They lied, they changed their stories and they compared notes even after being ordered not to by a special Orange County grand jury investigating a deadly beating at Theo Lacy Jail, the testimony shows.
During 45 days of grand jury prodding, members of the Sheriff's Department repeatedly hindered the probe, according to thousands of pages of transcripts made public last week. Then-Sheriff Michael S. Carona refused to answer a single question, including whether he was the county's sheriff the day John Derek Chamberlain was killed by other inmates.
Chamberlain, a Mission Viejo computer technician who was being held on suspicion of possessing child pornography, was beaten by fellow inmates over a 50-minute period near a glass-walled guard station while the ranking jailer watched television and exchanged cellphone text messages with friends, according to the grand jury transcripts.
Although the grand jury probe did not lead to criminal charges against any sheriff's employees, the transcripts show the hurdles that prosecutors faced as Carona and his troops took the witness stand.
Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas and acting Sheriff Jack Anderson agreed that the testimony painted a deeply unsettling picture of a law enforcement agency that had broken down. One expert said the findings could erode the public's confidence in the department, the second largest in the state.
"A great part of law enforcement is public trust," said former San Francisco Police Chief Anthony D. Ribera, director of the International Institute of Criminal Justice Leadership at the University of San Francisco. "Given the awesome authority that law enforcement has in our society, the issue of integrity has to be totally part of the fabric of the organization."
The special grand jury impaneled by Rackauckas spent nine months trying to get answers in the October 2006 beating at Theo Lacy Jail in Orange. Among the questions the grand jury sought to answer was whether deputies helped instigate the attack and why the Sheriff's Department decided to take the lead in the homicide investigation -- breaking a decades-old policy under which the district attorney reviewed inmate deaths.
