Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens must come to court to explain her department’s role in the misuse of jailhouse informants and the shredding of potential evidence, a judge declared Thursday June 8.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals said Hutchens “needs to testify” at a special hearing underway to determine if informant-related evidence was destroyed or withheld.

California Deputy Attorney General Mike Murphy said that he would call Hutchens as a witness in the hearing, a spinoff in the case of mass murderer Scott Dekraai, who pleaded guilty to killing eight people in a 2011 shooting rampage at a Seal Beach hair salon.

Depending on what he finds during the special hearing, Goethals has said he might take the death penalty off the table and sentence Dekraai to life in prison without parole.

Scott Dekraai listens as his attorney Scott Sanders speaks during the evidentiary hearing in Santa Ana on Thursday, June 8, 2017. (Photo by Sam Gangwer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders holds a thick document, the Orange County Sheriff’s speical handling log, as he questions Sheriff’s Lt. Lane Lagaret in the evidentiary hearing in the Scott Dekraai case in Santa Ana on Thursday, June 8, 2017. (Photo by Sam Gangwer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Orange County Sheriff’s Media Relations officer, Lt. Lane Lagaret testifies in the evidentiary hearing in the Scott Dekraai case in Santa Ana on Thursday, June 8, 2017. (Photo by Sam Gangwer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

confessed mass murderer Scott Dekraai, left, looks on as Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, right, questions Orange County Sheriff’s Media Relations officer, Lt. Lane Lagaret in the evidentiary hearing in the Dekraai case Thursday in Santa Ana on Thursday, June 8, 2017. (Photo by Sam Gangwer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Judge Thomas Goethals informs attorneys he expects Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens to be called to testify sometimes in the next few weeks in the evidentiary hearing in the Scott Dekraai case in Santa Ana on Thursday, June 8, 2017. (Photo by Sam Gangwer, Orange County Register/SCNG)



Judge Thomas Goethals listens to testimony by Lt. Lane Lagaret of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department during the evidentiary hearing in the Scott Dekraai case in Santa Ana on Thursday, June 8, 2017. (Photo by Sam Gangwer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Orange County Sheriff’s Media Relations officer, Lt. Lane Lagaret holds up his fingers to describe the thickness of a document as he testifies in the evidentiary hearing in the Scott Dekraai case in Santa Ana on Thursday, June 8, 2017. (Photo by Sam Gangwer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Orange County Sheriff’s Media Relations officer, Lt. Lane Lagaret testifies in the evidentiary hearing in the Scott Dekraai case in Santa Ana on Thursday, June 8, 2017. (Photo by Sam Gangwer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

After several days of testimony, an argument is taking shape pitting higher-ranking sheriff’s administrators against a small group of rank-and-file deputies who worked in the jail’s “special handling” unit, cultivating jailhouse informants to illegally coax confessions from targeted inmates. It is illegal to use informants on defendants who have been formally charged and are represented by attorneys.

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Did Orange County Sheriff’s Department shred jailhouse informant documents? Hearing focuses on that question During testimony on Wednesday and early Thursday, Sheriff’s brass blamed the misdeeds in the jail primarily on two deputies, William Grover and Seth Tunstall. Both men, along with Deputy Ben Garcia, face criminal charges that they lied in previous testimony concerning the existence of informant-related records at Orange County Jail. All three are the subjects of an internal affairs investigation and have invoked their right not to testify for fear of incriminating themselves in this new hearing.

Lt. Brent Benson testified that three years ago, when he was a sergeant who ran the special handling unit, he moved Grover out of the unit after Grover failed to read material given to him about the law pertaining to informants and providing evidence to defense attorneys. Benson also complained that Grover kept a combination lock on a desk drawer in the office and refused his orders to remove it.

Lt. Benson, like other Sheriff’s brass, also testified he knew nothing of the deputies’ activities and never read a computerized log used by the deputies to record their interaction with informants. Among those who also said they didn’t read the log were the sergeant who ordered its creation, another sergeant who ordered that it be discontinued, and the lieutenant in charge of giving information about the sheriff’s department to the public.

“I didn’t have time,” said Lt. Lane Legaret, the department’s public information officer.

While sergeants and other administrators in charge of the special handling unit at various times also said they didn’t know that deputies were handling informants, even though they sat six feet away, other evidence was introduced suggesting the informant program was known by higher-ranking members of the department.

An intradepartment memo written in 2007 congratulated deputies at another Orange County jail, Theo Lacy in Orange, for cultivating informants. And a 2009 memo approved by then Assistant Sheriff Mike James allowed a Santa Ana informant to be used to get taped statements from an inmate.

Deputy Zachery Bieker — an undercover detective who worked for the special handling unit – testified that supervisor approval was indeed needed to house an informant next to an inmate in a wired cell — which was done in the Dekraai case.

Bieker, who worked from 2011 to 2013 as a special handling deputy, initially invoked the 5th amendment but testified after he was granted immunity from the use of his statements in any possible prosecution.

A frequent contributor to the special handling log, Bieker said, “We couldn’t just go in there and move people around…it would have to go through the proper channels.”

At one point, as Judge Goethals peppered him with questions, Bieker began to hedge.

“Deputy, you understand you’re under oath, right? This is serious business we’re engaged in, right?” Goethals asked.

Finally, Bieker acknowledged that Grover and Garcia “potentially moved people, maybe not personally or knowingly, next to other people…moving people to different places, knowing (using) the informant could potentially be in violation.”

The hearing resumes Tuesday.