Suppression of evidence leads to suspension
In a significant decision for California prosecutors, a State Bar Court judge
has recommended a three-year suspension for a former Sonoma County deputy district
attorney who suppressed exculpatory evidence, claiming he did not actually
know about it. If the Supreme Court accepts the recommendation, BROOKE P. HALSEY
JR. [#142330], 44, of Tiburon also will be placed on five years of probation
and be required to prove his rehabilitation.
While prosecuting a prominent physician in Sonoma for murder, Halsey dismissed
the charges after evidence came to light that a key witness had been extensively
coached.
The State Bar had sought Halsey’s disbarment, accusing him of multiple
acts of misconduct in both the murder case and a misdemeanor Fish and Game
matter involving an old friend. Bar Court Judge Pat McElroy found that he committed
six of 10 charged violations, including suppressing evidence he had an ethical
duty to disclose, misleading a judge and committing acts of moral turpitude.
Halsey resigned last year after 15 years in the district attorney’s
office.
In 2000, he took over the prosecution of Louis Pelfini, who was accused of
murdering his wife. The original prosecution was botched by the sheriff’s
department, which accepted Pelfini’s statement that his wife committed
suicide by drowning herself in a bucket of water. As a result, protocol for
a homicide investigation was not followed. In addition, the forensic pathologist
who performed the autopsy, Dr. Thomas Gill, was incompetent and committed numerous
errors, according to McElroy.
When Gill’s checkered background was revealed in press reports, the
assistant sheriff hired a coach to improve the doctor’s communication
skills and eventually to rehabilitate his credibility. Prior to the trial,
Halsey and the coach met regularly to prepare Gill, providing specific guidance
for his testimony. More than 40 coaching sessions were videotaped, although
Halsey was not present during the taping.
When the defense sought all information relating to the prosecution team’s
investigation of Gill’s background, Halsey said the information was irrelevant
to the murder prosecution. In four discovery hearings, he made a series of
false statements, including that he was not aware of the specific facts that
had been gathered about Gill. He also said the detectives who conducted the
investigation of Gill did not work on the Pelfini case, which was not true.
When the defense learned during trial that two mock trial sessions with the
doctor had been held and videotaped, Halsey was ordered to turn over those
tapes. He made a series of misrepresentations at a subsequent hearing, denying
he had knowledge of the extent and nature of Gill’s trial preparation.
The next day, he asked that the murder charges against Pelfini be dismissed
because the videotapes irreparably harmed the case. He also falsely told the
court he didn’t know about the tapes and did not know the coaching included “tailoring
testimony and crafting answers.” In fact, McElroy found, Halsey “knew
the tapes existed and had helped to prepare Dr. Gill’s testimony by providing
suggested answers to questions and by providing questions for Dr. Gill to work
on.”
Pelfini cannot be prosecuted again because once a jury is empaneled, double
jeopardy attaches.
Halsey argued that because he never had possession of the evidence and did
not know the nature of its contents, he could not have possessed the requisite
intent to suppress it. McElroy rejected what she called his “hear no
evil, see no evil” argument as not credible and said that even if it
were true, “such a conscious decision to look the other way is no defense.”
Citing the high ethical standards required of prosecutors, McElroy said it
was clear that Halsey failed to be honest with both the court and defense counsel. “His
strong belief that the victim was murdered, his overzealousness to convict
and his determination not to let the ‘criminal’ go free blurred
his understanding of a prosecutor’s special duty to promote justice and
seek truth,” she wrote.
Esther Rogers, who tried the case for the State Bar, said previous decisions
about prosecutorial misconduct involved actions where the prosecutor had actual
possession of the exculpatory evidence and then intentionally suppressed it.
In Halsey’s case, she said, the bar had to go a step further since it
could not prove he actually had possession of exculpatory evidence.
“We had to show he should have known about it and couldn’t put
his head in the sand and then use that as a defense,” Rogers said. “What’s
significant for prosecutors is that the State Bar can hold them responsible
and they are subject to discipline even if they take the position that they
didn’t actually have [exculpatory] evidence in their hands. Prosecutors
can be culpable if they have enough indication that evidence exists but they
do nothing to take the next step and actually search for the exculpatory evidence.”
In the second matter, Halsey intervened in the case of Kevin Strain, a casual
acquaintance who was charged with violating the Fish and Game Code while hunting
for wild pigs. Although it was not Halsey’s case and he had lost touch
with his former friend until Strain called him about the investigation, Halsey
evaluated the matter on his own and had it dismissed without informing anyone
in his office. McElroy found that he had a conflict in the case because of
a prior relationship with the defendant.
Although McElroy considered Halsey’s years of discipline-free practice,
the testimony of 17 character witnesses and his extensive community involvement,
she concluded that he “significantly harmed the public and the administration
of justice by failing to uphold his duties as a prosecutor to reveal exculpatory
evidence in the Pelfini matter and to disclose his prior relationship with
Strain to the DA’s office.”
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