Federal oversight of D.A. is lifted

The Orange County office’s use of jailed informants had been under scrutiny.

- BY SALVADOR HERNANDEZ

ORANGE COUNTY Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer had vowed to reform the use of jailhouse informants.

More than a decade after a jailhouse snitch scandal rocked the Orange County district attorney’s office and nearly upended the prosecution of the deadliest mass shooting in county history, federal officials announced they've ceased overseeing the department's informant program, citing recent reforms.

The decision, announced Dec. 23, ends a yearlong agreement between the Department of Justice and local prosecutors who were tasked with reforming the way they use informants in criminal cases.

“The Orange County District Attorney’s Office has implemented and sustained extensive reforms that demonstrate an enduring commitment to protecting the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights of those in its jurisdiction,” said Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

According to a 2022 Justice Department report, Orange County’s district attorney’s office and its Sheriff's Department systematically used informants as “agents of law enforcement to elicit incriminating statements” from at least 2007 to 2016, and hid evidence of the practice in dozens of trials, including possibly exculpatory evidence obtained by informants.