A former Los Angeles Times reporter is suing Los Angeles County, former Sheriff Alex Villanueva and others for allegedly violating her First Amendment rights as a journalist by subjecting her to retaliatory investigations.
In 2017, Maya Lau and two of her colleagues published a story about the Brady List, a secret list of approximately 300 deputies accused of misconduct.
“At a time of widespread debate around police misconduct, Ms. Lau’s coverage of the Brady List provided evidence that LASD continued to employ and even reward officers with histories of misconduct, and demonstrated that crucial details about deputies were withheld from counsel in cases in which the deputies testified, in apparent violation of defendants’ constitutional rights,” said a release from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which is helping provide Lau legal representation. “The series prompted new oversight of LASD’s role in past prosecutions, and helped inspire California legislation that brought greater transparency to police disciplinary records statewide.”
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, however, may not have viewed that report as positively, as Lau was then subjected to “a campaign of retaliation and intimidation by the LASD” that lasted at least three years, her attorneys allege.
“None of these investigations revealed that Ms. Lau had committed any crime,” the release said. “But the LASD—under then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva—nonetheless recommended to the California Attorney General’s office that Ms. Lau be prosecuted for conspiracy, theft of government property, unlawful access of a computer, burglary, and receiving stolen property.”
The Attorney General’s Office declined to prosecute Lau, but as the LASD Civilian Oversight Commission noted in 2021, a conviction was not the point. Instead, “these baseless investigations were intended ‘to chill oversight of the Department, not to pursue a prosecution.’”
“It is an absolute outrage that the Sheriff’s Department would criminally investigate a journalist for doing her job,” Lau said in the release. “I am bringing this lawsuit not just for my own sake, but to send a clear signal in the name of reporters everywhere: we will not be intimidated. The Sheriff’s Department needs to know that these kinds of tactics against journalists are illegal.”
In addition to Villanueva and the county, former Undersheriff Tim Murakami and former Detective Mark Lillienfeld are named in the suit, which alleges five counts of rights violations.
When the Los Angeles Times reached out to the defendants for comment, Murakami and Lillienfeld didn’t respond, while the county counsel’s office declined to comment.
The LASD said in a statement that it hadn’t been served in the suit as of Tuesday afternoon.
“While these allegations stem from a prior administration, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department under Sheriff Robert G. Luna is firmly committed to upholding the Constitution, including the First Amendment,” the statement said. “We respect the vital role journalists play in holding agencies accountable and believe in the public’s right to a free and independent press.”
Villanueva told the Times that “under the advice of counsel, I do not comment on pending litigation,” though he did accuse the Times, not his department, of trying to chill investigations.
“What I can say is the investigation in question, like all investigations conducted by the Public Corruption Unit during my tenure as Sheriff of Los Angeles County, were based on facts that were presented to the Office of the Attorney General,” he said. “It is the political establishment, of which the LA Times is a part, that wishes to chill lawful investigations and criminal accountability with frivolous lawsuits such as this one.”
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