The husband of a woman killed by confessed mass murderer Scott Dekraai said in court Monday that Orange County Sheriff’s officials should be held “accountable” for their role in misusing jailhouse informants and delaying Dekraai’s sentencing for years.

Paul Wilson, whose wife, Christy, was among 8 people killed by Dekraai at a Seal Beach hair salon in 2011, offered his statement minutes after a retired sheriff’s sergeant testified that he knew nothing about deputies’ use of informants, despite leading that department for 15 months.

“The testimony we’ve heard in here from people who knew exactly what they were doing is pathetic,” an emotional Wilson told Judge Thomas Goethals.

Wilson also said he would prefer that Goethals spare Dekraai the death penalty and, instead, sentence him to eight consecutive life terms with no possible parole. Such a sentence would end the proceedings and, Wilson said, allow victims’ families to move on from the Dekraai trial.

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Seal Beach shootings 5 years later: Dekraai still in limbo as case rocks legal system Wilson’s comments came during a special hearing on whether sheriff’s officials illegally shredded documents that indicated the department withheld evidence and misused jailhouse informants to coax confessions from inmates with attorneys. At least a half-dozen cases in Orange County have been changed because of problems with jailhouse informants, withholding evidence from defense attorneys, or both.

Retired Sgt. Raymond Wert initially invoked the 5th amendment not to incriminate himself, but testified after being offered immunity from prosecution by the state Attorney General’s Office.

Wert, who is the subject of an internal affairs investigation, testified that he knew deputies kept computer logs that detailed the use of informants. However, Wert said he never read the logs in his 15 months as their supervisor — even as he ordered that the record keeping be discontinued.

Wert issued the order to discontinue the log days after a local prosecutor sent an email to sheriff’s officials, telling them that he believed Goethals soon would order the department to turn over all informant-related documents. Goethals, in fact, issued that order two days after Wert told deputies to stop recording the details of how they used informants in the computer log.

Wert said efficiency, not a pending order from Goethals, prompted him to tell the deputies to simply talk to each other instead of memorializing their informant use in the logs.

Goethals was incredulous that Wert never took the time to read those logs, or to sort out the details of the way deputies were using informants.

“You were too busy to pay attention to what the (deputies were) doing?” Goethals asked rhetorically.

Wert also testified that he learned some deputies said they would not tell the court, even under oath, about a computer record known as TRED, which tracked the movement of inmates within the jail. Wert said he reached out to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office to train those deputies in what they needed to disclose.

Despite that training, the deputies later failed to say anything about the TRED records, or the special handling logs, when asked about their use of informants. That lack of candor eventually prompted Goethals to remove the district attorney from the penalty phase of Dekraai’s trial. The state Attorney General now is prosecuting the case.

In other testimony, Commander John Briggs — who was in charge of deputies at the jail — became the first sheriff’s official to concede that “deputy sheriff’s spent a great deal of their time cultivating and utilizing informants.”

Briggs said he arrived at his conclusion by recently reading the logs kept by deputies on informants from 2008 to 2013. However, Briggs testified that he hasn’t shared his conclusions with Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, who has insisted the department does not have a jailhouse informant program despite rulings from several courts and the conclusion of the Fourth District Court of Appeals that informant misuse is “systemic” in Orange County.

Briggs is expected to return to the witness stand Tuesday.