Judge’s ire signals Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office in disarray

As the highest law-enforcement official in any California county, district attorneys don’t wear uniforms or slap the cuffs on criminals and precious few carry guns. Their authority arises from the trust placed in them by voters.

What happens when that trust is diminished?

That’s a question Stanislaus County District Attorney Birgit Fladager had better be prepared to answer.

Until their trials are completed, The Bee does not comment on the guilt or innocence of those accused of crimes. We’re not changing that policy in the case of the People vs. Frank Carson. The well-known criminal defense attorney stands accused of plotting the murder of suspected metal thief Korey Kauffman in 2012.

What is open for comment, though, is the conduct of a hearing that has become an embarrassment to the DA’s Office.

Sixteen months after charges were filed, the trial remains in its preliminary stages – already, apparently, the second-longest preliminary hearing in California history. Now in a one-month hiatus, it will get longer.

The length of the proceedings is troubling enough, but over the past two weeks the presiding judge – assigned from Contra Costa County in the interest of fairness – expressed dismay and frustration over the prosecution team’s conduct. Judge Barbara Zuniga excoriated lead prosecutor Marlissa Ferreira for not having turned over all the evidence in the DA’s possession. Then she admonished Fladager for not attending some sessions of the most important proceeding her office has conducted in years.

Preliminary hearings are used to determine if defendants should face a trial and then what evidence the jury will be allowed to see (or hear) and what will be excluded. While prosecutors are expected to have a firm grasp of the evidence, the Constitution guarantees defendants the right to see all of it as they prepare to defend themselves.

That the prosecution failed to share all of the evidence is a serious lapse. That even more undisclosed evidence was found during the trial’s holiday break makes the lapse worse. Judge Zuniga told the court she will “sanction” the DA’s Office, but not until she knows the full extent of these lapses – perhaps meaning she isn’t convinced the problem has been corrected.

It’s not uncommon for judges to berate attorneys on either side of a case, but when Zuniga freed the accused on their own recognizance, it was jaw-dropping.

None of this proclaims Carson et al innocent, but it does erode public trust in the DA’s Office.

Korey Kauffman, a man so degraded that he is reported to have stolen scrap metal to pay for drugs, deserves justice. But so do those accused of murdering him. The people of Stanislaus County deserve to see that prosecutions are carried out competently and professionally.

Withholding evidence is unacceptable. Period. Merely overlooking evidence points to either incompetence or a failure to devote enough resources to the case.

District Attorney Fladager has always been press-shy, except when running for office. Whether such reticence is a strategy for keeping the public at arm’s length or because she doesn’t want to explain her actions, the district attorney needs to get over it. To regain the trust her department is losing, the district attorney needs to explain to the people who elected her what’s happening and why.

This story was originally published January 7, 2017 at 5:10 PM with the headline "Judge’s ire signals Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office in disarray."