Public Sector Case Notes
| Citation | Vol. 34 No. 1 |
| Publication year | 2020 |
| Author | By Scott Tiedemann and Kaylee Feick |
By Scott Tiedemann and Kaylee Feick
Scott Tiedemann is the Managing Partner of Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, California's largest public sector labor, employment and education law firm. He is the author of the CPER Pocket Guide to the Firefighters Procedural Bill of Rights, as well as a chapter on that topic in California Public Sector Employment Law. Kaylee Feick is an Associate in Liebert Cassidy Whitmore's Los Angeles office, where she provides representation and counsel to clients in all matters pertaining to labor, employment, and education law. She provides support in litigation claims for discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wage and hour disputes, and other employment matters. Kaylee can be reached at (310) 981-2735 or kfeick@lcwlegal.com.
Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs v. Superior Court, 8 Cal. 5th 28 (2019)
In Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs v. Superior Court, the California Supreme Court overturned a lower appellate court's decision and held that the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department (LASD) could give prosecutors the names of individual deputy sheriffs on the department's internal "Brady list" without a Pitchess motion and court order, so long as it did so in the context of cases in which the deputies might be witnesses.
The case arose from a potential conflict in the law between criminal defense rights and California peace officers' privacy rights. In Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that under the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment, the prosecution in a criminal case must disclose to the defense all evidence the prosecutor has that would tend to show the criminal defendant was not guilty. This includes evidence that would impeach prosecution witnesses such as peace officers.
Sometimes, this "exculpatory" evidence is found in the personnel file of a peace officer witness. For example, if the personnel file shows that the officer had previously been dishonest or committed other significant misconduct (e.g., racial profiling), the defense could use that information to impeach the officer's credibility or motivations at the criminal trial. Conversely, California Penal Code §§ 832.7 and 832.8 and Evidence Code § 1043, et seq., sometimes called "the Pitchess statutes," generally make peace officer personnel records confidential. The Pitchess statutes say that in order to access peace officer personnel information, the party seeking the information must first file a motion with the court. If the motion is granted, which can only occur if the moving party establishes "good cause," the court privately reviews the officer's personnel records and provides the asking party any information the court deems relevant. This is commonly known as the "Pitchess procedure," and the motion the party files is commonly called a "Pitchess motion."
To address this conflict between a criminal defendant's constitutional rights and a peace officer's privacy rights, the LASD compiled a so-called "Brady list," consisting of names and employee identification numbers of deputies whose personnel files contained sustained allegations of misconduct that could be used to impeach the deputies at trial. This Brady list typically includes officers who have been found to be dishonest or guilty of other acts of moral turpitude.
The LASD proposed a policy whereby it would disclose its Brady list to the district attorney's office and other prosecutorial agencies. The prosecution would then know to file a Pitchess motion to obtain the relevant information from the deputy's personnel file, or to alert the defense so it could file its own Pitchess motion. Under the proposed policy, no information from the deputies' personnel files would be disclosed without a formal Pitchess motion and accompanying court order.
The LASD notified the deputies of the...
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