Former Stanislaus County prosecutor offended co-workers, DA says

A senior prosecutor was not disciplined for backing the political opponent of District Attorney Birgit Fladager, but because he refused to stop “alienating, insulting and offending his co-workers, judges, law enforcement officials and members of the public,” lawyers representing Stanislaus County say in recent court documents.

Also, Douglas Maner was not forced out, as he asserted in a civil rights lawsuit, but quit voluntarily after being punished for rude and bullying conduct, such as demeaning clerks and officers from other agencies and “urinating only a few feet away from a female who was in the restroom painting the interior,” a briefing says.

“Maner’s claim is baseless and lacks all evidentiary support,” attorneys Morin Jacob and Lisa Charbonneau wrote in a request that a judge throw out his lawsuit. “Maner was not forced to quit; he resigned because he could not face his own actions as a poorly behaving (deputy district attorney).”

In an email to The Modesto Bee, Maner said many of the county’s allegations are “grossly exaggerated or downright false.”

Maner’s lawsuit, filed in 2014, says Fladager retaliated against him for his 2006 support of former Judge Michael Cummins, who ran against Fladager in her first campaign. Maner had prosecuted 99 trials in 15 years before her election, but shortly after her election, she removed him from the office’s gang unit and assigned him to only two trials in the next seven years, says his lawsuit, which names Fladager personally as a defendant and seeks an unspecified amount of money.

Maner, who had praised Cummins in a letter to the editor of The Bee during the 2006 campaign, faced a long road of “vindictive payback,” the lawsuit says, including suspensions, a demotion and an attempt to fire him. He said some discipline seemed targeted because standards were not applied equally to other employees.

The county’s briefing names two prosecutors who also backed Cummins without suffering discipline since then.

The county’s document says Maner “demonstrated strong lawyering skills” but consistently hurt others by calling them names, using profanity and blaming them for problems he had caused. Those who complained included clerks, paralegals, two doctors called as witnesses, officers with Modesto and Ceres police, a murder victim’s sister and Judge Marie Silveira.

Maner, 58, left the office in 2013 and opened a private defense practice in downtown Modesto. His website says he is “thoroughly knowledgeable with the inner workings of the District Attorney’s Office. Having built thousands of cases for the DA, he knows exactly what it takes to tear them apart.”

A trial for the lawsuit is scheduled for October in Sacramento’s federal court.

This story was originally published March 19, 2016 at 5:19 PM with the headline "Former Stanislaus County prosecutor offended co-workers, DA says."