Former Orange County prosecutor Suzy M. Snyder must be smiling today.
Sure, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas fired Snyder in 2008 after learning that she had had a secret “sexual relationship” with an Irvine police detective who testified in a case she prosecuted in the Newport Beach courthouse.
But thanks to county employee union protections, Snyder successfully appealed Rackauckas' decision to an independent arbiter and this week didn't just get her job back, but also learned that she will receive back pay, according to multiple sources.
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Attempts to reach Snyder were unsuccessful, but her courthouse allies say she has maintained throughout her ordeal that the DA had overreacted.
Susan Kang Schroeder, chief of staff to Rackauckas, said “county confidentiality rules” prevent her from commenting.
Prosecutors are required to disclose to the defense personal ties they have with testifying witnesses. In the case of woman-beater Reza Gurel, reports of Snyder's relationship with the lead detective didn't surface until after the defendant was convicted and sent to prison. When advised, Rackauckas viewed Snyder's actions as an unacceptable ethical breach.
You can read my original article on the incident
HERE.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
