Four months after California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced multiple felony charges against a top adviser to the Los Angeles County district attorney, state prosecutors this week dropped three of 11 counts but are still moving toward trial.
Diana Teran, a former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department consultant who later oversaw ethics and integrity operations at the DA’s office, is accused of illegally using confidential personnel records. State prosecutors allege Teran broke the law three years ago when she flagged the names of several sheriff’s deputies for possible inclusion in an internal district attorney’s database of officers accused of misconduct.
According to state prosecutors, Teran only knew of the deputy’s name and alleged wrongdoings during her role at the D.A.’s office because she accessed his records in 2018 while working at the sheriff’s department.
Last month, Teran pleaded not guilty to all counts, according to his attorney, James Spertus, according to deputies’ records. already public in court cases and other records,
Though the two sides have argued with each other in dozens of legal filings over the past few months, the preliminary hearing will determine whether there is enough evidence to proceed to trial — which will be the first real encounter in court.
The trial was scheduled to begin Wednesday, but prosecutors said they were not ready and had not asked their witnesses to appear. On Thursday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta expressed his doubts about the state’s theories and questioned the purpose of pursuing the case.
“I don’t see this type of factual scenario being repeated very often,” he said. “Part of the criminal law is to deter future criminal conduct, so what are we trying to prevent here?”
The allegations at the center of the case date back to 2018, when Teran worked as a constitutional policing consultant for then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell. Her normal duties included reviewing confidential deputy records and conducting internal affairs investigations.
According to an affidavit filed in court earlier this year by state prosecutors, the department used secret tracking software to keep records of more than 1,600 personnel files it searched and reviewed.
After leaving the sheriff’s department in late 2018, Teran joined the district attorney’s office, where state prosecutors allege that in 2021 she sent a list of 33 names and supporting documents to another prosecutor for possible inclusion in the so-called Brady database, which includes officers with problematic disciplinary histories. The name is a reference to a landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that requires prosecutors to turn over any evidence favorable to a defendant, including evidence of police misconduct.
The affidavit states that many of the names Teran emailed to fellow prosecutor Pamela Revell were deputies whose files she had access to while working at the sheriff’s department. After searching news articles and public records requests, a state investigator found that 11 of the names had not been mentioned publicly, leading to allegations that Teran would not have identified them if she did not have special access while working at the sheriff’s department.
For months, the state has been reluctant to release the names of the 11 deputies, seeking a protection order at every step. Bonta’s office agreed to release the information earlier this yearThe prosecutors are still at large Nine names were removed.Only the names of Liza Gonzalez and Thomas Negron were made public — former deputies who were fired for dishonesty, according to court records — a move the state has not offered an explanation for.
This week, when Bonta’s office filed an updated version of its criminal complaint, it dropped charges against Gonzalez, Negron and another deputy who was identified only by Deputy Doe 11 Prosecutors did not explain why they withdrew those three charges, and the DOJ did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
After court, Spertus told the Times that Deputy Doe 11 was a civilian employee, not a deputy.
Judge Ohta said in court that state prosecutors also added “aggravating factors” to the complaint, but court staff told the Times that the document would not be available in the court record until next week. The DOJ did not respond to a request for a copy of the document.
Much of Thursday’s hearing was spent hearing testimony from Deputy Todd Bernstein, who detailed which files Teran had accessed during his tenure at the Sheriff’s Department and which files he had received information about via email.
He also testified that most Sheriff’s Department information is confidential under policy and that public information — including public court records — would be treated as confidential once it is sent to the department, such as in an email attachment.
According to Spertus, that testimony showed how “legally untenable” the state’s position is.
“Their view of the matter is that when someone from outside the sheriff’s department emails a public record to someone inside the department it becomes a private record,” he later told the Times. “It is undisputed that the data allegedly taken was from Los Angeles Superior Court pleadings and emailed to someone in LASD, which then became LASD data.”
He said public court records sent via email are the very material Teran is accused of including in the Brady database.
Questions asked in court Thursday repeated some of the same allegations that Bonta’s office declined to prosecute earlier this year. As the Times reported last monthAfter Alex Villanueva was elected L.A. County Sheriff in December 2018, his administration launched an investigation into leaked records and allegedly stolen personnel files.
Part of that investigation included claims that Teran and officials from the inspector general’s office had downloaded a large number of deputy personnel records in the final days before Villanueva took office — including records on Villanueva and several of his close aides. The sheriff’s department’s 306-page case file reviewed by The Times did not explain why this would be considered a crime.
At one point, a county legal counsel called the investigation “not legally viable,” and over the course of several years, state and federal prosecutors repeatedly rejected it, according to documents reviewed by The Times. But in 2021, the department again raised the matter with state prosecutors, sending them a letter and case file that accused Teran, his assistant, Alan Wang, two supervisory officers and another. The Times reporter attended on multiple felony counts. In May of this year, Bonta’s office formally dismissed the case and declined to file charges.
On Thursday, however, state prosecutors asked Bernstein several questions about records Teran obtained in the final days before Villanueva took office.
“Many of the cases Ms. Teran viewed and accessed belonged to high-level Department officials who had not been in the area for years,” Bernstein said. “It is beyond reason why anyone would need to look into cases that are 20 years old, for someone who is not a Department official or even employed by the Department.”
When asked if he had ever asked Teran why he had looked at so many files, Bernstein said he had not.
“Without talking to him,” Spertus said, “how can you know what he needs to do his job?”
At the end of the testimony, Spertus asked Bernstein if he had participated in referring the matter to the Attorney General, and Bernstein said he had not.
But a review of the case file by the Times showed that as one of the department’s technology and computing experts, Bernstein had a key role in the investigation. According to the case file, he was one of the members of the Villanueva transition team that discovered “abnormalities” while reviewing personnel records and triggered a criminal investigation that was eventually sent to the state DOJ.
Bernstein, whose personnel records were reportedly among those accessed by inspection officials, did not respond to an emailed request for comment Thursday evening.
