The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office presents a substantial Brady/Giglio failure when it prosecutes cases while relying on testimony, reports, declarations, recommendations, or investigative work from Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department personnel or Los Angeles County Probation Department personnel without making complete impeachment disclosures concerning known institutional misconduct, credibility defects, gang-affiliation evidence, abuse allegations, falsified reporting, retaliation, obstruction, failure to supervise, and concealment practices. Brady requires prosecutors to disclose favorable exculpatory evidence, Giglio makes impeachment evidence part of that constitutional disclosure duty, and Kyles places responsibility on the prosecutor to learn of and disclose favorable evidence known to the police or investigative team rather than allowing law-enforcement agencies to become the final arbiters of disclosure. In light of the LASD deputy-gang problem, which describes parallel loyalty networks, falsified reporting, obstruction, retaliation, and prosecutorial-system failure, and the Probation Department juvenile hall settlements, which describes concealed abuse, deficient reporting, failure to track misconduct, and undisclosed credibility issues affecting probation witnesses, LADA’s failure to affirmatively disclose this material converts agency misconduct into prosecutorial misconduct. The constitutional defect is therefore not limited to individual officers or isolated cases; it attaches to the prosecutorial decision to use compromised government witnesses while withholding the institutional facts necessary for defendants, defense counsel, judges, and juries to assess credibility, bias, motive, truthfulness, and reliability.
- RAND Corp. Report on Deputy Gags
- LASD Deputy Gangs Special Counsel Report to Civilian Oversight Commission
- A Tradition of Violence: The History of Deputy Gangs in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department
- Brotherhoods of Power: Deputy Cliques, Loyalty Oaths, and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department
- Los Angeles County Juvenile Hall Settlement
- Guardians of Harm: The Los Angeles County Juvenile Hall Conspiracy
