Rackauckas Text Blast Touts Endorsements by His Co-Conspirators

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The Rackauckas for District Attorney campaign for some reason has me on their text messaging list.  (If they want to weed me out after reading this, I’ll help them do so: my number starts with “714.”)  I received my first one today — and it was unintentionally sort of funny:

Hi Gregory, ballots are out and our District Attorney Tony Rackauckas is endorsed by Sheriff Hutchens, the Association of OC Deputy Sheriffs and Deputy District Attorneys! Can Tony Rackauckas count on your vote? Reply STOP to opt out.

No, no — if your texts are going to be THIS damning, then please keep ’em coming!

Has anyone ever before seen a text from a candidate saying “My co-conspirators in violating the Constitution, state and federal law, and professional ethics say: “VOTE FOR ME!”

The Democratic Party of Orange County apparently won’t talk to people before the election about the snitch scandal and other violations of rights of the accused and convicted, but let’s just focus on what we know on the record!

It’s all fun and games until someone loses a constitutional right — and despite being innocent spends decades in prison.

WHY WOULD HUTCHENS AND DEPUTY SHERIFFS ENDORSE RACKAUCKAS?

1. SNITCH SCANDAL: Rackauckas’s OCDA office worked with the Sheriff’s office to plant prosecution agents (other prisoners) near people accused of crimes
2. Those accused of crimes had invoked their right to representation by counsel.
3. They therefore could not be questioned by prosecution agents without their lawyer.
4.  The “snitches” planted near them would be rewarded for obtaining confessions to their crimes.
5.  They would be expected to testify in court, if asked, about the content of those confessions — admissible hearsay as “statements against interest.”
6. There is no reason to believe that their testimony would be truthful.  But even the presence of a falsely manufactured confession could be used to get innocent people to plead guilty to lesser offenses.
7. EAVESDROPPING SCANDAL:  The Voice of OC reports that Sheriffs Deputies were also eavesdropping on phone conversations between prisoners and their legal counsel.  Presumably, information obtained was also given to the OCDA.
8. THE OCDA’S OFFICE HID THIS INFORMATION — FROM THE EXISTENCE AND THE RECORDS OF THE SNITCH PROGRAM GENERALLY TO SPECIFIC INFORMATION ABOUT INDIVIDUAL CASES — FROM THE PUBLIC, PROSECUTORS, AND EVEN COURTS (!) FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE!
9. This was illegal activity.  Convicted prisoners — even murderers (!) — have been released as a result.
10. The OCDA will never prosecute anyone over any of this.  The office will continue to cover it up.  So he gets the endorsement of both the Sheriffs and the Sheriffs’ Deputies — which secures their collective and individual security from being held accountable for their crimes.
    

    SO OF COURSE THEY WILL ENDORSE HIM!

Mystery #1 solved!  But what about the Deputy and Assistant District Attorneys sworn to uphold the law — including the Constitution?

WHY WOULD DEPUTY DISTRICT ATTORNEYS ENDORSE RACKAUCKAS?

1. To keep their jobs, Deputy and Assistant District Attorneys have had to go along with these illegal activities.
2. They have been ordered — or maybe they just knew on which side their bread was being buttered, though I’d like to hear testimony on this happened — to freeze certain judges (like Hon. Thomas Goethals) out of hearing cases where information related to these scandals might be divulged.
3. Other illegal activities have been refusing to produce incriminating documents in “Brady” proceedings — something that surely does happen in other prosecutors’ officers as well, but not usually to further this level of underlying conspiracy given what those documents would very likely show!
4. High-level lawyers in the District Attorney’s office often want to run for judicial positions.  It has been virtually impossible to get elected to the position of judge in Orange County for years without the endorsement of District Attorney Rackauckas.  If one wants to play the judicial game, there is apparently tremendous pressure to “go along to get along” with the corrupt OCDA.  As a result, many more judges than should be are more indebted to him than they should be.  I can’t — and wouldn’t, without ironclad evidence — point to a single case where this clearly made a difference in an outcome, but I know from attorneys who have spoken to me over the past five years who have told me that my running against OCDA Rackauckas was career suicide, and sometimes it’s the threat of trouble that matters the most.
5. The OCDA will never prosecute anyone over any of this.  No ethical charges are likely to be filed, in part because fruitful investigation will be made impossible so long as Rackauckas or his chosen successor is in power. The office will continue to cover up criminal wrongdoing and unethical behavior.  So he gets the endorsement of the attorneys working in his office — which secures their collective and individual security from being held accountable for their crimes and lesser ethical offenses.

6. SO OF COURSE THEY WILL ENDORSE HIM!

In the past couple of years, I’ve looked to guidance as to the ethics of actions within the prosecutors office to a woman named Karen Schatzle — who ran for Judge against a depraved incumbent who had the endorsement of both Rackauckas and most of the Superior Court judiciary, which does not like to see judges challenged, pretty much period.  (Schatzle ran as an NPP this year for CA-39; I notoriously overestimated her chances.  She’d be a good District Attorney herself at some point.)

In most matters dealing with the workings of the electoral and political system itself, I (like many others) ha’ve looked for ethical guidance from Shirley Grindle.

Both women are endorsing Todd Spitzer.   Now THAT would be something worth a blast text — not that your CO-CONSPIRITORS want you to be in place to protect them.