A Los Angeles County assistant district attorney who was in charge of ethics and integrity operations for the office was ordered on Tuesday, Aug. 20, to stand trial on six felony counts for alleged unauthorized use of data from confidential police officer files.
Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta dismissed two other identical felony counts against Diana Teran. Three other counts against Teran were dismissed earlier this month at the request of the California Attorney General’s Office, which is prosecuting the case.
The judge said he spent “a lot of time thinking about the law” and whether the prosecution’s theory was valid.
Teran is free on her own recognizance and due back in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom on Sept. 3.
Teran allegedly accessed computer data, including numerous confidential peace officer files, in 2018 while working as a constitutional policing adviser at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and then impermissibly used that data at the District Attorney’s Office after going to work there in January 2021, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
Teran’s attorney, James Spertus, has questioned whether it was a crime for his client to do her job, and told the judge that he disagreed with his conclusion. Outside court, he said he “absolutely” plans to ask another judge to reconsider whether there was sufficient evidence to require Teran to stand trial.
“The judge was very diligent, but I believe he misapplied the law,” Spertus said. “I don’t think it’s possible to split the ruling the way the court did.”
Former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, who was in court for the judge’s ruling, later called it “just a sad day, a sad day that someone is being prosecuted for something she did in her scope of responsibility.”
“This is a crime?” said Garcetti, who hugged Teran after the hearing.
He described her as bright, careful and ethical, noting that she had worked for him in the District Attorney’s Office before he became the county’s top prosecutor.
In 2019, then-Los Angeles County Undersheriff Tim Murakami said the agency was investigating Teran along with Inspector General Max Huntsman for allegedly accessing confidential personnel files of high-ranking sheriff’s executives, including former Sheriff Alex Villanueva.
Murakami told ABC7 at the time that Teran had downloaded the confidential personnel records on behalf of the Inspector General’s Office a few days before Villanueva was sworn into office in late 2018. Huntsman at the time denied any wrongdoing, insisting that a county ordinance afforded his office access to county employee records, and that his office kept such records confidential.
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