Published: December 10, 2008
By Nicholas Grube
Triplicate staff writer
In December 2005, Karen Olson testified against her boss during a local grand jury investigation.
At the time she was the second-highest-ranking prosecutor in Del Norte County and her superior was District Attorney Mike Riese.
She told the grand jury what she knew about Riese's handling of a financial elder abuse case in which he dismissed felony charges against the defendants in exchange for more than $400,000 in restitution, $100,000 of which went toward his office's budget.
The grand jury later admonished Riese for that, but he was not charged with a crime.
Olson also testified about her knowledge of Riese's billing practices when it came to seeking reimbursement from the state for managing Pelican Bay State Prison cases.
It is this testimony that Olson points to in a recently filed wrongful termination lawsuit as a significant turning point in her working relationship with Riese and as the beginning of the end of her employment in the District Attorney's Office.
She claims in her lawsuit filed in Del Norte County Superior Court that when Riese found out about her testimony, he told her that "her disloyalty would not go unanswered" and he then "set into motion a shocking and deplorable sequence of events aimed to maliciously discredit" Olson and "cause irreparable injury to her reputation."
Riese calls Olson's legal action nothing more than a series of personal attacks against him, some of which might cause the district attorney to go on the offensive.
"Anybody can make any allegation," Riese said. "She'll have to prove her allegations in court. And because her allegations are slanderous and libelous in nature with no merit, and she knows that, I plan on filing a suit against her."
Riese denied all the allegations in the lawsuit, but declined to address them in detail.
"Ms. Olson just wants to attack me because she was fired," he said.
In Olson's 46-page complaint, accompanied by more than 50 pages of exhibits, she alleges everything from wrongful termination to civil conspiracy. She contends Riese plotted to have her fired and to defame her. Among other things, she claims he confiscated her computer and planted incriminating documents on it, and urged the California Highway Patrol to investigate her as the person who leaked information to a suspect in an unsolved two-year-old fatal hit-and-run case.
"This is a fellow who has decided he is going to make his own law and make the rules up as he goes," said Olson's attorney, Michael Rains of Pleasant Hill. "Rather than being the district attorney, I think he's proclaimed himself the king."
While the lawsuit against Riese and the county seeks an indeterminate amount of monetary damages, Rains — whose list of clients also includes former San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds — said it's more important to inform the public about Riese's alleged improprieties and hold him accountable.
"What we hope to achieve," Rains said, "is an airing of these events in a forum where we have a fair opportunity to tell the county what kind of man this is."
He added that this is what his client attempted to do while she was the chief deputy district attorney, but when she tried to blow the whistle she was systematically retaliated against.
The lawsuit states that while Olson was on maternity leave in 2006 and again less than a year later when she was placed on administrative leave, Riese told one of his investigators to take her computer to the Northern California Computer Crimes Task Force in Humboldt County to do a forensic examination of the hard drive "for the purpose of finding evidence of criminal activity."
Olson claims that before these incidents, the hard drive of her work computer was swapped with another one that contained many documents that were "hidden," meaning the files were not visible to her.
Rains said that both times Riese ordered these technological audits he was on a "fishing expedition" searching for a reason to fire Olson. He added that the only way Riese could have the authority to have the Computer Crimes Task Force do this was by claiming Olson was performing criminal activities using her computer.
"That was the only way Mike Riese could get the forensic analysis done," Rains said. "He had to allege some violations of the law or they (the Computer Crimes Task Force) weren't going to do it."
Another instance of alleged reprisal came when Riese linked Olson's name to a leak in a hit-and-run fatality investigation.
In August 2007, California Highway Patrol officials revealed a person involved in law enforcement notified the only suspect in the Josh Lacy case that he was the focus of the investigation.
Lacy was a 15-year-old Del Norte High School student who struck and killed by a vehicle while he was crossing U.S. Highway 101 in January 2007. The person who was behind the wheel is still a mystery.
According to Olson's complaint, Riese, with the help of the Del Norte County Sheriff's Office, told California Highway Patrol investigators that she informed a suspect about "case sensitive information" that could have hindered the investigation.
In the lawsuit, Olson claims that this suspect's testimony during a termination appeal hearing contradicted what was in the report forwarded to the California Highway Patrol, and that she "did not give him any case sensitive information."
Riese placed Olson on administrative leave in May 2007 shortly after The Triplicate published stories regarding her attempt to dismiss a colleague's speeding ticket. Shortly after that, he informed her of his notice to terminate her employment.
Olson fought her firing, and the county held an informal hearing regarding her termination over the summer. Her termination was upheld Sept. 4, 2007.
A subsequent county administrative hearing regarding Olson's termination is now under way, and a decision in this matter is pending.
Reach Nicholas Grube at ngrube@triplicate.com.
http://www.triplicate.com/news/story.cfm?story_no=11111
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