A San Diego County judge has set a June 10 special hearing for a former high-ranking Orange County prosecutor, now a judge, to testify about his alleged misconduct in a 2010 murder case.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Ebrahim Baytieh, the original prosecutor in the case, has been subpoenaed to take the witness stand on allegations that he withheld evidence that may have been beneficial to the defense.
Baytieh’s testimony will be part of an ongoing hearing on whether defendant Paul Gentile Smith can receive fair treatment in a retrial of charges that he fatally stabbed his boyhood friend and sometimes marijuana dealer in Sunset Beach in 1988.
The case was moved to San Diego County, where it is being heard by Judge Daniel Goldstein, because of Baytieh’s position as a judge in Orange County.
Smith’s conviction was overturned in 2021 amid allegations that evidence was withheld that his civil rights were violated through the use of jailhouse informants. Three informants were used to pry incriminating evidence from Smith, but only one informant was disclosed to the defense.
Smith’s attorney, Orange County Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, alleges Baytieh conspired to hide evidence from the defense and bury the routine use of jailhouse informants on incarcerated defendants who had been charged — violating their right to counsel.
Sanders is demanding that all charges be dismissed against Smith for alleged “outrageous government conduct.”
Orange County’s secret use of jailhouse informants led to one of the largest criminal justice scandals in the United States and resulted in a blistering rebuke in 2022 by the Department of Justice.
During testimony Monday, May 6, at the San Diego hearing, two Orange County sheriff’s officials who worked with jail informants in the Smith case testified they did not realize they were breaking the law.
According to the 1964 case, Massiah v. United States, defendants who have been formally charged cannot be further interrogated by law enforcement or informants working with police.
Sheriff’s Sgt. Michael Padilla and retired Lt. Roger Guevara testified they didn’t fully know the law when Padilla gave three informants the same dayroom privileges as Smith so they could extract information from him, and when Guevara introduced one of the informants to two investigators working the Smith case.
Guevara described the rules pertaining to the use of informants as “foggy to me.”
“I wasn’t up to speed on Massiah,” he said.
“What I know now, I wouldn’t be talking to inmates,” Padilla testified.
Because of the snitch scandal, the Sheriff’s Department ordered special training for their deputies — taught by Baytieh — on the Massiah ruling.
Padilla and Guevara testified they were never questioned by their department or prosecutors about their role in using informants and did not read the DOJ report.
The hearing is scheduled to continue briefly with Guevara on the stand Tuesday morning and then will resume in June.
