WOODLAND — The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office remains assigned to the Samantha Green murder case, after a judge rejected defense claims that prosecutors violated the Woodland woman’s right to a fair trial.
“In many respects this may be much ado about nothing,” Yolo Superior Court Judge David Rosenberg said Monday of defense lawyers’ contention that the entire DA’s office was “infected” by knowledge of Green’s psychological records from the Yolo County Jail.
Prosecutors said they hadn’t read the documents and couldn’t have used them at trial anyway.
The ruling clears the way for Green’s trial to begin as scheduled next week, barring any further legal maneuvers. Green, 24, has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge.
Prosecutors obtained the sensitive records in March 2015 after serving a warrant to the jail’s medical provider, California Forensic Medical Group, seeking documents related to Green’s medical history.
Green recently had been arrested on suspicion of causing the death of her 3-week-old son, Justice Rees, after leaving him overnight on a Knights Landing slough bank.
Rosenberg later quashed, or voided, the warrant at the request of Green’s public defenders, who argued that the records amounted to “personal and privileged information.” The judge ordered the documents returned the court or destroyed.
But a DA investigator apparently prepared a summary of the records and uploaded it into the office’s computer system. It prompted Green’s lawyers to seek the DA’s recusal from the case late last month, saying that others in the office likely were exposed to the confidential details.
During a court hearing on the issue Monday, Deputy Public Defender David Muller likened the conduct to throwing a rock into a pond, creating “ripples that go throughout the whole pond, so that everything is affected.”
Deputy District Attorney Ryan Couzens, however, pointed out that his office had lawful possession of the documents for several months before Rosenberg granted the motion to quash, and yet the defense only now is seeking a recusal — an 11th-hour move he attributed to failed plea-deal negotiations following Green’s November preliminary hearing.
“We didn’t settle the case, and now this issue is being raised, that the whole office is ‘infected’ with this information,” Couzens said.
Rosenberg ultimately sided with the DA’s office, finding no conflict that has prejudiced Green and noting Couzens’ claim that neither he nor fellow prosecutor Rob Gorman read the medical records or the summary, which has since been ordered purged from the computer system.
The judge said he has generally found Yolo County’s prosecution and defense attorneys to be “honorable and truthful to this court. If Mr. Couzens and Mr. Gorman say they haven’t reviewed the summary or the records, I believe them.”
Green’s psychological records and mental state are not even an issue in the case absent an insanity or other diminished-capacity defense, which her attorneys have said they don’t plan to pursue, Rosenberg added.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene