“A prosecutor earnestly trying to do her job and track important information should be applauded not punished.”
– Cristine Soto DeBerry,
Executive Director, Prosecutors Alliance
By Keri Blakinger
One legal expert called it “kind of bunk.” Another said it simply raises more questions than it answers.
But two months after state prosecutors announced 11 felony charges against a top advisor to Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón, a newly unsealed court record offers a window into the controversial case.
The basis for the allegations against Gascón advisor Diana Teran had remained opaque since California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced them in April.
State prosecutors have said only that Teran improperly accessed confidential police records while working as the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s constitutional policing advisor in 2018, then improperly used data from those records when she joined the district attorney’s office three years later.
It’s been unclear whose files she’d allegedly used or how, but after weeks of legal wrangling, an attorney for the Los Angeles Public Press convinced a judge to unseal the affidavit used to justify the arrest warrant.
The 15-page document, unsealed late Tuesday, shows the core allegations are focused on Teran’s efforts to include more deputies’ names in district attorney’s databases used to track problem officers, much as her attorney had previously speculated.
But the document also shows that records of disciplinary against at least two of the 11 deputies were already public when she flagged them for inclusion. This week, The Times found the records were easily located through a Google search.
The identities of the nine other deputies were still redacted in the public version of the affidavit — though Teran’s lawyer said he was “99% confident” their records were already public as well.
“I can’t believe a case would be filed on this type of evidence,” James Spertus told The Times. “I understated before how bad this case was.”
On Wednesday, several legal experts who reviewed the affidavit raised questions about the case….