In a stinging rebuke of one of California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s most politically fraught prosecutions, a state appeals court moved Thursday to dismiss the remaining criminal charges against a top advisor to ex-Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón.
Diana Teran was charged last year with 11 counts of improperly downloading confidential police discipline records when she was a constitutional policing advisor at the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, and then “impermissibly” using the data while working for Gascón.
Teran and her legal team have long argued that the records were public court records, and she was simply sending them to a colleague as part of an effort by the D.A.’s office to track cops with disciplinary histories.
In a unanimous 26-page ruling issued Thursday morning, the appeals court shot down the attorney general’s arguments that Teran’s actions were criminal even though the information she accessed was publicly available.
“These court documents convey nothing that a member of the public could not learn by sitting in a courtroom attending the court proceedings or reviewing publicly available information from the court’s docket and files,” the court said.
Computer crime experts have noted that the statute Bonta invoked primarily focused on hacking and illegal access to computer systems, not the type of behavior Teran was accused of. The appeals court adopted that position Thursday.
Teran’s lead defense attorney, James Spertus, said he was “very appreciative” of the court’s decision.
“These are very important issues that affect thousands of residents in California, and it’s good to have the clarity the court offered,” he said.
The Attorney General’s Office has not indicated whether it will appeal. “We are reviewing the opinion,” a spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Department declined to comment.
The decision comes six months after the appeals court took the unusual step of asking state prosecutors to appear in person and justify the prosecution before deciding whether to let it move forward, and followed months of hearings where Bonta’s case seemed to be eroding.
Prosecutors dropped three of the counts against Teran before a preliminary hearing last year, and L.A. County Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta threw out two more. During the hearing, the normally stoic Ohta repeatedly rolled his eyes and groaned at prosecutors’ attempts to justify the case.
Testimony at the hearing showed that Teran did not download the information from the Sheriff’s Department personnel file system. In most cases, she learned of the alleged misconduct when colleagues emailed her copies of court records from lawsuits filed by sheriff’s deputies hoping to overturn the discipline against them.
The allegations at the center of the case date to 2018, when Teran worked as a constitutional policing advisor for then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell, who is now Los Angeles police chief. Her usual duties included accessing confidential deputy records and internal affairs investigations.
After leaving the Sheriff’s Department, Teran joined the District Attorney’s Office. In April 2021, she sent court records related to roughly three dozen deputies to a subordinate to evaluate for possible inclusion in the internal databases prosecutors use to track officers with histories of dishonesty and other misconduct.
One is known as the Brady database — a reference to the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brady vs. Maryland, which says prosecutors are required to turn over evidence that could be favorable to a defendant, including evidence of police misconduct.
Gascón’s fiercest critics — including current Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman and ex-Sheriff Alex Villanueva — were quick to pounce on the charges against Teran, which Hochman used against Gascón in a successful campaign to oust the progressive from office.
During the campaign, Hochman questioned whether Gascón “blessed” Teran’s supposed illegal conduct.
“Did he bring her on to explicitly take advantage of the illegal downloads that she had already done in the Sheriff’s Department?” he asked, though evidence in the case never reflected that allegation.
A spokesperson for Hochman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In an email, Villanueva said, “Teran was caught illegally downloading confidential personnel files, including that of my entire transition team, for political purposes that have absolutely nothing to do with her job at the time. This outcome does not change that basic fact.”
Criminal justice reform activists have long charged that Teran was being pursued by law enforcement for advancing Gascón’s broader police accountability platform that helped vault him into office in 2020, a sentiment some echoed after Thursday’s ruling.
“The use of scarce prosecutorial resources to pursue criminal charges against a longtime public servant committed to police accountability was disappointing, unfounded and inexplicable from the outset,” said Miriam Krinsky, a former federal prosecutor and founder of the criminal justice reform advocacy group Fair and Just Prosecution.
Keri Blakinger is a former Times staff writer.
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