In a rare move, District Attorney Jeff Rosen has fired a longtime Santa Clara County prosecutor after concluding that she committed an “outrageous abuse” of her power by pressuring police to arrest her husband’s ex-wife.

Deputy district attorney Lisa Rogers was notified of her firing last week after being put on paid administrative leave in February, according to a 32-page termination notice released by the county counsel’s office. The move is the climax of a series of controversies involving Rogers, who has been accused repeatedly of distorting the truth and other misconduct over the past decade, and was disciplined on five other occasions.

In the most recent case, Rogers sought to get her husband’s ex-wife, Lauren Herbstman, arrested and prosecuted for second-degree felony robbery of a cellphone. A conviction could have carried a five-year prison sentence. But law enforcement officials in Contra Costa County decided not to prosecute the incident, which occurred when Herbstman grabbed her ex-husband’s cellphone during a contentious dispute.

With the firing, Rosen demonstrated again that he is taking a hard line on discipline that in many respects exceeds that of his predecessors. The DA campaigned on an ethics platform after a series of scandals involving prosecutors who sought to win cases by ignoring judges’ orders, improperly withholding evidence and committing other missteps.

Last year, he yanked an attorney off a major gang case for improperly withholding crucial evidence from the defense until the brink of trial, and is still weighing whether to discipline that prosecutor further. Sixteen prosecutors have left since Rosen took office in 2011.

Rosen and other officials in the DA’s Office declined to comment on the action against Rogers, as did Herbstman and her attorney Diane Morin.

In a brief statement shortly before she was fired, Rogers said she’s had a “successful and rewarding 13-year career” in the District Attorney’s Office. “I have not misused my official position in any way. I need to protect my stepson and husband, not fight a custody dispute in the press. If you don’t understand the policy on use of official position I urge you to contact the SCC GAA (Santa Clara County Government Attorneys Association).”

The union would not comment.

This newspaper pieced together what happened largely through the termination notice and a review of seven volumes of court documents related to the custody battle between Rogers’ then-fiance Adam Blum, whom she married in late October, and ex-wife Herbstman over the former spouses’ 7-year-old son. Blum is the former CEO of San Jose-based Rhomobile, which was sold to Motorola Solutions in late July for what an analyst at C.L. King & Associates estimated was about $20 million.

The investigation of Rogers started in fall 2011, according to the termination notice, after Herbstman’s attorney Morin complained to the Santa Clara County DA’s Office that Rogers had injected herself into the high-conflict custody wrangle and was using her position in the DA’s Office to try to influence the situation. At the time, Rogers was handling domestic violence cases and was engaged to Blum.

Morin levied several accusations, including that Rogers improperly used her title as a “DA” in September 2011 in an effort to influence a Santa Cruz County sheriff’s deputy who was investigating a complaint by Herbstman concerning the visitation return date of her son. Morin also contended Rogers abused her authority by refusing to give the custodial mother — Herbstman — the engaged couple’s new address, where the son was routinely taken, on the grounds it was “protected” because of Rogers’ job. Morin contended Rogers was misrepresenting the law.

It wasn’t the first time Rogers was accused of making misrepresentations.

In 2003, then-Public Defender Jose Villareal took the rare step of writing a detailed letter to then-DA George Kennedy claiming Rogers had “misrepresented information” to judges and/or defense attorneys on four occasions. Rogers was investigated by the District Attorney’s Office and orally counseled in 2004 regarding her “failure to meet office standards of honesty and truthfulness,” according to an internal report released by the county Personnel Board after Rogers appealed a later disciplinary action in late 2010.

The report also noted Rogers had been passed over for a promotion in 2001 because of a “history of conflicts with the attorneys, support staff and the court, including the fact that commissioners had expressed concern about your conduct at times.” In 2002, she was counseled for wrongfully accusing a defense attorney of a crime and violating a court order.

A source close to the 2004 investigation said prosecutors did not fire her after Villareal’s letter because they were worried they could find themselves in a dispute over the Americans with Disabilities Act. Rogers is deaf in one ear and has limited hearing in the other. At the time, the office was paying at least $60,000 a year for her real-time captioner, and it had just lost a lawsuit that sought to force the state Superior Court to assume that financial burden. Another factor, the source said, was the likelihood that the county Personnel Board could reinstate Rogers, allowing her to collect back pay for all the time she was off pending the hearing.

Rogers also was orally counseled in 2007 for failing to turn over key information about a case to the defense, leaving the judge with the impression she was not truthful and prompting him to dismiss a felony case. After more recent complaints about Rogers from defense attorneys, then-District Attorney Dolores Carr in late 2010 suspended her for a week for “incompetence” and “gross misconduct,” according to the report released by the Personnel Board. Rogers appealed her suspension to the board, and a hearing is set for May.

According to the report, Rogers was suspended for behavior in connection with two of her cases — and warned that further incidents could result in her termination.

In one case, she made “implied accusations” to a judge that a young, inexperienced public defender had harassed a crime lab analyst on the telephone to the point where the “hysterical” analyst had called Rogers “in tears.” But the analyst recalled the exchange with the public defender was “pleasant,” the report states, adding that the office could not “confidently rely on your (Rogers’) credibility.”

In the other matter, the report concludes Rogers had responded to a not-guilty verdict in a misdemeanor case by ripping up a trial exhibit in front of the jury and berating jurors in a raised voice outside the courtroom for their decision. The account was corroborated by a law clerk and a deputy sheriff assigned to the courts.

Last fall, Morin’s complaint led DA investigators to begin looking into her accusations that Rogers was misusing her position. The lawyer said police officers in San Jose and Danville had been called to the scene of several arguments, allegedly among Blum, Herbstman and Rogers, over visitation arrangements for the child. No arrests came of the calls.

On Oct. 15, another confrontation occurred among the threesome — at an elementary school carnival in Danville.

According to court documents and the termination notice, the clash was over Blum’s cellphone. He and Rogers claimed Herbstman grabbed the phone and threw it down because he was using it to videotape her; Herbstman contends she grabbed it and then handed it back because he had earlier shoved it into her face, bruising her cheek.

Based on the events at the carnival, Blum urged an officer in a telephone call to arrest Herbstman for battery in connection with the cellphone incident. When the officer said the incident was at most vandalism, Rogers “suddenly” got on the phone, identified herself as a Santa Clara County prosecutor, demanded Herbstman be arrested for robbery and “bullied” the officer for about five minutes when he disagreed, according to the termination notice. A conviction could have gone down on Herbstman’s record as a strike under California’s Three Strikes law.

But Danville police decided not to arrest Herbstman after interviewing her and viewing the video Rogers had taken. Police presented their report for review to the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office, and the office also rejected the case after several prosecutors reviewed it, according to Doug McMaster, a senior deputy DA there. Rosen’s office was then notified by Contra Costa County about the “impropriety,” according to the termination notice.

After reviewing the incident with the other law enforcement agencies, the Santa Clara County DA’s Office came to believe Rogers had improperly invoked her position in urging the arrest of someone her husband was battling in a custody dispute. That was an “outrageous” abuse of authority, partly because prosecutors are not permitted to press police for special treatment ordinary citizens would not enjoy. The termination notice also concluded that Rogers misrepresented the carnival incident in a written declaration to the family court judge to benefit Blum’s child-custody case.

Rogers, 48, has petitioned the county’s Personnel Board to reinstate her, though a hearing might not be held for a year or longer. Her attorney has contended her firing is based on retaliation, disparate treatment and discrimination, according to the termination notice.

More is at stake for Rogers than the loss of her $142,328 salary and reputation. She will still be able to draw a pension at age 50 even if the county’s Personnel Board sides with Rosen on her termination, county officials said. But she would lose a valuable county perk — virtually free post-retirement medical benefits for life.

Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482.