Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas is assembling a committee of legal experts to review his office’s use of jailhouse informants, following numerous allegations of systematic misconduct.

“I think it’s important to have an objective and expert external committee with different points of view to thoroughly review and analyze the issues regarding the use of in-custody informants so we can improve the program and avoid any future mistakes,” Rackauckas said.

In recent months, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office has been criticized by local defense attorneys and national legal experts because of its handling of jailhouse snitches and, in some cases, failing to disclose evidence to defense lawyers.

The committee’s findings, due by the end of the year, will be released publicly, Rackauckas said.

The five-member panel includes retired Orange County Superior Court Judge Jim Smith, retired Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney Patrick Dixon, former Orange County Bar Association President Robert Gerard, and Blithe Leece, an attorney who specializes in legal ethics and professional responsibility. Professor Laurie Levenson of Loyola Law School, a legal scholar and ethics expert, will serve as an adviser.

Two of the five panelists are being paid, and the cost is expected to be capped at $50,000.

Members of the group said Monday they’ll take an unflinching look at the District Attorney’s Office.

“I am more than 100 percent determined to get to the bottom of this without pulling any punches whatsoever,” said Gerard, a labor and sports attorney in Newport Beach who led the Orange County Bar Association in 2003.

The committee comes after an extensive two-year probe by Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, who found police and prosecutors were routinely using a secret network of jailhouse snitches to get illegal confessions from inmates. The probe also found that prosecutors withheld material evidence from defense attorneys.

The District Attorney’s Office has been removed from the penalty phase trial of confessed mass killer Scott Dekraai, after a Superior Court judge concluded that prosecutors couldn’t protect the defendant’s rights. Dekraai gunned down his ex-wife and seven others at a Seal Beach salon in 2011.

Also, four major criminal cases – including two murder cases – have unraveled in the fallout from the snitch crisis.

And recently, an Orange County sheriff’s deputy who handled jailhouse informants has declined to testify in ongoing cases after a judge accused him of lying or withholding material evidence in a misconduct hearing.

Orange County’s legal community offered a variety of reactions to the formation of the panel and its potential impact.

Sanders said the problems were too ingrained in the department to be fixed by a paid committee.

“The law regarding informants and evidence disclosure has been well settled and understood for decades. Those laws have been ignored because of a culture that overvalues winning,” Sanders said. “Changes in procedures – although welcomed – will not remedy this fundamental problem.”

Kate Corrigan, a prominent Newport Beach defense attorney, called the panel “the first significant and meaningful action that the OCDA’s office has taken to address the jailhouse informant problem.”

“It is my hope that the committee will be given unlimited and full access to files, records and information,” Corrigan said, adding that she hopes the panel will interview the attorneys and investigators who worked with informants.

Rackauckas in the past year conducted an in-house investigation into his prosecutors’ use of jailhouse informants and its effects on the rights of defendants.

Under federal law, prosecutors and police cannot use jailhouse informants to question defendants who have been formally charged and have retained legal representation. But the Orange County District Attorney’s Office has been accused of violating that rule routinely in recent years.

Rackauckas’ investigation resulted in changes in personnel, policy and procedures to better track the use of informants and ensure that no violations of defendants’ rights occur in the future, the agency said.

The changes include new leadership and the addition of staff to the gang unit. Rackauckas also is heading a new internal committee to oversee the use of in-custody informants in criminal cases.

Meanwhile, the office has updated its informant policy manual to establish new guidelines.

Among the changes, the office is going to ensure it has all the information from police on the informants before using them, Rackauckas said in an interview.

“We’re not going to just take cases from task forces that we don’t have all the information,” he said.

“An investigator isn’t going to talk a deputy (prosecutor) into doing something he probably shouldn’t do.”

Tom Dominguez, president of the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, said both deputies and prosecutors need more training in the use of in-custody informants.

“Dealing with jailhouse informants is a very complex and involved process,“ Dominguez said.

“Deputies involved in the recent motion were not investigators, but rank-and-file deputies who were taking direction from the U.S. Attorney’s Office as well as the District Attorney. The deputies … did their best to comply with the direction they were given.”