Case against D.A. advisor will move forward to trial on six remaining charges
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta on Tuesday tossed out two of the eight remaining felony charges against Diana Teran, a top district attorney’s office advisor accused of illegally using records the state alleges were confidential.
But Ohta also ruled the case will move ahead toward trial on six remaining felony charges. The decision came after a four-day preliminary hearing in the state’s case against Teran, who was charged under a computer hacking statute.
Four months ago, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office said Teran broke the law in 2021 when she flagged several sheriff’s deputies’ names for possible inclusion on a list of problem cops. Bonta’s office said Teran knew about those deputies and their alleged misbehavior only because of purportedly confidential records she’d been sent three years earlier when she worked at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Teran’s attorney, James Spertus, has said repeatedly that those records were never confidential because they were public court records. But state prosecutors have argued for weeks that all information sent to the Sheriff’s Department is considered confidential under department policy, even if it is a public court ruling written by a judge.
Ohta read aloud his 28-page ruling, which took more than an hour. Ultimately he concluded that, although court records are public, Teran could have then searched for those deputies’ names in the Sheriff’s Department’s confidential personnel data system after she was emailed the records in question. Those searches, he said, could show a link between the public records and confidential information.
Two months after state prosecutors announced 11 felony charges, a newly unsealed court record offers a window into the case against a George Gascón advisor.
State and county prosecutors declined to comment on Tuesday’s outcome. But former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, who watched the proceedings from the audience, said Ohta’s decision was a disappointment.
“It’s a sad day when someone as fine a lawyer and as ethical and careful as she is was working within the scope of her authority and somehow that scope becomes criminalized,” he told The Times outside the courtroom.
Spread out over two weeks, the hearing featured several eyebrow-raising moments. At one point, a state investigator incorrectly said he thought court filings were not considered public records because they cost money. Later, he said all information sent to the Sheriff’s Department would be confidential — even the receipt for a deputy’s pizza order.
And, though prosecutors said for months that Teran had illegally taken confidential personnel records, testimony showed there was no evidence she had downloaded any of the court records from confidential personnel files, which she was permitted to access as part of her job. Even so, one investigator testified that the state is still investigating additional allegations against Teran.
Throughout the hearing, Ohta repeatedly signaled skepticism about the case, often sighing at state prosecutors or rolling his eyes. A few times, he questioned the point of the prosecution — so the outcome appeared something of a reversal.
The decision moves ahead a case that set off shock waves across the state’s legal community when Bonta unexpectedly announced it in April, even as Dist. Atty. George Gascón — a fellow Democrat — geared up for a tough reelection fight against a more conservative challenger.
Teran’s duties included overseeing the division of the district attorney’s office tasked with prosecuting police. She was seen as closely tied to Gascón’s law enforcement accountability and justice reform agenda. The district attorney’s office has said it does not comment on personnel matters but has confirmed Teran is no longer overseeing the office’s Ethics and Integrity Operations. Public records obtained by a longtime prosecutor show Teran was still being paid as of June.
The allegations at the center of the current case date to 2018, when Teran worked as a constitutional police advisor for then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell. Part of her usual duties included accessing confidential deputy records and internal affairs investigations.
After leaving the Sheriff’s Department in late 2018, Teran joined the district attorney’s office, where state prosecutors allege that, in 2021, she sent a list of 33 names and supporting documents to another prosecutor for possible inclusion in internal databases of officers with problematic disciplinary histories. Under the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brady vs. Maryland, prosecutors are required to turn over any evidence favorable to a defendant, including evidence of police misconduct.
According to an affidavit signed by Tony Baca, a special agent with the state Department of Justice, several of the names Teran emailed to fellow prosecutor Pamela Revel were deputies whose files she had accessed while working at the Sheriff’s Department.
After searching news articles and public records requests, a state investigator found that 11 of the names hadn’t been mentioned in public, which led to the allegation that Teran wouldn’t have been able to identify them were it not for her special access while working at the Sheriff’s Department.
The state has fought for months to keep the arrest affidavit secret and has resisted releasing the names of the deputies, asking for protective orders at every step. When Bonta’s office this year agreed to release the affidavit, prosecutors still left nine of the names redacted.
Only the names of Liza Gonzalez and Thomas Negron — former deputies who court records show were fired for dishonesty — were made public, a move the state has not explained.
Before the first day of the hearing, Bonta’s office filed an updated version of the criminal complaint, dropping the charges relating to Gonzalez, Negron and one other deputy, identified only as Deputy Doe 11 in court filings. Prosecutors did not explain why they dropped those three charges, though Spertus later told The Times one of them — Deputy Doe 11 — was a civilian employee and not a deputy.
At the start of the hearing, the court heard from Deputy Todd Bernstein, who testified that most Sheriff’s Department information is confidential under department policy and that public information — including public court records — would be considered confidential once sent to the department, such as in an email attachment.
Diana Teran, a top advisor to L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón, still faces charges of misusing confidential records.
Though state prosecutors repeatedly pointed out that tracking software showed Teran had accessed confidential personnel records hundreds of times while working at the Sheriff’s Department, Bernstein testified that the software in fact showed she did not download any files relating to the 11 department employees from the personnel records system.
The court also heard from Baca and another special agent who investigated the case. Much of their testimony focused on identifying the documents Teran is accused of sending to Revel and offering detailed descriptions of metadata linking them to files she had received years earlier at the Sheriff’s Department.
Testimony showed those files were all court records and tentative court orders, echoing claims Spertus had made repeatedly in the past. For months, he has said the allegedly confidential records were all documents from lawsuits filed by the deputies themselves, seeking to overturn disciplinary decisions and firing.
But Baca acknowledged that, while investigators scoured major news articles and searched Google for public mentions of the deputies, he did not check whether their court records were available on the court website, because he’s “not too familiar” with the platform. Also, he said, he didn’t consider the court’s online records to be public because there’s a fee to search them.
“Because you couldn’t find it, that makes it confidential in your mind?” Spertus asked in a broader question about the investigators’ research efforts.
“That’s correct,” Baca replied.
In their testimony, the agents also said some of the deputy district attorneys they’d interviewed took issue with Teran’s view of what materials should be included in the district attorney’s databases of problem cops, which they framed as more inclusive than past practice.
The judge frequently bristled at the state’s lines of questioning. At one point, Ohta asked whether prosecutors were trying to show that Teran harbored an anti-police bias and demanded to know how that was relevant to the charges. Later, he questioned why they appeared to be trying to show Teran was supposedly worried about being arrested.
“A lot of people are afraid of being arrested by the Sheriff’s Department,” Ohta said. “I’m afraid of being arrested by the Sheriff’s Department.”
As the hearing unexpectedly stretched into its second week, Inspector General Max Huntsman — the county watchdog whose office oversees the Sheriff’s Department — testified that he found Teran “exceedingly honest” when they worked together. He said that, when state investigators interviewed him this year, he told them he was concerned their prosecution was “without a legal or factual basis.”
Diana Teran faces 11 felony charges after Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta alleged she downloaded the records of 11 deputies while working at the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department.
Ohta, however, apparently begged to differ. Even though he agreed with Spertus that court records are public, he said that wasn’t the determining factor as to whether Teran broke the law. Instead, he focused on whether the public documents contained names linking them to confidential personnel records.
Because evidence showed that Teran had been tracking some of the deputies’ disciplinary cases during her time at the Sheriff’s Department, Ohta said it was a reasonable inference that she might have searched their names in the confidential personnel data system.
He threw out the two felony counts relating to Deputy Does 3 and 5, saying there were no emails indicating that Teran had been tracking their cases, so there was no “logical inference” she would have looked them up in the personnel records system.
Though Teran had been released on $50,000 bond when she was initially booked in April, Ohta nixed the bail requirement and released her on her own recognizance.
Within hours of Ohta’s decision, news of the outcome began making waves in the legal community. In a Tuesday afternoon email to other prosecutors, deputy district attorney John Colello raised concerns about whether the D.A.’s office should notify defense lawyers about Teran’. For cases she had “any role in,” Colello wrote, the charges against her could constitute exculpatory evidence that prosecutors are required to disclose under Brady.
“The intentional failure to do so is a felony crime,” Colello wrote in his email, a copy of which was sent to The Times.
Meanwhile Cristine Soto DeBerry, who runs the Prosecutors Alliance of California — an organization of progressive prosecutors and their allies — focused on the two dismissed charges and said she still believed Teran would be acquitted at trial.
“With each step of the legal process, the case against her is unraveling, as it should,” DeBerry said in statement. “The deeply problematic charges brought against ADA Teran seek to penalize a public servant for fulfilling her ethical duty to ensure transparency and uphold the Constitution, all in the name of shielding police misconduct behind a veil of secrecy.”
Teran is due back in court on Sept. 3.
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