ORANGE – A top official for the Orange County District Attorney’s Office had a one-word response Wednesday to widespread accusations that local prosecutors illegally use jailhouse informants and withhold evidence beneficial to the defense: “baloney.”

On the same day that a New York Times editorial called for a federal investigation into Orange County’s informant controversy, Assistant Orange County District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh conceded that his office has made mistakes in using informants and getting evidence to defense teams. But, he said, the office is trying to do better.

“The notion that there is any effort on anybody’s part, at any level, to intentionally hide evidence … is from our perspective absolutely false,” Baytieh told a packed room during a debate Wednesday on the informant issue at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law.

Countering Baytieh was veteran defense attorney Jack Earley, who pointed to a 754-page legal brief filed by a public defender citing case after case in which police and prosecutors allegedly withheld evidence or employed informants on defendants who were lawyered up, both alleged violations of constitutional rights.

Earley said the District Attorney’s Office may finally be on the right track by making changes, but that doesn’t discount decades of alleged abuse.

“I applaud they are looking at it, but they’ve had the opportunity for 30 years and didn’t do a thing,” Earley said.

Also participating were Jim Tanizaki, senior assistant district attorney, and David Swanson, a defense attorney.

Accusations of informant abuse have turned Orange County’s legal system on its head with the District Attorney’s Office – all 250 lawyers – being barred from the penalty phase of the largest mass killer case in county history. Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals ruled in March that local prosecutors couldn’t be trusted to protect the rights of confessed murderer Scott Dekraai, who killed eight people in 2011 at a Seal Beach beauty salon. Goethals turned the case over to the state Attorney General’s Office, which is appealing the decision.

Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders has documented the alleged abuses in thousands of pages of legal briefs and exhibits while defending Dekraai and double-murder defendant Daniel Wozniak. His mission: to prove that the Orange County District Attorney’s Office should not be allowed to prosecute death penalty cases.

Baytieh told the crowd of law students and law enforcement officials that justice – for all involved – and not just prosecutions are the goal of his office.

“We can do better and we are working hard at doing better,” he said.

More training on the law, better evaluation of informants, and consulting with outside experts are all part of the office’s reforms, Baytieh said.

Reforms aside, Earley said using informants is inherently dangerous because of the incentive to lie on the witness stand.

“Are you going to trust them to tell the truth when the golden ball is there, their freedom is there?” he said.