A Seal Beach murder case in which the defendant is alleging that his constitutional rights were violated has been reassigned to a judge in San Diego County.
The retrial of Paul Gentile Smith, accused of a 35-year-old murder, was reassigned to San Diego County Superior Court Judge Daniel B. Goldstein.
The change follows a new round of allegations stemming from the Orange County jail informant scandal that has raised questions about dozens of cases while also sparking a Department of Justice inquiry.
A 400-plus page motion filed Sept. 7 in the case against Smith, 63, alleged that Orange County Superior Court Judge Ebrahim Baytieh, who originally prosecuted the case, used jailhouse snitches connected to nearly 100 cases.
The order for the switch to San Diego came from Orange County Superior Court presiding Judge Maria Hernandez Wednesday.
Smith’s prior conviction was thrown out two years ago on the eve of an evidentiary hearing into alleged misconduct by a sheriff’s investigator.
In August 2022, prosecutors moved to dismiss another set of charges – to which Smith previously had pleaded guilty – for allegedly soliciting an attack on an Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigator for his work on the murder case.
Baytieh was fired by Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer in February 2022, months after allegations of misconduct in Smith’s case led Spitzer’s office to agree to a retrial for the defendant. Voters nonetheless chose the former prosecutor four months later, making him a Superior Court judge.
A Department of Justice report also cited misconduct by Baytieh – not disclosing information about an informant in Smith’s case to defense attorneys in his first trial, in 2010.
The DOJ probe was sparked by the informant scandal in the case of Scott Dekraai, the worst mass killer in the county’s history.
Sheriff’s investigators subsequently said they would invoke their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination if they were called to testify in an evidentiary hearing in the case – further contributing to the prosecutors’ decision to accede to a retrial for Smith.
Smith’s attorney, Orange County Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, is seeking an evidentiary hearing for a motion to dismiss charges for outrageous governmental conduct.
Sanders alleges that prosecutors and sheriff’s investigators illegally used jailhouse informants to pump Smith for incriminating information that was used to convict him.
Informants can be used in some cases to legally gather incriminating information, but not after defendants are represented by an attorney, as was the case with Smith. Sanders also alleges that investigators withheld evidence of the use of informants from Smith’s defense team in his earlier trial.
Smith is charged with stabbing Robert Haugen, 29, to death in Sunset Beach on Oct. 24, 1988, then setting his body ablaze.
– City News Service
