First Amendment Protected Prosecutor’s Speech Alleging Wrongdoing By Deputy Sheriff

Richard Ceballos has been a deputy district attorney since 1989. In 1997 or 1998 he was assigned to the District Attorney's Office's Pomona Branch and about a year later was promoted to calendar deputy, with supervisory responsibilities over two to three deputy district attorneys. In late February 2000, a defense attorney in People v. Cusky, a case then being prosecuted by the District Attorney's Office, told Ceballos that he believed that one of the arresting deputy sheriffs may have lied in a search warrant affidavit. He asked Ceballos to investigate. Ceballos was supervising the deputy district attorney assigned to the case, but he decided to investigate the allegations himself. After reviewing the relevant documents in the case and visiting the crime scene, Ceballos determined that the affidavit of the deputy sheriff had, at the least, grossly misrepresented the facts.

Ceballos discussed the problems arising from this investigation with others in the Office, including his immediate supervisor, Carol Najera and the then-Head Deputy District Attorney, Frank Sundstedt. Everyone agreed that the validity of the warrant was questionable. On March 2, 2000, Ceballos sent Sundstedt a memorandum discussing his determination that the affidavit was falsified and recommending that the case be dismissed. Sundstedt instructed Ceballos to revise the memorandum to make it less accusatory of the deputy sheriff. Ceballos rewrote the memorandum, and a meeting was held on March 9 with representatives from the Sheriff's Department, Sundstedt, Najera, Ceballos, and another deputy district attorney.

Following the meeting with the Sheriff's Department, Sundstedt was not certain that Cusky should be dismissed and decided to proceed with the case pending the outcome of a motion challenging the search warrant, which had already been filed by the defense. Ceballos informed defense counsel that he believed the affidavit contained false statements, and defense counsel subpoenaed him to testify at the hearing. Ceballos told Najera that pursuant to Brady v. Maryland and other case law, he was obligated to turn over to the defense the memoranda he had prepared regarding his opinion of the legality of the search warrant. Ceballos contends that Najera instructed him to edit the memorandum to include statements by only one detective and to limit his in-court testimony. When Ceballos testified at the hearing on the motion, the Cusky court sustained the prosecution's objections to several questions defense counsel asked him. Ceballos maintains that, as a result, he was unable to tell the court certain of his conclusions (and the reasons therefore) regarding the accuracy of the warrant. The defendant's motion was denied, and the prosecution proceeded. Having testified for the defense, Ceballos was removed from the Cusky prosecution team.

Ceballos filed a complaint pursuant to § 1983 alleging that Garcetti, Sundstedt, and Najera retaliated against him for submitting the memorandum regarding the Cusky warrant, for otherwise reporting to or discussing with other persons the allegations of misconduct by the deputy sheriff, and for testifying truthfully at the court hearing. He alleged that the defendants took a number of retaliatory actions against him: (1) they demoted him from his position of calendar deputy to that of trial deputy; (2) Najera "threatened" him when he told her that he would testify truthfully at the hearing; (3) at the hearing itself Najera was "rude and hostile" to him; (4) Sundstedt "gave him the silent treatment"; (5) Najera informed him that he could either transfer to the El Monte Branch, or, if he wanted to remain in the Pomona Branch, he would be re-assigned to filing misdemeanors, a position usually assigned to junior deputy district attorneys; (6) the one murder case he was handling at the time was reassigned to a deputy district attorney with no experience trying murder cases; (7) he was barred from handling any further murder cases; and (8) he was denied a promotion.

The district court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment. On appeal, the 9th Circuit reversed, holding that Ceballos’ speech was clearly protected under the First Amendment.

Ceballos v. Garcetti

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The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ jurisdiction includes California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Alaska and Hawaii.

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