Double-murder defendant’s lawyer can’t have prosecutor’s emails, judge decides

An Orange County Superior Court judge Friday said he would not force a prosecutor to turn over emails that a double-murder defendant’s attorney said would show members of the county district attorney’s office badmouthing the lawyer.

Public defender Scott Sanders said he was seeking the communications to show that county prosecutors have a personal dislike for him. If that is true, he argued, it would call into question whether his client, Daniel Patrick Wozniak, can get a fair trial.

Judge John Conley said Sanders’ request for all of prosecutor Matt Murphy’s emails that reference the public defender boiled down to, “I want to find out what they’re saying behind my back about me.”

“What’s missing from this?” Conley said. “Mr. Wozniak is missing from this.”

Wozniak, a 31-year-old aspiring actor from Costa Mesa, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he killed Orange Coast College students Sam Herr, 26, and Juri “Julie” Kibuishi, 23, in 2010 so he could steal $50,000 from Herr’s bank account. Detectives said in grand jury testimony that Wozniak admitted to the crime.

Authorities allege that Wozniak dismembered Herr’s body and hid it in a park and, in an effort to throw police off his trail, staged Kibuishi’s body in Herr’s Costa Mesa apartment to make it look like she had been sexually assaulted.

Sanders has attacked the district attorney’s office and Orange County Sheriff’s Department over what he alleges is misuse of jailhouse informants.

In March, Sanders succeeded in getting the entire district attorney’s office thrown off the sentencing phase of its case against mass murderer Scott Dekraai, who pleaded guilty to shooting to death his ex-wife and seven other people at a Seal Beach salon in 2011.

In that case, Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals ruled that law enforcement had repeatedly failed to turn over important evidence that the defense was entitled to see.

“There are unquestionably hard feelings about that,” Sanders said at a court hearing last month.

Murphy, however, called Sanders’ request for the emails “absurd.” It’s speculation that the badmouthing emails exist, Murphy argued. And if they did, Sanders would not be entitled to see them, he said.

Conley has chastised both lawyers for focusing on their personal disagreements.

“It’s not about … your anger at each other. It’s about Mr. Wozniak,” the judge said Friday.

Conley has set a trial date for October — more than five years after the slayings. But before that, he’ll have to consider a motion that Sanders said he intends to file attempting to bar the death penalty as a possibility for Wozniak.

Herr’s father, Steve, pleaded with the judge not to allow more delays.

“Just let it go to the jury, where it belongs,” he said. “That’s all we’ve ever asked.”