Judge: Convicted killer Wozniak’s defense can hunt for jailhouse recording

An Orange County judge Tuesday said he would allow the defense attorney for convicted murderer Daniel Wozniak to continue searching for a possible recorded conversation between Wozniak and a jailhouse informant, despite prosecutors’ insistence that there’s no such tape, and if there were, it would be irrelevant to the case.

Arguments over the existence of the recording are the latest impediment to official sentencing for Wozniak, a Costa Mesa resident who was convicted last year of two counts of murder for the 2010 killings of Army veteran Sam Herr, 26, and his friend Juri “Julie” Kibuishi, 23.

In January, a jury recommended the death penalty for Wozniak, 31, but his official sentencing date next week is in danger of being delayed as the case turns into an examination of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s record-keeping practices.

Read the latest headlines from the Daily Pilot >>

Wozniak’s attorney, public defender Scott Sanders, alleges the Sheriff’s Department can’t be trusted to turn over evidence that defendants are entitled to see before trial — especially as it relates to jailhouse informants. He plans to ask a judge to throw out the death penalty or grant a new trial based on those allegations.

Last week, a sheriff’s sergeant and commander revealed under Sanders’ questioning that a group of deputies kept a secret log of their interactions with jailhouse informants between 2008 and 2013.

On Friday, after Sanders questioned whether deputies may still be holding back information, Superior Court Judge John Conley ordered eight deputies to turn over any more notes, recordings or other documents they may have related to Wozniak and Fernando Perez, a prolific informant with whom Wozniak spoke while in Orange County Jail.

On Tuesday, the Sheriff’s Department turned over more documents and a handful of recorded jailhouse phone calls and interviews.

As Sanders questioned the same sheriff’s sergeant Tuesday on how she discovered the new batch of information, he seized on a sentence in her notes that said one of the deputies who worked with informants had a “flash drive with Perez and Wozniak conversations.”

Sanders argued that this meant the flash drive must contain a recorded conversation between Perez and Wozniak, but such a conversation wasn’t included in the materials the department turned over.

Prosecutors said Sanders was misinterpreting the note, which they said likely referred to separate conversations involving Wozniak and Perez.

“There are no recordings of Perez and Wozniak,” prosecutor Matt Murphy said. “He’s spinning that.”

In addition, Murphy said, prosecutors never used any information gathered through informants at Wozniak’s trial, so anything Sanders would discover from such a recording would be unimportant.

“The concealment of evidence always is important,” Sanders countered.

Conley called the notes’ wording ambiguous, and he too questioned whether any recording would have affected the trial.

Nevertheless, he ordered the Sheriff’s Department to return Thursday with the original flash drive so he could review it.

“I am very reluctant to leave that stone unturned having no idea what’s under it,” he said.

--

[email protected]

Twitter: @jeremiahdobruck