Santa Clara County civil grand jury makes formal corruption accusations against sheriff

Jurors investigated questions over Sheriff Laurie Smith’s concealed-gun permit practices and jail mismanagement raised by the board of supervisors; jury has unique authority to initiate the forced removal of an elected official Santa Clara County civil grand jury makes formal corruption accusations against sheriff

Jurors investigated questions over Sheriff Laurie Smith’s concealed-gun permit practices and jail mismanagement raised by the board of supervisors; jury has unique authority to initiate the forced removal of an elected official

SAN JOSE — Santa Clara County’s civil grand jury has taken a dramatic step that could lead to the removal of Sheriff Laurie Smith following the panel’s investigation into allegations of corruption and jail mismanagement in the last half of her two-decade tenure.

The jury dropped its bombshell Tuesday, filing an official declaration in Superior Court accusing Smith of seven corruption-related acts. Six involve ongoing criminal indictments alleging Smith engaged in political favoritism and traded favors by leveraging her control over issuing concealed-carry weapons permits. The seventh accuses her of failing to cooperate with the county law-enforcement auditor in an investigation into negligence allegations stemming from a 2018 jail inmate’s injury that led to a $10 million county settlement.

Smith has been ordered to appear in court Jan. 12. Her personal attorney, Allen Ruby, said Tuesday evening that the sheriff, who repeatedly has denied the accusations, defended her performance and rejected calls for her resignation, plans to formally object to the accusation, which would prompt a civil trial on the matter.

Smith has not formally announced her intention to run for re-election next year, though she is widely expected to vie for a seventh term as the state’s first woman sheriff.

The civil grand jury has unique authority in the county to launch formal processes that could lead to the forced removal of an elected official, including the sheriff. The jury began investigating the sheriff’s office in October following a request by the Board of Supervisors, which this fall passed a vote of “no confidence” in Smith, who was first elected in 1998.

Because the jury serves calendar-year terms, the panel had to complete its investigation and formalize its conclusion in about two months.

District Attorney Jeff Rosen, whose office has been prosecuting two of Smith’s commanders in a criminal corruption indictment, said late Tuesday: “It’s a sad day for Santa Clara County and for the women and men who proudly wear the badge.”

Supervisors Joe Simitian and Otto Lee spearheaded an Aug. 17 board referral that called attention to past and potential high-figure settlements paid to mentally ill people who were severely injured while in county jail custody. That includes the 2018 case of Andrew Hogan, whose serious, unattended injuries that he inflicted on himself in a jail-transport van led to a $10 million county settlement for him and his family.

“All you can be is sad that it came to this,” Simitian said. “This is the process working as it should. Significant issues have been raised, and now there will be a venue in which the civil grand jury’s accusations can be heard.”

Simitian and Lee were joined by their three board colleagues in approving the referral, which directed the county to publicly release previously confidential records in the Hogan case and spurred a new review of the case by the county’s civilian law enforcement auditor. The referral requested outside investigations by the civil grand jury, the state Attorney General’s Office, the state Fair Political Practices Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice.

But the civil grand jury’s corruption accusations ended up revolving almost entirely around the referral’s references to two criminal corruption indictments that ensnared two of Smith’s top commanders, her undersheriff and a captain who doubled as a close adviser. The indictments allege that the pair conspired with Smith’s political supporters and a fundraiser to broker concealed-gun permits — signed by Smith — in exchange for political donations and favors.

The prosecutions of those cases were hit with notable setbacks this past year, with the dismissal of charges against a key defendant in each of the two related indictments. Still, four defendants including the commanders remain on the case, and several people who implicated the sheriff’s office have pleaded guilty to bribery-related charges and are cooperating with prosecutors in exchange for lighter sentences.

The civil grand jury reviewed several of the allegations originally made in the indictments but reached agreement on accusations — including a perjury allegation — for just one specific reported incident that was the subject of testimony to the criminal grand jury. That incident involved allegations that Smith directed a staff member to purchase low-priced tickets to a February 2019 San Jose Sharks game, presumably to mask her use of a donor and gun-permit recipient’s luxury suite and circumvent state gift-reporting laws.

In the formal accusation filed Tuesday, a list of the more than 60 witnesses called showed that the civil grand jury retraced many of the steps of the criminal grand jury proceedings in the summer and fall of 2020 that led to the concealed-weapons permits indictments, interviewing investigators, prosecutors and key witnesses.

Ruby suggested Tuesday that the civil grand jury’s findings might have been expected because such bodies are not typically convened to clear the person being probed. He pointed to questions that the civil grand jury dismissed, which alleged her direct involvement in the permit scandal, and how in the filing they were literally crossed out in pen and denoted with the word “No.”

“The most striking thing about this work by the grand jury is that they completely exonerated the sheriff on these accusations the district attorney has thrown around for years, with regards to illicit dealings with the gun permits. The fact the grand jury saw through that and said descriptively said ‘No’ says volumes,” Ruby said. “The sheriff looks ahead to the rest of the accusations being put to rest and appreciates the work the grand jury has done so far.”

Regarding the Hogan case, the supervisors’ referral insinuated that political maneuvering may have stymied an internal investigation into how Hogan’s crisis was handled and was behind an absence of any significant discipline in the case. A watch commander on the scene was the president of the correctional officers union, which backed Smith’s successful 2018 re-election bid for a sixth term.

Two weeks later, Simitian and Supervisor Susan Ellenberg were joined by the rest of the board in approving a symbolic no-confidence vote in Smith and her running of the jails, which her office has overseen for over a decade after taking the reins from the county department of correction.

The county’s Office of County Law Enforcement Monitoring said it has been in a stalemate with Smith’s office over records access. On Nov. 24, monitor Michael Gennaco informed the supervisors in a letter that his firm, OIR Group, had issued subpoenas to get additional information about the Hogan response.

The jury was guided by an assistant district attorney from San Francisco County, appointed by the Superior Court to remove a potential conflict. The Santa Clara County Counsel’s Office, which serves as the attorney for the Board of Supervisors, typically advises civil grand juries.

The process of removing municipal and county elected officials from office through a grand jury accusation alleging “corrupt or willful misconduct” is rarely used, although permitted by a 1943 state law. In the Bay Area, the most recent case stemming from a grand jury accusation was that of Contra Costa County Assessor Gus Kramer, who faced trial after the civil grand jury filed charges against him of “willful or corrupt” misconduct after people who worked in his office accused him of sexual and racist comments.

A judge in that case, however, declared a mistrial, and Kramer kept his job after the trial jurors couldn’t all agree whether most of the allegations constituted workplace harassment under state law or whether he should be booted from office.

Tuesday night, reactions to the civil grand jury started pouring in from local leaders including San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo — who this fall called for Smith’s resignation — and two sheriff’s office veterans vying to replace her.

“The civil grand jury has spoken,” Liccardo said in a statement. “Sheriff Smith need not wait for the decision of a criminal grand jury to resign.”

Kevin Jensen, a retired sheriff’s captain who challenged Smith in the 2014 election, said in a statement that “what has transpired for so long has caused much pain. Our community deserves so much better. My voice joined many other courageous voices over the past 10 years in calling for positive change.”

Sheriff’s Sgt. Christine Nagaye, who has served in the custody division for two decades, added herself to the chorus of resignation calls for her boss.

“I would call on Sheriff Laurie Smith to resign in light of these latest allegations … It’s the right thing to do for the residents of Santa Clara County. And it will be the first step in restoring the reputation of the office I have served for the better part of 20 years.”

San Jose Mercury News
By ROBERT SALONGA
December 14, 2021