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With the stinging responsibilities of one of California Atty. The state court of appeals, General Rob Bonta’s most politically plagued prosecutor, moved Thursday to dismiss the remaining criminal charges against the former Los Angeles County King’s top advisor. Atty. George Gascon.
Diana Terran was accused of improperly downloading secret police discipline records and “unpurgedly” using data while working at Gascon, when she was a constitutional police advisor to the LA County Sheriff’s Office.
Terran and her legal team have long argued that the records are public court records. She simply sent it to her colleagues as part of the DA’s office’s efforts to track disciplinary history.
In a unanimous, 26-page ruling issued Thursday morning, the appeals court shot down the attorney general’s argument that Terran’s actions were a crime despite the information she accessed being made public.
“These court documents do not convey anything that the public members could not learn by attending court cases or sitting in court reviewing publicly available information from court dockets and files,” the court said.
Computer crime experts note that the laws that Bonta was called up mainly focus on hacking and illegal access, not on the type of behavior Teran was accused of. The Court of Appeal adopted the position Thursday.
Terran’s lead lawyer James Supertas said he was “very grateful” for the court’s decision.
“These are very important issues affecting thousands of California residents, and it’s good to have the clarity that the court provided,” he said.
The Attorney General’s Office has not indicated whether it will appeal or not. “We’re reviewing our views,” the spokesman said.
A Sheriff’s Department spokesman did not immediately provide comment.
The decision comes six months after the appeals court took the extraordinary action of asking prosecutors to justify them before deciding whether to move forward, following a few months of hearings in which Bonta’s case appears to be eroded.
Prosecutors dropped three counts against Terran before last year’s preliminary hearing, and LA County Superior Court Judge Sam Ota dumped two more. During the hearing, the normally stoic nerd rolled his eyes repeatedly, moaning at the prosecutor’s attempts to justify the case.
Testimony at the hearing indicated that Terran did not download information from the Sheriff’s department personnel file system. In most cases, she learned of alleged misconduct when her colleagues emailed copies of court records from lawsuits filed by sheriff’s deputies in hoping to overturn discipline against them.
The allegation at the litigation center dates back in 2018, when Terran worked as a constitutional police advisor to then-Sim McDonnell, now the Los Angeles Police Chief. Her usual duties included access to confidential secondary records and internal affairs investigations.
After leaving the Sheriff’s Office, Terran joined the District Attorney’s Office. In April 2021, she sent court records related to about 30 representatives to her subordinates, assessing the possibility of including them in an internal database that prosecutors use to track officers with a history of fraud and other misconduct.
One is known as the Brady database. This is a reference to the 1963 US Supreme Court decision Brady vs. Maryland. This states that evidence in favor of the accused, including evidence of police misconduct, must be carried over.
Gascon’s most intense critics – including the current district. Atty. Nathan Hochman and former principal Alex Villanueva were quickly struck by the accusations against Terran.
During the campaign, Hochman questioned whether Gascon had “congratulated” Terran’s illegal activities.
“Has he explicitly utilized the illegal downloads that had already been made in the sheriff’s department?” he asked, but the evidence in the case did not reflect the allegations.
A spokesman for Hochman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Villanueva did not respond to requests for comment.
Criminal justice reform activists have long accused Terran of being pursued by law enforcement to advance Gascon’s broader police accountability platform that helped him take office in 2020.
“The use of rare prosecutor resources to pursue criminal charges against long-time civil servants who are committed to police accountability has been disappointing, unfounded and unconventional from the start,” said Miriam Klinsky, former prosecutor and founder of Criminal Justice Reform Advocacy Group Fair and Fair Prosecution.
Keri Blakinger is a former Times staff writer.
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