State GOP official files ethics complaint against O.C. district attorney
Republican National Committee treasurer goes to the state bar, saying Tony Rackauckas and his spokeswoman misrepresented facts in letters concerning an inmate's parole.
A state Republican party official who accused Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas and spokeswoman Susan Kang Schroeder of engaging in a political vendetta against him has filed an ethics complaint against them with the state bar.
The dispute stems from a letter written in 2005 by Timothy J. Morgan, treasurer of the Republican National Committee and a former committeeman from Santa Cruz, to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supporting parole for Paul A. Guardado, who is serving 17 years to life for a 1979 killing in Westminster.
The letter was written on the committee's letterhead and led to a proposed resolution against Morgan at the state GOP convention in Anaheim over the weekend.
Ethics complaint: An article in Tuesday's California section about Timothy J. Morgan filing an ethics complaint with the State Bar of California against Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas and his spokeswoman, Susan Kang Schroeder, identified Morgan as a state Republican Party official. Morgan lost his position in the state GOP earlier this year.
Rackauckas and Schroeder are both Republicans, and she is the wife of Michael Schroeder, former state party chairman. Morgan, an attorney, was rules committee chairman for the California Republican Party when Michael Schroeder was its head. The two men had a falling out over how to spend party money.
When Guardado had a court-ordered parole hearing in August, Rackauckas wrote to Morgan asking him to withdraw his support for the inmate.
The state board denied Guardado's bid for parole then and again last week when he had his scheduled 2008 hearing.
Before the August hearing, Rackauckas' office released copies of his letter to Morgan and Morgan's letter on behalf of Guardado. Rackauckas chided Morgan for not contacting him and said Guardado was unremorseful and unwilling to assume responsibility for the killing.
The district attorney said Guardado shot Steven A. Buus, but in a seven-page letter to Rackauckas, Morgan quoted from a federal court finding that Guardado was convicted of aiding and abetting the killing.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Chrisopoulos, who attended last week's hearing, said even though witnesses did not see Guardado fire a weapon, there was circumstantial evidence that he did, and he was convicted of using a firearm in the commission of a crime. An accomplice was convicted of shooting Buus with a shotgun.
Morgan's letter to the district attorney, which he sent Friday and made available to The Times, accused Rackauckas and his spokeswoman of misrepresenting the facts of the case in an attempt to affect the outcome of the parole hearing.
He noted that a federal judge found that Guardado had expressed remorse and admitted guilt.
