Neil Knight Private Dick

No Better than Fish Chum

The Office of the District Attorney of Orange County is tasked with the job of enhancing the safety and welfare of the public through the vigorous enforcement of criminal and civil laws.

At the same time the position of District Attorney is a political position where an individual must campaign for the office, and, if elected, serve a term of four years, with no limitations on the number of terms. It is a commonly held belief that the actual enforcement of the law might be influenced, to a degree, during an election year, and may be more or less rigorous depending on the overarching attitudes and perceived security needs of the voting public.

Anthony "Tony" Thomas Riganti was one of the longest serving district attorneys in Orange County history, having been sworn in to his position for a fourth term in 2016 by his longtime friend U.S. District Judge Franklin Pierce Sherman, who shook his hand and patted the back of his head afterward in an act of jurisprudence brotherhood.

Tony had run against, and beaten by a margin of 48% to 45%, Salvadore "Sally" Malafronte, who had been the Senior Assistant District Attorney under Riganti. Tony had groomed Sally to be his successor, but the pair had an ugly and very public political falling out, and Malafronte vowed to take over his former boss' job.

During the campaign Sally repeatedly attacked Riganti in connection with the so-called "Snitch Scandal", which led to Riganti's office being kicked off a high-profile death penalty case due to prosecutorial misconduct. Unfortunately for Sally, he'd been second in command under Riganti at the time, which tempered the impact of his argument on the electorate.

The fact was the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, and the law firm of Halstead, Birmingham & Scheinfeld had filed a lawsuit against both Riganti and Orange County Sheriff Helen Wilson-Watson, claiming their departments conducted a secret jailhouse informant operation in violation of the U.S. Constitution, the California Constitution, and certain state laws.

The suit had claimed that during the entirety of Riganti's tenure, both the DA and the Sheriff's departments colluded to recruit and place informants in jail cells with defendants, paying and rewarding them with promises of reduced sentences for extracting incriminating information useful in convicting the criminally charged.

Which of course they had; on and off for over twelve years running.

Now district attorneys are possibly the most powerful government agents in the U.S. criminal justice system, with unrestricted access to evidence that can determine a person's guilt or innocence. They can cut deals with witnesses, co-conspirators and defendants. They also determine the charges a defendant will face, and thereby set the parameters for the eventual punishment a suspect might receive.

There was no compelling reason except for judicial expediency for the DA and Sheriff's departments to employ this tactic even once, let alone multiple times over a twelve-year period. But it seemed as if the pair had simply because they were jaded by the system itself. The sherr unpredictability of justice.

And as the DA and Sheriffs offices were elected positions, susceptible to the whims and fears of the voters, what better way than to tip the scales themselves, especially for high profile cases in election years, than with ill-gotten information.

Some judges might have ignored the tactics of the district attorney's office and Wilson-Watson's sheriff's department, but Judge Karen Smatz-Anderson, herself a former homicide prosecutor, refused to tolerate the corruption exposed during the high-profile multiple murder case being tried before her.

The Sixth Amendment prohibits the use of government-directed informants to question defendants who have already been charged with a crime, as had been the case with most of the individuals who had been targeted under the DA/Sheriff's program, and specifically the case being heard in Judge Smatz-Andersons's courtroom, which meant the prosecution team had violated the rights of all defendants, not only in this case but in all cases wherein the strategy had been employed.

"I understand exactly what you hoped to accomplish with this scheme you've been running for the past few years" the judge chided the prosecution, "but I'm issuing a ruling to forcibly recuse the District Attorney's office from further prosecution as I have no faith they would act ethically during the penalty phase of this case."

Riganti complied with the Judges directive, but in retribution for holding both his and the Sheriff's office accountable, and for revealing to the public his "Snitch Scandal" tactics, Rigantis' prosecutors blocked the judge from presiding in 55 of 58 cases assigned to her during the following 18-month bench period.

Tony Riganti didn't take any shit from criminals, subordinates, judges or the ACL fuck U.

You were either pulling on the oars in the same direction or you were no better than fish chum.