Arrest Warrant Issued For District Attorney Involved In DEA's California Wiretap Warrant Mill
from the DEA-DOA dept
Former Riverside District Attorney Paul Zellerbach is in trouble, as Brad Heath and Brett Kelman report for The Desert Sun.
A judge issued an arrest warrant Tuesday for former Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach after he failed to appear at a court hearing to answer questions about an eavesdropping operation so vast it once accounted for nearly a fifth of all U.S. wiretaps.
[...]
"He should have been there," said Jan Ronis, the attorney who subpoenaed Zellerbach. "But he just blew us off. We could have had court today."
It's not uncommon for Zellerbach to go missing when people need him. When Zellerbach ran the DA's office, he was rarely there. The DEA found his office to be just as accommodating, with or without him, though. Although the DEA was supposed to run its wiretap warrant requests through federal judges and have them signed by the district attorney himself, it often found it easier to obtain a signature from whoever happened to be at the office and run them by Riverside County judge Helios Hernandez, who approved five times as many wiretap applications as any other judge in the US.
The wiretap applications' reach frequently exceeded their jurisdictional grasp, traveling far outside of Riverside County, California, to be deployed against suspects as far away as North Carolina. But that was only one issue with the warrants applications approved by Zellerbach's office.
The DOJ's lawyers didn't like the DEA's skirting of federal rules for wiretap applications.
"It was made very clear to the agents that if you're going to go the state route, then best wishes, good luck and all that, but that case isn't coming to federal court," a former Justice Department lawyer said.
"They'd want to bring these cases into the U.S. Attorney's Office, and the feds would tell them no (expletive) way," a former Justice Department official said.
California's wiretap laws weren't being followed either, thanks to Zellerbach holding office in absentia.
Riverside County’s former district attorney, Paul Zellerbach, has acknowledged that he allowed lower-level lawyers to do that job, saying he could not recall ever having reviewed a wiretap application himself. Four of the wiretaps in the Kentucky case were approved by one of Zellerbach’s assistants, and one was approved by an assistant to his successor.
Now, the DEA's toxic and possibly illegal wiretap warrants are being challenged, now that defense lawyers know exactly how much -- and how often -- state and federal requirements were being skirted by the drug warriors. That's what has led to Zellerbach's arrest warrant.
The first challenge, filed in Kentucky, led a federal judge to say that Riverside had issued so many wiretaps “that constitutional requirements cannot have been met.” The second challenge, filed locally, led to the warrant being issued for Zellerbach.
Zellerbach was subpoenaed to appear in the case of Christian Agraz, 33, an accused drug trafficker who was allegedly caught on a wiretap selling bricks of heroin in 2014.
The former DA did not appear at the hearing in the Agraz case on Tuesday morning, so Judge Michele Levine issued a bench warrant and assigned a bail of $1,500.
The constitutional requirements say Zellerbach was supposed to sign each wiretap application personally. Paul Zellerbach can't recall approving a single one of the hundreds that flowed through his office over the years.
The DEA's Riverside County-centric drug war looks like it's going to result in several cases being tossed out. Fortunately, the DEA still can keep everything it's claimed via civil asset forfeiture, which makes good busts out of bad ones and makes obtaining convictions entirely optional.
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Filed Under: dea, district attorney, doj, paul zellerbach, riverside county, wiretaps
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But we have to wait and see if they get off with a love tap first!
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Serves me right for even hoping the legal system might show some sliver of equal treatment under the law for once I guess.
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not even a glimpse.
For now it is the tattered shread of hope for an apology some day by our descendents.
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More of the same
Hopefully the judge in the case takes the gloves off and treats him no different(if not harsher given his previous position) than any other individual who ignored a subpoena and did a no-show in court, rather that just chalking it up to a 'harmless mistake'.
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Re: More of the same
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Re: Re: More of the same
My bigger issue is what may or may not be special treatment due to his past position. If it's standard practice to issue an arrest warrant but not actually send it out to be enforced unless someone pulls a no-show twice then fine, I don't have much of a problem with the judge holding back here. If it's not however, if someone else didn't show and the arrest warrant was not only issued it was sent out to be enforced immediately then yeah, I've got a huge problem with how he's being treated here, as in that case he'd be given a pass a regular person wouldn't, and I can't stand double-standards under the law like that.
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Re: Re: Re: More of the same
Just a suggestion. What else can you do? I don't think you really have any other remedy.
No other remedy.
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Re: Re: Re: More of the same
In general, when people didn't show up for things like debtor's hearings, often they would get an "order to show cause" served on them, where they'd have to show up to a hearing to justify why they should not be held in contempt for missing the previous hearing. So I can't say it's favorable treatment that he's not in jail already... but he'd better be able to justify his absence.
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for once, a SWAT team invasion would be appealing
While it's nice to dream that any government official would get the same brutal taste of law-enforcement as all the rest of us, that will simply never happen to the privileged class.
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"almost five times as many wiretaps as any other judge" Hunh?
Here's a better, more telling statistic:
"...A county court in Riverside, Calif last year signed off on almost half as many wiretaps as the total of the next twenty-nine jurisdictions with the most wiretaps in the United States."
That's effed.
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Oh their objection wasn't due to the legality itself, not really, they only cared because dodgy legality meant the cases would be weaker, making convictions(one of the very few things they do care about) less likely. However since no conviction is required to steal the stuff of the accused, it wasn't that big of a deal.
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Makes Worse Busts Out of Bad Ones
Please, please, please, tell me that was sarcasm.
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Re: Makes Worse Busts Out of Bad Ones
Strange as it seems inanimate object's can be charged with a crime, the constitution say citizens can not be deprived of property with out due process so they just flip the script!
The War on Drug was born of insanity but it provides jobs for people who seem completely committed to the destruction of all the principle's in our constitution, because you know, terrorism, drugs, fear, misinformation and mainly because it puts money in their pockets.
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Re: Re: Makes Worse Busts Out of Bad Ones
Unless of course the war on drugs is just another means of stripping people of their constitutional rights.
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Re: Re: Re: Makes Worse Busts Out of Bad Ones
BINGO!
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Apologies to your sanity, which is about to take a beating
The idea that a conviction should be a requirement for taking someone's stuff is one that's only applicable in some states(and it should be noted that it's a requirement that is typically heavily objected to by law enforcement in those areas), with the 'standard' generally being that you can absolutely steal someone's stuff at badge-point simply by accusing the property of being involved in an illegal act.
I'll repeat that again in case your brain blocked it the first time to save itself: The accusation is leveled against the property, not the person.
Once the accusation against the property has been made, it's up to the previous owner of said property to demonstrate how it wasn't linked to a crime, in a complete reversal of 'Innocent until proven guilty', and more often than not those that stand to benefit generously from the theft of the property make reclaiming it as difficult and expensive as possible a process as they can, in order to convince people to not even try and/or punish them for attempting to get their stuff back.
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Re: Apologies to your sanity, which is about to take a beating
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