Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer, the only elected prosecutor in California found by a judge to have violated the state’s law against racial bias in criminal cases, has refused to turn over records that could show further offenses, alleges a lawsuit filed Wednesday, Oct. 19, by the ACLU.
The American Civil Liberties Union and activist groups are seeking a court order forcing Spitzer to turn over records about his enforcement of the Racial Justice Act. Spitzer was said by a judge in June to have violated the act by making racist comments in a double-murder case against a Black defendant.
“The Racial Justice Act is a sore spot and an embarrassment to District Attorney Spitzer, who does not want people talking about (it). That is why he has refused to release information. He’s afraid it’s damaging to him,” said Sean Garcia-Leys, co-executive director of the Peace and Justice Law Center and attorney for Chicanxs Unidxs, two of the civil rights groups bringing the lawsuit.
Kimberly Edds, the spokeswoman for the District Attorney’s Office, said Spitzer has complied with public records law and contends the requests were either overly burdensome or sought records not possessed by the agency.
“The law safeguards taxpayers from being forced to respond to overly burdensome fishing expeditions,” Edds said. She also noted that Superior Court Judge Gregg L. Prickett stated that Spitzer acted in violation of the Racial Justice Act without conducting a full hearing and taking testimony.
For the past year, the ACLU and other groups have submitted public records requests for information that would show whether the District Attorney’s Office is consistently discriminating against racial minorities. While some documents have been released, the lawsuit called them insufficient.
The limited data publicly available shows persistent racial bias in the office’s charging decisions, says the suit.
Key to the ACLU’s argument are racist comments made by Spitzer during a closed-door meeting on whether prosecutors should seek the death penalty against Jamon Buggs for killing a man and a woman in Newport Beach.
During the meeting, Spitzer asked about the race of Buggs’ past girlfriends and said he knew Black men who dated White women to enhance their status. The leaked comments ignited a national firestorm of criticism and calls for his resignation.
Spitzer took the death penalty off the table for Buggs, who was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He also publicly apologized, and though Judge Prickett found that his comments showed racial bias, no penalty was given. Spitzer went on to a landslide reelection days after the court finding.
The lawsuit also points to an ACLU report in February that revealed 5.8% of the criminal defendants charged in Orange County are Black, although the group makes up only 2.1% of the population. The District Attorney’s Office also is more likely to charge Black and Latino defendants with felonies and sentencing enhancements than White people, and less likely to offer Black and Latino people diversion as an alternative to jail, the report said.
The study was largely based on the years before Spitzer took office in January 2019 — but that is because he refused to release records from his own tenure, the suit said.
Emi MacLean, senior attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, said the same information has been requested from 58 counties to determine if they are complying with the Racial Justice Act. Many of the counties have complied, MacLean said.
“What is Spitzer hiding?” she said. “The response of the (Orange County) District Attorney’s Office is a blatant violation of the public’s right to know.”
MacLean noted that Spitzer was first elected after promising to reform an office that illegally used jailhouse informants to coax confessions from inmates, in violation of their right to have an attorney present.
The lawsuit comes a week after the U.S. Department of Justice concluded a six-year investigation that found the civil rights of defendants were systematically violated by Orange County’s illegal use of jailhouse informants. The probe also said that efforts to fix the county’s justice system have been inadequate.
“It’s notable that the district attorney is claiming to clean house but is cloaking prosecutorial data under a veil of secrecy,” MacLean said.
Edds responded that the ACLU is “hell-bent” on ensconcing “soft-on-crime” prosecutors.
“This is nothing more than another frivolous lawsuit by the ACLU that is completely divorced from reality,” she said. “The ACLU’s one and only goal is elect soft-on-crime district attorneys who will implement policies that endanger public safety and, in fact, harm the very communities of color they pretend to care about.”
