protect
Speaker 1: is going to protect me, and they're gonna do what's right,
Speaker 1: and the system is going to work exactly how it's
Speaker 1: supposed to work for me. Did complete the complete opposite.
Speaker 1: I think get people don't realize sometimes as they think, well,
Speaker 1: if you uncover misconduct, it only helps defendants, like yeah,
Speaker 1: but but all of this it's for society well and
Speaker 1: also for victims. So the problem is if you're in
Speaker 1: a death penalty case and twenty years later evidence that
Speaker 1: comes forward that could have been available twenty years earlier,
Speaker 1: that's when victims lives get unraveled again. So cheating doesn't
Speaker 1: help on any side. And in reality, here, if they
Speaker 1: would have played it straight from the beginning, they would
Speaker 1: have gotten the death penalty. They would have had a
Speaker 1: pretty good shot, not that I would have ever wanted it.
Speaker 1: I would have always been opposed to it, but they
Speaker 1: but they could have done it clean from the beginning.
Speaker 1: And one of the great and terrible examples is that
Speaker 1: we are years into this litigation, we are the D's
Speaker 1: Office has been recused, and we discover a whole series
Speaker 1: of records called a special Handling Log that basically said
Speaker 1: that everything we had said way back in two thousand
Speaker 1: in fourteen when we first filed the brief was accurate.
Speaker 1: If they had turned that over when they were supposed to,
Speaker 1: and they were required to, because in two thousand and
Speaker 1: thirteen they had in order to turn over all of
Speaker 1: these types of materials they refused. If they had done that,
Speaker 1: Paul wouldn't have gone through this, none of it. It
Speaker 1: would have all right there been out What would have
Speaker 1: happened happened to tell us? I would have dealt with
Speaker 1: all the informant issues right there. We would have understood
Speaker 1: what was the scope of the litigation. We would have
Speaker 1: realized it all there wouldn't have been But what would
Speaker 1: have been the downside for the d A's Office to
Speaker 1: admit all of that well, and let's let's say, you know,
Speaker 1: some stuff D's office sometimes Sheriff's office. If the Sheriff's
Speaker 1: office had admitted, why do you think they were afraid
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, this happened. Let's move on. Because it's
Speaker 1: devastating because because behind all this, unfortunately is years of concealment.
Speaker 1: It's not just the Scott Decry case. So other cases
Speaker 1: would have. Is that what you think, Mr Moxley? A
Speaker 1: whole lot of Absolutely. In January two fourteen, when Matt
Speaker 1: Murphy and Dan Waggoner in the homicide unit received Scott's
Speaker 1: motion and to cry, I was with them and they
Speaker 1: huddled around, and they looked through it and they told
Speaker 1: me and they trusted me at this point. I trusted
Speaker 1: them at that point. This is nothing. This is just
Speaker 1: wild stuff. But I could see the look on some
Speaker 1: of their faces of cringet, trepidation, and and so I
Speaker 1: you know, it's a five page motion And I remember
Speaker 1: on a Saturday going to a coffee shop thinking I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna speed read this puppy, and I get
Speaker 1: like forty pages in. It's been like four hours because
Speaker 1: it's so dense. That's how much hard work went into
Speaker 1: that to that brief, and I'm talking about Mr Sanders,
Speaker 1: the original brief, and I knew that I was. I
Speaker 1: just it's not the first document that revealed the informant scandal,
Speaker 1: and I knew this is gonna take me forever to
Speaker 1: digest because there's so many and you didn't have any
Speaker 1: real professional relationship with Mr Sanders at that point. I
Speaker 1: watched him in him. I knew of him. I had
Speaker 1: watched him in court um and in fact, some of
Speaker 1: the people in the homicide unit had previously told me
Speaker 1: good things. They thought he was a really good lawyer.
Speaker 1: It's true. And so eventually, when I felt I got
Speaker 1: a little bit more into it, I realized the issues
Speaker 1: are way beyond me that he's discussing in terms of
Speaker 1: all the informant games and the Sheriff's Department, the d
Speaker 1: A that I requested a meeting, and we were hesitative
Speaker 1: at each other because he'd read my coverage of the
Speaker 1: Orange County District Office and a favorable that I've written
Speaker 1: favorable stories about their homicide cases. So when we sat down,
Speaker 1: we didn't know exactly where we were going to go.
Speaker 1: All I wanted out of the meeting was one thing,
Speaker 1: that that he would open up a channel that I
Speaker 1: could ask him questions. That was it to start with
Speaker 1: that he was worried whether he could trust a reporter
Speaker 1: who was so close to everybody in the homicide unit.
Speaker 1: Thank goodness, you went first. I was second after that.
Speaker 1: That's the article where he came with the cowboy hat
Speaker 1: and the think oxide on his nose and you were
Speaker 1: afraid of the sunshine at that. I never really had
Speaker 1: any um communications with reporters. Maybe once in a while
Speaker 1: somebody would ask me something, but this is really my
Speaker 1: first time I've ever media, and you know, and it's
Speaker 1: the most media don't say very nice things about your clients,
Speaker 1: so I could understand you not. One of the one
Speaker 1: of the remarkable things for me in terms of signals
Speaker 1: was in the after maybe a week or two where
Speaker 1: the d a's office had time to digest more about
Speaker 1: what was in the in the brief, there was a
Speaker 1: hearing in in No wazni At case with Murphy and
Speaker 1: Matt was walking behind him at the pacing and standing
Speaker 1: right behind him, and and I was sitting in there.
Speaker 1: You hadn't seen that kind of behavior before. I hadn't
Speaker 1: seen that from him that I could remember. But what
Speaker 1: the difference was Scott swiveled around in the divince here
Speaker 1: and just stared up at him. It wasn't frown or
Speaker 1: just just he was digesting, like you could see he's
Speaker 1: just take but he spun around. He wasn't afraid. He
Speaker 1: wasn't afraid. And that was the signals, Like because one
Speaker 1: of my pet peeve covering court for for so long
Speaker 1: is I hate lazy lawyers, you know. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this guy's this guy is ready to fight, and he
Speaker 1: wasn't over the top. It was just you hate lazy journalists.
Speaker 1: I do, but I've seen so many. Matt is an
Speaker 1: impressive courtroom figure, and I've seen many defense lawyers just
Speaker 1: crumble around him. And for for Scott Sanders to spin
Speaker 1: around and follow him like it's sick. I'm not afraid
Speaker 1: of you. I'm not afraid of you on this and
Speaker 1: it was it was a turning point for me that
Speaker 1: I have to pay attention, I have to learn more,
Speaker 1: and thankfully my company allowed me to drop covering other
Speaker 1: things to spend more time kind of digesting this and
Speaker 1: learning the issues. And they were tough at first. The
Speaker 1: Messiah rules and when you can when the cops can
Speaker 1: talk to you or not, and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: It was. It was a learning experience. It took years
Speaker 1: to kind of feel like I understood it appropriately. But
Speaker 1: it all began there with them telling me I couldn't
Speaker 1: trust Scott, but me seeing a signal of him ready
Speaker 1: to fight. And then he he slowly opened up and
Speaker 1: helped me understand what was in his motion and why
Speaker 1: he put it in. Do you feel satisfaction? Anybody could
Speaker 1: answer this with the election results, Well, my friends joked
Speaker 1: with me that as an investigative journalist it's better to
Speaker 1: have Tony Rococcus in there because he's just a scandal machine. So, UM,
Speaker 1: I laugh at that. I think I've told you that before.
Speaker 1: And uh, I mean I've I've known Todd Spitzer and
Speaker 1: Tony Rococcus since the late nineties. Maybe we have no
Speaker 1: Todd since my listeners about a little bit about Todd
Speaker 1: Spitzer's background. Well, Todd has been on a school board,
Speaker 1: he's been a county supervisor twice, he's been termed out
Speaker 1: at the state Assembly. Um, he's a radio show and
Speaker 1: KFI many years ago, or at least he was a
Speaker 1: producer or something like that. He's been a reserve a
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Police Department officer and um, you know, so
Speaker 1: he has served the public over the years. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: a he's a He's unlike Ricoccus, Tony a touch bitzer,
Speaker 1: is much more of a policy wonk. He gets into
Speaker 1: the nitty gritty of why you have to do something right.
Speaker 1: Rococcus is more, Uh, my friends calling on the phone
Speaker 1: that needs help, maybe a case doesn't get filed for example. Uh.
Speaker 1: One of the first indicators for me about Tony Ricoccus
Speaker 1: was his office filed a complaint against George Arduous, who
Speaker 1: was a billionaire Newport Beach real estate developer. He has
Speaker 1: an apartment complex massive, and he was refusing to give
Speaker 1: refunds to all these poor people, just systematically. That was
Speaker 1: in the complaint. Within like forty five minutes of it
Speaker 1: being filed officially in court with the time stamp, he
Speaker 1: had it yanked. Arduous was one of his campaign contributors,
Speaker 1: and that cleared the way for George Arduous to pass
Speaker 1: Senate confirmation to become a US ambassador to Spain. That's
Speaker 1: the type of thing that Todd has campaigned a bit,
Speaker 1: not just recently, but kind of fought against or argued
Speaker 1: against that. You can't have a system operating like that.
Speaker 1: And I can tell you that the prosecutors on that
Speaker 1: case were horrified that they had They had worked on
Speaker 1: it for years and years, and for him to yank
Speaker 1: it for what they believe our political concerns was unacceptable.
Speaker 1: Do you think that with a new administration, the cleanup
Speaker 1: that Todd Spitzer promised to his constituents will indeed take place?
Speaker 1: I just am taking the perspective that it's a possibility
Speaker 1: that he will, he'll bring that in. I want to
Speaker 1: be positive about that, but this is what I would say.
Speaker 1: It's not going to be enough to just look forward
Speaker 1: and make sure that it doesn't happen in the future.
Speaker 1: There's issues to address here that are not going to
Speaker 1: just go away. And like what, well, right now we
Speaker 1: have a phone call scandal. We have issues with regard
Speaker 1: to and to say what that is. There's been calls
Speaker 1: that recorded from inmates to their lawyers improperly. Unquestionably those
Speaker 1: numbers have grown as really well, you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: record calls from inmates to their lawyers. It's strictly prohibited
Speaker 1: and has lots of legal implications and they have been recorded.
Speaker 1: They have and you know this for fact. Yes, this
Speaker 1: has been admitted. This has been admitted by the telephone
Speaker 1: provider and by the Sheriff's department. There's no question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not a disputed issue. It's been admitted
Speaker 1: by both entities. The numbers that the sheriff Department admitted, Yes,
Speaker 1: and they're at this reluctantly. Reluctantly. They took a long time,
Speaker 1: and I would say they absolutely concealed it for three
Speaker 1: and a half years. So now they come forward and
Speaker 1: they have admissions of a very small number of calls.
Speaker 1: How did you come to realize this is And it
Speaker 1: wasn't me. It was another lawyer by the name of
Speaker 1: Joel Garson who covered it in a case. Our office
Speaker 1: then has been leading an effort to bring it out
Speaker 1: in other cases. I have one of the cases that's involved.
Speaker 1: But they admitted a thousand calls on Friday, we're talking
Speaker 1: here on the Tuesday and Friday. They've admitted now that
Speaker 1: the calls maybe vastly greater. We think the numbers are
Speaker 1: more like an excess of two thousand calls, and we
Speaker 1: think there's lots of logic supporting that and lots of
Speaker 1: cover up on it. So that's not going to go away,
Speaker 1: and he has to handle issues like that. There's also
Speaker 1: the issue of the people that were involved in the
Speaker 1: informant scandal have moved to the streets. So if you
Speaker 1: were a deputy working in the jail and you then
Speaker 1: were part of what we're part of it, that's supposed
Speaker 1: to follow you your whole career. If you made the
Speaker 1: decision to engage in governmental misconduct and concealment of that,
Speaker 1: and that should follow you. So when you take the
Speaker 1: witness stand, you get to be questioned about that. It
Speaker 1: does not look like there's been any disclosures of that
Speaker 1: in cases, and so that's another issue we've raised. But
Speaker 1: so that's gonna be the issue you for Mr Spitzer.
Speaker 1: I think there's a really good chance he's going to
Speaker 1: say I don't want cheating to take place. I'm hoping
Speaker 1: that's the case. Well if he, I mean, you said
Speaker 1: he ran on that, but that campaign promise. But that's
Speaker 1: I just want to say, But that's just not enough.
Speaker 1: He has to remedy what's going on to date. He's
Speaker 1: got to make sure that cases from the past get
Speaker 1: handled correctly. Well, we'll have Mr Moxley watching out for that,
Speaker 1: right sure. Let me just add something on the phone
Speaker 1: call for your listeners. The importance is that your pre
Speaker 1: trial inmate, the the Shares Department controls every aspect of
Speaker 1: your day and night in there, and you're supposed to
Speaker 1: constitutionally have the ability to communicate with your defense lawyer.
Speaker 1: And those communications are important because you're talking about strategy
Speaker 1: or your feelings or whatever, where a piece of evidence
Speaker 1: might be and that sort of thing. And they just
Speaker 1: can't violate that. And we know they've come in and
Speaker 1: tried to downplay the numbers so far, the number the
Speaker 1: system records the calls, that's a violation. But then the
Speaker 1: Shares deputies and key cases were going in and monitoring,
Speaker 1: downloading the calls for themselves and not telling anyone. And
Speaker 1: in the particular case of Josh Wearing that's ongoing right now,
Speaker 1: uh my belief that he had said some things only
Speaker 1: on the phone. And then Coasta Mesa police department eventually
Speaker 1: had the prosecutor had to admit that she she had
Speaker 1: been given a rundown of the what was said in
Speaker 1: the phone call. That's how they were aware of and
Speaker 1: wrote things in certain motions, and was the prosecutor using
Speaker 1: that information? They yes, they did. That's what started the
Speaker 1: whole ball rolling on us. That's the first indication of
Speaker 1: these calls. And the other thing that's really fascinating is
Speaker 1: the group in the jail that kind of it was
Speaker 1: at the forefront of the informant scandal was a group
Speaker 1: called Special Handling. And so in March of two fifteen,
Speaker 1: Judge Goltel's removes them from the District Attorney's office. One
Speaker 1: day later, that same entity, Special Handling, stops another log
Speaker 1: that they were keeping, and that log had all sorts
Speaker 1: of information about their monitoring a phone calls. So you
Speaker 1: didn't see that at that point, we didn't know. We
Speaker 1: had no idea that we didn't have the evidence yet
Speaker 1: that they were that they were actually listening to calls
Speaker 1: that hadn't come out until a couple of months ago.
Speaker 1: But way back they end their log. This is the
Speaker 1: second log that they ended in a very strangely time decision.
Speaker 1: One just within days of Judge Golde's ordering evidence in
Speaker 1: the decry case, and then second within days of Judge
Speaker 1: Goltell's throwing them off the case. And here comes the
Speaker 1: Attorney General's office, they've been listening to all these calls
Speaker 1: and suddenly they just they decided to stop their log
Speaker 1: for a second time. So that's just one piece. You know,
Speaker 1: they turned over documents that are ridiculous where you're you've
Speaker 1: got a hundred law offices you're calling, and there's five
Speaker 1: week periods where they claiming there's not a single call
Speaker 1: made to a lawyer's office. It's absurd stuff. And so
Speaker 1: when you engage in that kind of conduct repeatedly, and
Speaker 1: we've gone through this through our litigation and through this litigation,
Speaker 1: what do you do with the sheriff's department that keeps
Speaker 1: behaving like this? Well, here comes Mr Spitzer and have
Speaker 1: to hope it's to the rescue. But that's a that's
Speaker 1: a tall order. And how do you feel because for
Speaker 1: so long you said your relationship with the d A's
Speaker 1: office was a positive one, right where you never saw
Speaker 1: any of this. I had no idea. I'd watched certain
Speaker 1: battles litigate out and I wasn't aware. I knew that
Speaker 1: there were trouble with certain prosecutors. I mean, one, for example,
Speaker 1: was tipping off the organized crime about raids that were
Speaker 1: on the way. Wait, wait, what does that mean you
Speaker 1: you tipped off? I'm aware of a prosecutor doing that.
Speaker 1: Orange County was working in league with the organized crime
Speaker 1: to tip them when they were going to be police raids. Um,
Speaker 1: he lost his license, but now he's back in practicing.
Speaker 1: When did that? By the way, he contributed to he
Speaker 1: was yes, So couldn't we say his name? Brian Kazarian? Right?
Speaker 1: And how long ago? When was he a prosecutor? Was
Speaker 1: the beginning of the rococcus term? Right back? And he was.
Speaker 1: I mean he was a prosecutor starting when I did.
Speaker 1: We were in the almost the same class six years
Speaker 1: ago almost. But the key here is that if they
Speaker 1: every time you go into court, the judge will say,
Speaker 1: or the lawyers are said, during when they're doing jury selection,
Speaker 1: when this officer or an officer comes in, our deputy
Speaker 1: comes in, you're not going to give them any more
Speaker 1: weight than any other witness because that would be wrong.
Speaker 1: And they all absolutely not. Now they come in and
Speaker 1: they're wearing their weapons, they're wearing their outfit with their
Speaker 1: ranks and whatever else, and that carries weight in ours county.
Speaker 1: So I think it's an authority figure. I mean that's right.
Speaker 1: So that so that the way the system, if the
Speaker 1: system is working, you have to rely on the credibility
Speaker 1: of those officers to tell the truth. Once that system
Speaker 1: is broken down, which it has here, how can you
Speaker 1: trust any decision? Then I was just gonna say, it's
Speaker 1: a trust based system. And in the in the in
Speaker 1: the Informant jail House Informant scandal, they knew the loophole.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors and deputies knew the loophole to site. So for example,
Speaker 1: you once a pre trial defendant has been arraigned and
Speaker 1: has a lawyer, the government and their agents like informants,
Speaker 1: are not allowed to question them about the case. So
Speaker 1: there's an exemption that if an inmate wink wink that's
Speaker 1: not working for the government accidentally overhears the guy confessing. Right,
Speaker 1: So they would parade the guy into court and go,
Speaker 1: did we make any deal with you? No, No, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna get any sweetheart deal at all. So you're
Speaker 1: just out of the goodness of your heart. You listened
Speaker 1: in and you heard this guy confess, and you get
Speaker 1: nothing in return. Right, And so what we've learned in
Speaker 1: the snitch scandal is the routine was they had meetings.
Speaker 1: They wink wink, and they would move, they would shuffle
Speaker 1: the informants around, and the informants were writing notes going
Speaker 1: I love my little job I have. And the two
Speaker 1: of them that Scott exposed, both of them who that
Speaker 1: the d a's office said, oh, we have no deal
Speaker 1: with them. There was no prior deal for them. They
Speaker 1: did out of the good. These are gang murderous gang members,
Speaker 1: by the way, who were facing life in prison unless
Speaker 1: they cut unless they cut a deal in some way,
Speaker 1: and they were being paraded into court. Oh, no deal
Speaker 1: at all. There was nothing there. And we later on,
Speaker 1: Um saw the paperwork in the process that worked out
Speaker 1: how they were using that loophole to cheat. How did
Speaker 1: you how did you confront your sources in the d
Speaker 1: a's office when you were seeing this unfold? How did
Speaker 1: that change or did it change your relationship or your
Speaker 1: feelings towards these people that you had been covering for years? Well, Um,
Speaker 1: Susan King Schroeder. She is Tony Roccoccus is right hand person,
Speaker 1: and she was the head of Public Aration's office. She
Speaker 1: made herself chief of staff. She was the head of
Speaker 1: what office at public Relations office? And as I was
Speaker 1: writing as I was learning and I watched the developments
Speaker 1: in the nich snitch scandal, she repeatedly, routinely said, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna cut you off from our agency if you keep
Speaker 1: writing these stories. And I just kept well, then you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to cut me off because I'm going to
Speaker 1: write what I see in court. And quite frankly, she
Speaker 1: couldn't even keep up because she wasn't paying attention or
Speaker 1: whatever whoever the sources were who were telling her about
Speaker 1: what was happening, they were ill advised, or they weren't
Speaker 1: telling a story, or she just was down with spin spin.
Speaker 1: So I've lost her as a source and she's the
Speaker 1: main d a flack or was and so yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a ramification for telling the truth in a story about
Speaker 1: what you what you see sounds familiar. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is what's so incredible about having someone like Paul
Speaker 1: involved in another person by the name of Bethany Webb
Speaker 1: also who had who lost a loved one. There's it
Speaker 1: never happens. You don't have victims who are so stunned
Speaker 1: by what they're seeing. I mean that they rise above
Speaker 1: their natural feelings would be towards you representing their loved
Speaker 1: one's killer, right that they rise above that. That's right,
Speaker 1: first of all. Most human beings can't do that. Regardless
Speaker 1: like that we would be sitting here today and that
Speaker 1: we've sat together many times. It's Marathos, But it's not.
Speaker 1: That's not me, that's Paul, because I can do it
Speaker 1: as a defense lawyer, you know, I can. I'm trained
Speaker 1: to see everybody in in all sorts of shades. But
Speaker 1: to have lost your loved one the way he did
Speaker 1: and still to say, look, I can't see how horrible
Speaker 1: that is and how much it's it's devastated my life,
Speaker 1: but I still can't tolerate the cheating that's going on
Speaker 1: in the courtroom and that no one's being held accountable.
Speaker 1: And that's the key. And I think I don't want
Speaker 1: to speak for Paul, but I think that's what's so
Speaker 1: motivating to him and why he keeps pushing me, is
Speaker 1: that there's the tenants of our system, right, but there's
Speaker 1: no there's been zero accountability, right, And that's the problem.
Speaker 1: And it's the zero accountability. And does that frighten you?
Speaker 1: Of course it frightens me absolutely. I Mean, like I said,
Speaker 1: I'm a guy that went into this believing in this
Speaker 1: system and this system that's in place for exactly guys
Speaker 1: like me. Right, That's that's what you think as we
Speaker 1: sit here today. I'm still very pro police, pro law enforcement,
Speaker 1: and I believe that there's more good being done than
Speaker 1: than there is is bad. Unfortunately, I got put in
Speaker 1: with the bad and I had to experience and through
Speaker 1: that experience, Yeah, I mean it look at these guys
Speaker 1: took almost seven years of my life of and like
Speaker 1: Scott said earlier, the only reason I was going back
Speaker 1: to court is because they got caught cheating. They got
Speaker 1: caught breaking the law, and that extended the time I
Speaker 1: had to go to court. And so you no longer
Speaker 1: looked at it as Scott Sanders fault. You looked at
Speaker 1: it as the d and obviously, and I mean, can't
Speaker 1: tell you what it's like sitting ten feet away from
Speaker 1: the guy that has changed the course of your life.
Speaker 1: It drains, It takes everything out of your soul. I
Speaker 1: would leave court that day and just have to go
Speaker 1: home and close up my house and just sit there
Speaker 1: and and and be alone, because it just takes everything
Speaker 1: out of you. It's hard to understand unless you're there
Speaker 1: actually had a very similar conversation with me about that
Speaker 1: with Dan wisn Yankee says, you just can't imagine. It's
Speaker 1: mentally and physically excruciating and draining. And the fact that
Speaker 1: I only had to do that because these guys got
Speaker 1: caught cheating. They need to be held accountable, and they're there.
Speaker 1: They as far as I'm concerned, Scott and it we're
Speaker 1: gonna work to get these guys there are going to
Speaker 1: be held accountable. So you're angry, of course, I'm angry.
Speaker 1: I mean, these guys lied to me. It's difficult. I
Speaker 1: had a son in high school going through his senior
Speaker 1: year when this all happened. He was he was getting
Speaker 1: looked at it by colleges, and there was so much
Speaker 1: to juggle in the fact that these guys we're just
Speaker 1: using me as a pawn and playing with me and
Speaker 1: lying to me, and they knew exactly what they were doing.
Speaker 1: It's unacceptable to me, and I'm not going to allow
Speaker 1: it to happen. And it's at some point somewhere along
Speaker 1: the line, those bad guys are going to have to
Speaker 1: be held accountable. I mean, you could understand Paul's gone
Speaker 1: and spoken to the attorney General's office himself and asked
Speaker 1: for answers because in two thousand and fifteen they announced
Speaker 1: we're going to do an investigation of what the Sheriff's
Speaker 1: department did. It was obvious cover up. Judge Golds called
Speaker 1: out the perjury in written rulings and it's undebatable perjury
Speaker 1: and there's plenty of evidence. We're three and a half
Speaker 1: years later, not a peep from them, not a word.
Speaker 1: Tell me what's going on with the Department of Justice
Speaker 1: and the Attorney general investigations. I think as Scott's was
Speaker 1: saying earlier, the delay, the three and a half year
Speaker 1: delay with nothing to show for it in it may
Speaker 1: I believe the California Attorney General, who supposedly independently investigating
Speaker 1: corruption in the Arrange County shriffs Department, held a campaign
Speaker 1: stunt press conference with the candidate that's trying to replace
Speaker 1: and did replace us shriff functions, So to pose in
Speaker 1: front of the media right before an election. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna do that if you're going to hold these accountable. Plus,
Speaker 1: standing right behind him is one of the lead investigators
Speaker 1: in this who's also one of the very prominent figures
Speaker 1: in the whole snitch scandal. Yeah, who is that? William
Speaker 1: Baker was one of the people who's been investigating and
Speaker 1: supposedly on the inside level trying to determine who's responsible.
Speaker 1: But that investigation that Basara came to speak at and
Speaker 1: speak about with Don Barnes, the newly elected sheriff, was
Speaker 1: an investigation that's led by one of the primary people
Speaker 1: from the snitch scandal, So a fellow by the name
Speaker 1: of Jonathan Larson, all through the snitch scandal, in the
Speaker 1: heart of it, in the heart of not turning over records,
Speaker 1: they chose him, of all people to be their lead
Speaker 1: investigator in this very important Mexican mafia investigation. So if
Speaker 1: you're us looking at this, you think, but did he
Speaker 1: take the standard stand? He testified, he told tests, covered up,
Speaker 1: he gave to testimony in two different cases. He never
Speaker 1: revealed for years that there was an informant program. So
Speaker 1: he's a guy that you would think, well, we just
Speaker 1: moved him to the side. Would they put him in
Speaker 1: charge of investigating Why? Because they're not afraid at all.
Speaker 1: They have no fear of the attorney generals, nobody that's
Speaker 1: holding anybody accountable. This is one of the things when
Speaker 1: I met with the d o J, and I made
Speaker 1: very clear to them that what's happening in Orange County,
Speaker 1: they're laughing at you, guys. They don't they operate as
Speaker 1: they want to, when they want to, how they want to.
Speaker 1: They're laughing at you. They don't care what you have
Speaker 1: to say about it. They don't care what you think
Speaker 1: or what you'll do. They're laughing at you. And what
Speaker 1: was their response. Number of people at the d o J,
Speaker 1: the California Department of Justice. So there's the response. Um.
Speaker 1: Their response was, we're not here to give you responses.
Speaker 1: We're here to listen to you. Mr Wilson, Wow, how
Speaker 1: do you feel about that? Mr? Mat doesn't make me
Speaker 1: happy because the system is not working. And it goes
Speaker 1: back to it's been obvious perjury. There's been the destruction
Speaker 1: of records. Even their own records show that they've destroyed evidence,
Speaker 1: and nothing's happened so well, And just just to draw
Speaker 1: it back to WASNAC for a second, So in the
Speaker 1: Waznia case, we actually went further back. The cry is
Speaker 1: really limited to about a six year examination of informant
Speaker 1: records in the WASNIAC case, even though we never were
Speaker 1: permitted a hearing. In our argument in the Waznia case
Speaker 1: was that the system is so corrupted right now that
Speaker 1: it's not a reliable one for imposing the death penalty,
Speaker 1: that you can't reliably count on evidence being turned over.
Speaker 1: But when we looked at in Wozniak was looking back
Speaker 1: at thirty five years of deception, because it's been going
Speaker 1: on forever, the same techniques, the same tactics. And if
Speaker 1: you looked at case after case since the early nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties where informants were involved, they always coincidentally landed in
Speaker 1: the same place. They were using the same what we
Speaker 1: call snitch tanks or informant tanks, same techniques, no disclosure.
Speaker 1: So and then did those snitches get some kind of
Speaker 1: a sweetheart They all us do. They always do. They
Speaker 1: come in and their line is, I'm doing it out
Speaker 1: of a moral obligation. That's what Fernando Perez said in
Speaker 1: the in the Wosniac and Decry cases. That's what Oscar
Speaker 1: Morial did in every case. Now, Matt did give you
Speaker 1: the letter from Fernando. There's no there's no disclosure issue
Speaker 1: in terms of Matt Murphy failing to turn over discovery
Speaker 1: and We never argued that he failed to turn over
Speaker 1: discovery on that level. We did argue that the Sheriff's
Speaker 1: department didn't turn over materials, and they didn't. In fact,
Speaker 1: after we lost in the Wosniac case was when we
Speaker 1: got this special Handling log that included details about the
Speaker 1: contacts with Special Handling and Fernando Perez to get statements
Speaker 1: that's almost undeniable. And also wasn't the mail order requests
Speaker 1: from Detective Morales discovered at that point, right? That was
Speaker 1: discovered afterwards as well, after the trial was complete. That
Speaker 1: the trial was completed, So after Wosniak was completed, was
Speaker 1: when we got in a in subsequent litigation, this key
Speaker 1: document that has so much about what everyone had been
Speaker 1: denying up to that. So, really you weren't given everything
Speaker 1: in discovery. We weren't giving everything. And I've always said this.
Speaker 1: I'll put it aside and say we don't blame Matt
Speaker 1: Murphy for not giving us a special handling lung wool.
Speaker 1: Assume that he didn't know about that. But what about
Speaker 1: the Morales mail I don't request. Well, why Morales wasn't
Speaker 1: turned over I don't know, but I will just say
Speaker 1: we didn't get that, and that mail order request from
Speaker 1: Detective Morales to the Orange County Sheriff's Department had it
Speaker 1: a letter that spoke about the Coast of Mesa's belief
Speaker 1: that there was a co conspirator in the case of
Speaker 1: the murders of Sam and Julie, and so they wanted
Speaker 1: the mail from Dan Wozniak in case there was mail
Speaker 1: between Dan and Rachel Buffett, which shows the mindset of
Speaker 1: the Coast of Masa police at the time that they
Speaker 1: really did consider Rachel Buffett an accomplice. But again, this
Speaker 1: is we're talking about decades of concealment and it would
Speaker 1: take an army to dig it all through, and people
Speaker 1: are doing it. There's a lot of cases that have
Speaker 1: been turned around by our numbers. There's eighteen cases where
Speaker 1: the defendant received a new trial, this case was dismissed,
Speaker 1: some very positive outcome for defendants related to informant related misconduct.
Speaker 1: So this is the arguably the largest scandal in the
Speaker 1: nation's history, and it's still growing and it should be
Speaker 1: growing even more. But when do you think there's going
Speaker 1: to be some form of actionable response from an authority
Speaker 1: that as something that they can claim that Okay, we're
Speaker 1: going after these people and they're going to pay their
Speaker 1: going there's going to be consequences to their actions. Where
Speaker 1: do you see the end of this odyssey that you're
Speaker 1: all on. Probably never, I mean realistically, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not hoping for the U. S. Department of Justice or
Speaker 1: the California Department of Justice to save this. This This
Speaker 1: work is just work that you just have to kind
Speaker 1: of keep going on until someone cries uncle. Do you
Speaker 1: think it's ultimately going to be the public that makes it?
Speaker 1: I mean, here, we do have an election after twenty years,
Speaker 1: we have a new administration. I would imagine that gives
Speaker 1: you some form of hope, cautiously optimistic. But is it
Speaker 1: the public in the end, Mr Moxley, that you think
Speaker 1: has the power to make changes? They just showed it
Speaker 1: and Todd Spitzer's election. Absolutely. And what one of the
Speaker 1: most ridiculous or not ridiculous, but more arrogant things that
Speaker 1: Shriff Huchins and Racoccus we're bragging about and when they
Speaker 1: were doing private dinners and wealthy communities, was that nobody's
Speaker 1: paying attention to niche candle because it's made up. It's
Speaker 1: we all know around here that it's not made up,
Speaker 1: it's real. And one of the real um facts that
Speaker 1: people should know is they were sending in informants illegally,
Speaker 1: and they were the informants were doing great intelligent intelligence works,
Speaker 1: There's no doubt about that. Some of the notes that
Speaker 1: they were making cleared defendants that were in jail, and
Speaker 1: they held those notes because they didn't want to change.
Speaker 1: They wanted that defendant. One of them was a fourteen
Speaker 1: year old boy who had been charged in Santa Anna
Speaker 1: with a murder. The notes that they had in their
Speaker 1: possession said, everybody knows this guy wasn't had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with it. He's a punk. We would never let
Speaker 1: him in our game. They kept him in and they
Speaker 1: dragged it out. They dragged it out for how long
Speaker 1: was that two years? Fourteen year old boy. So they're
Speaker 1: selective and when they want to use the information, and
Speaker 1: then they pretend that even though this is one of
Speaker 1: the biggest informants in history modern history around here, they
Speaker 1: didn't really read all of his notes, but they used
Speaker 1: them in the cases where they wanted to use them well,
Speaker 1: and that would add So when that district attorney took
Speaker 1: the stand, do you remember what happened. He said that
Speaker 1: they had lost their file. The District Attorney's office had
Speaker 1: lost their file. His name is Stephen Shriver, he testified,
Speaker 1: and James is here as a prosecutor in that case.
Speaker 1: He said they couldn't find their file. The sant Ana
Speaker 1: Police Department officers said, oh, it is all in the
Speaker 1: hands of the District Attorney's office. The District Attorney's office said,
Speaker 1: we can't find our file. But just as Scott Moxley
Speaker 1: just said, those notes are a great indication of the mentality.
Speaker 1: And I've sometimes when I talk about this case, compare it.
Speaker 1: The guy who was making these comments to the informant
Speaker 1: named Oscar Maurreal was not is not a great guy,
Speaker 1: but he at least had the moral decency to know
Speaker 1: that some kid who didn't do a crime shouldn't go
Speaker 1: down for it. The folks who got the notes decided
Speaker 1: the better route was to keep it to themselves because
Speaker 1: they had a better sense of justice. And so when
Speaker 1: people are playing on those levels and that type of mindset,
Speaker 1: you imagine the damage they're doing in this context and
Speaker 1: so many other contexts. Again, I always say this, if
Speaker 1: you're cheating with informants who are the most dangerous witness
Speaker 1: in the system. Everybody knows this, right. They're super motivated,
Speaker 1: they'll say anything. They're half bounced away from being a
Speaker 1: car salesman. They're incredibly skilled. They can I had a
Speaker 1: difficult time questioning them because they're really talented. Often. But
Speaker 1: if you're a district attorney's office and you're willing to
Speaker 1: play with evidence of the sheriff's department or hold back things,
Speaker 1: what will you do on other cases? Right? Because that
Speaker 1: those are easy. You just turn over everything on an informant,
Speaker 1: You put it out in front of the jury and
Speaker 1: let them make a call it. But for years, here, decades,
Speaker 1: I would say that hasn't happened, So it's not. And
Speaker 1: this is why the argument I made on the Wisnia case.
Speaker 1: In a culture that allows that you don't get to
Speaker 1: have the death penalty, that's my argument. And that's one
Speaker 1: that you know didn't work. But we'll see what happens
Speaker 1: down the road. But it's frightening to me to think
Speaker 1: about what else is out there that we won't ever touch.
Speaker 1: When you see this type of kind of because I
Speaker 1: never saw I I've spent most of my last five
Speaker 1: years of my life studying these issues, and I never
Speaker 1: found something that was helpful to a defendant from an
Speaker 1: informant that was disclosed. I never found it. And in
Speaker 1: the case of Oscar or Moreal, this is a guy
Speaker 1: who walked down the street with his buddies shooting at
Speaker 1: people on their porches and didn't care. So he's technically
Speaker 1: a serial killer. And I think he admitted how many
Speaker 1: on the witness stand five He admitted five, But he
Speaker 1: can't know because he's shooting as he's walking down the
Speaker 1: street at night with his buddies. He's doing this all
Speaker 1: the time. This is who Tony Prococcus in the Sheriffs
Speaker 1: Department put their faith in UM as he's facing a
Speaker 1: life sentence. And as far as in the Scotty case
Speaker 1: you're talking about, well when well he testified, He testified
Speaker 1: in three cases with nine defendants looking at life. He
Speaker 1: ended up testifying in the Scott Decry case and having
Speaker 1: to answer some of those questions, and this is one
Speaker 1: of them. You're saying they used him as a credible witness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they oh yeah, they pretended they didn't have a deal
Speaker 1: with him, but he got a sweetheart deal. Recently, as
Speaker 1: Scott and Scott wrote a number of stories about Oscar
Speaker 1: Morel and the lunacy of this right, true serial killer.
Speaker 1: If you go out five times to do shootings, isn't
Speaker 1: that the very definition of a serial killer? You don't
Speaker 1: become less of one because you're a gang member. Right.
Speaker 1: Then he goes up and I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: ever heard the recordings that were concealed and which he said,
Speaker 1: I can make my memories better if you give me
Speaker 1: a better deal. Didn't make it into any of his cases,
Speaker 1: and those things can be found online, just terrible things,
Speaker 1: and he gets rewarded because you did a deal with
Speaker 1: the devil and you can't get out, okay. I think
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that the prosecutors loved using someone
Speaker 1: like Oscar Moreal grew up in a high crime area
Speaker 1: as a serial killer you wouldn't want to be around him,
Speaker 1: is that this is actually a remarkable person. I wrote
Speaker 1: this a couple of times after watching him for hours
Speaker 1: in court. He is brilliant, he is He outraces me
Speaker 1: by a trillion percent by his brain function. The federal
Speaker 1: government used him in a Mexican mafia case and he
Speaker 1: was answering questions before they came out of the federal
Speaker 1: prosecutor's mouth. Repeatedly, he knew what the questions should have been,
Speaker 1: and he actually, actually, don't you want to ask me this?
Speaker 1: That's how smart and slick this guy is. He could
Speaker 1: have been the best auto dealer salesperson at at Fletcher Jones, whatever,
Speaker 1: But this guy would sales. This guy could sell you anything.
Speaker 1: In the battle he gave with Scott at one point
Speaker 1: he was able to defend off for hours, but eventually
Speaker 1: Scott got him because it was hours and hours of
Speaker 1: grilling him. But the few people can hold up to that.
Speaker 1: But a person like Oscar Morial everything is he doesn't.
Speaker 1: You'll tell you what you want to hear. In other words,
Speaker 1: he's a great salesman. But and this is what's the problem.
Speaker 1: So he's so good. I had all the tools in
Speaker 1: the end because of this crazy situation in a death
Speaker 1: penalty case where Judge Goulds made a miraculous ruling, we
Speaker 1: learned all these things about him. But when he was
Speaker 1: in trial with those defendants with their lives on the line,
Speaker 1: they didn't have those tools. They didn't have the evidence
Speaker 1: to show he was lying. I had it in some
Speaker 1: crazy litigation that nobody could have guessed in a hundred years.
Speaker 1: But how's that fairness when people are in trial for
Speaker 1: their lives and the prosecutor's office turns over four pages
Speaker 1: of his two hundred pages of notes, which they did
Speaker 1: in cases, or don't disclose his relationship so you can't
Speaker 1: take him apart. Hey, Mr Mariel, here's this and this
Speaker 1: and this. That's what you need. That's why I always
Speaker 1: say it wasn't that my litigation in the Decry case
Speaker 1: was particularly good. I had it all. It didn't take
Speaker 1: it didn't take the headiest guy to do this. In
Speaker 1: the end, we had we had accumulated all the materials
Speaker 1: and we could play things for him that made him
Speaker 1: ultimately given. As Scott said, it took a long time
Speaker 1: and finally he relented, and then he started to talk
Speaker 1: proudly about his shootings in the neighborhood and how he
Speaker 1: how he walked in. But it was hard, and those
Speaker 1: other people didn't have it. And that's the key. The
Speaker 1: key to the fairness is you've got to have the
Speaker 1: evidence that you're entitled to have so you can question
Speaker 1: witnesses effectively. I mean, that's the foundation of our system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and and you know that's again I come back
Speaker 1: to Paul that Paul, Paul sees these things in way
Speaker 1: that few victims can see it. And I'm still mesmerized
Speaker 1: by it. I truly am them. Yeah, you know what,
Speaker 1: because it's just incredible that with the pain that he
Speaker 1: and his family has suffered, he can see that. You
Speaker 1: still don't want this to be the case. This isn't
Speaker 1: just it's just not the way to do justice. And
Speaker 1: ultimately victims pay too, because what happened on the Oscar
Speaker 1: Morial's cases, well one of them, the victims think the
Speaker 1: defendants doing life without possibility of parole. He's out in
Speaker 1: a year or two. You know, for whatever you think
Speaker 1: of this, that's a disaster, right, that's a disaster. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe he should have he deserved to be acquitted, but
Speaker 1: the victims, they would have said, why don't you just
Speaker 1: give him the evidence the first time and we'll litigate
Speaker 1: it the right way, or don't use him because he's unreliable.
Speaker 1: But it's never good for victims either if ten years
Speaker 1: down the road or fifteen down years down the road,
Speaker 1: you're learning of evidence that should have been given over earlier.
Speaker 1: It turns your life upside down a second time. Well,
Speaker 1: that's what I've been saying, and I think I've shared
Speaker 1: with you, Mr Moxley, like I don't understand in the
Speaker 1: case of Wozniak, he had it all right, he had
Speaker 1: a confession, he had the murder weapon, he had the
Speaker 1: treasure trove of evidence, as he likes to say, he
Speaker 1: didn't have to frame Rachel the way he did. And
Speaker 1: it seemed to me like there there's a sense and
Speaker 1: correct me if you think I'm wrong, but I feel
Speaker 1: like in the case of the Orange County District Attorney's office,
Speaker 1: there's a sense of that they cherry pick justice, who
Speaker 1: gets justice and who doesn't. I'd love to hear your
Speaker 1: reaction to that, But that's someone who has come into
Speaker 1: town and covered this trial for in this case for
Speaker 1: three years. I don't know the history the way Mr
Speaker 1: Moxley does, or certainly you, Mr Sanders, and I can't
Speaker 1: speak on behalf of how you feel, Paul, but that's
Speaker 1: my impression. It might be cherry picking. But I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that I learned about, particularly after
Speaker 1: these Wozniak and cry cases, is that they weren't focused
Speaker 1: on them to target them for cheating. They were just
Speaker 1: cheating against everybody anytime they wanted. They were doing because
Speaker 1: they called him capers all the time, against inmates. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is what they just routinely do. Nobody was.
Speaker 1: They were operating in secret, They had no management accountability,
Speaker 1: they were coming into court, they were committing perjury. They
Speaker 1: they're above the law. And it just through Scott's work here,
Speaker 1: it just got exposed that they took the easiest slam
Speaker 1: dunk definitely case and botched it. That's the embarrassment that
Speaker 1: Tony Roccoccus and Sheriff Hutchins have to live with. And
Speaker 1: I keep asking, how is that justice for the victims families?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you could speak best. It's not
Speaker 1: justice at all, it um right, It's just it's heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: And you know, to know that the respect that I
Speaker 1: had for these guys and what I thought they would
Speaker 1: produce for me and do for me, they did the
Speaker 1: complete opposite, and they they made my pain worse. And
Speaker 1: they continued to do that by not admitting what they
Speaker 1: did and not just holding themselves accountable. I mean, right,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm just so sorry for what you are experiencing.
Speaker 1: I just think it's a travesty. I want to thank
Speaker 1: you all today for being here. It means so much
Speaker 1: to have listeners hear the truth and know the real
Speaker 1: story behind all this, and you all three have contributed
Speaker 1: to that in such a powerful, honorable way, and I
Speaker 1: just thank you all, Thank you, thank you. On our
Speaker 1: remaining episodes of Sleuth, you can expect to hear from
Speaker 1: sources who will identify the full extent of others who
Speaker 1: helped Daniel Wazniak in the murders of Sam Hair and
Speaker 1: Julie Kibuishi. We'll learn about when and where Tim Wazniak
Speaker 1: showed up on the scene to help aid his brother
Speaker 1: Dan in the murders. And then there is Rachel's brother
Speaker 1: Noah Buffett. What and how much did no one know
Speaker 1: at the time of the murders. Finally, you will hear
Speaker 1: from a couple of explosive surprise guests which will round
Speaker 1: out our season, ending with a live call in finale
Speaker 1: episode a finale where all our Sleuth listeners have a
Speaker 1: chance to talk to me directly with any questions, criticisms,
Speaker 1: or suggestions for our team. As we head into the
Speaker 1: new year with an all new season, two. Stay with
Speaker 1: us as we share all that's left of our work
Speaker 1: for this season of Youth and No. You can find
Speaker 1: us with the latest sleuth news at Facebook dot com,
Speaker 1: Forward Slash Sleuth podcast. If you enjoyed this episode of Sleuth,
Speaker 1: share it with a friend and be sure to leave
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