Paul Gentile Smith sits in the courtroom of Orange County Superior Court Judge Patrick Donohue in Santa Ana on Thursday, August 5, 2021 as his attorneys seek to overturn Smith’s 2010 murder conviction. (File photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)
A former Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigator on Tuesday denied that he personally mishandled evidence related to a jailhouse snitch that was held by defense lawyers, resulting in the unraveling of a murder conviction.
William Beeman, a former member of the sheriff’s Special Operations Unit, was the first person to take the stand in a special hearing held for a judge to determine whether a former high-level Orange County prosecutor, who is currently a judge, improperly withheld evidence in a murder case and covered up the county’s illegal use of jailhouse informants.
Paul Gentile Smith’s convictions, for the 1988 killing of his boyhood friend and marijuana dealer in Sunset Beach and for trying to hire a hit man to attack a veteran sheriff’s investigator and witness, were dismissed following the 2021 revelation that ex-prosecutor Ebrahim Baytieh failed to turn over evidence that might have been beneficial to the defense.
At the center of the unraveled convictions is a jailhouse informant named Jeff Platt, and a recording that wasn’t turned over to Smith’s defense lawyers in which he spoke to a sheriff’s investigator about his efforts to pry information loose from Smith.
Platt would become the first informant to report that Smith had confessed in jail to the killing, and that Smith was trying to hire a hitman for $8,000 to kill a detective.
Beeman, as a member of the special operations unit, was tasked with investigating the alleged threats Smith made against now-retired Orange County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ray Wert. Beeman’s efforts, which apparently included going undercover posing as a hitman, led to Smith’s murder-for-hire conviction.
Beeman testified that Platt stepped forward to report that he had information related to Smith. But the former investigator said he didn’t want Platt to be involved in the Smith case since Platt at the time was supposed to be focusing on helping with a separate investigation targeting white supremacist gangs.
“On his own accord he was acting as an informant who was not doing as he was told,” Beeman said of Platt.
Asked about a monitored phone call in which Smith told Platt he was highlighted DNA evidence was going to be reviewed since he believed it would exonerate him in the murder case, Beeman noted that that inmates know calls are recorded and therefore avoid professing their guilt.
Asked why information related to Platt wasn’t turned over to Smith’s attorneys, Beeman said the only thing he could think of was “human error.”
“Everything was booked into evidence as it should have been,” Beeman said. “I assumed they had everything.”
Beeman worked closely with members of the now-defunct “special-handling” unit, whose deputies were at the heart of the Orange County jailhouse informant scandal in which in-custody snitches were strategically placed to wrongfully obtain incriminating statements from targeted inmates. Beeman was also involved in a later scandal involving deputies recording attorney-client jail calls, with documents showing that on multiple occasions he listened to unauthorized recordings of calls.
Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, who uncovered the informant scandal, is now representing Smith. Sanders is seeking to have the charges Smith is facing dismissed, alleging that the actions of former prosecutor Baytieh and others rise to outrageous government misconduct.
The Orange County District Attorney’s Office has described the allegations raised by Sanders as being part of a personal vendetta against the former prosecutor. Prosecutors argue the allegations have no bearing on whether Smith can receive a fair trial.
Since Baytieh is now an Orange County Superior Court judge, the case has been transferred to San Diego County Superior Court. A San Diego judge on Monday agreed to hold a special evidentiary hearing regarding the allegations raised by Sanders.
During questioning by Sanders, Beeman described knowing little about the snitch scandal, explaining he didn’t pay attention to news coverage and read only “snippets” of a state Department of Justice report. Asked what training he had received about the use of jailhouse informants, Beeman noted that at one point Baytieh himself had provided training to Beeman and other sheriff investigators.
Sanders has argued that if the recording of Platt had been made public earlier, the network of informants within the Orange County jails could have come down. The recording reportedly confirmed that three informants — including Platt — were used against Smith, not a single informant that Smith’s initial defense team was told of.
Baytieh — who may be called to testify during the evidentiary hearings — has previously said that he himself didn’t know about the Platt recording until 2019, nearly a decade after Smith’s conviction.
Baytieh was terminated by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office after the office conducted an independent probe of his conduct. But Baytieh’s supporters say he was actually fired for acting as a whistleblower regarding racially charged comments Spitzer made in an unrelated double-murder case.
Testimony in the evidentiary hearing is scheduled to resume on Monday. It will likely continue sporadically, to accommodate the judge and attorneys’ schedules.
