2 exited city attorney's office after nearly 100 unprocessed misdemeanor files were found
The San Diego city attorney’s office has instituted new file-review procedures after discovering that prosecutors lost track of almost 100 misdemeanor cases between 2012 and 2015.
While this number is a small fraction of the 2,500 or so cases that city prosecutors review annually, and most of the 98 unprocessed files would not have been pursued, the statute of limitations had expired on some that would have been pursued, including 15 domestic violence cases, said city attorney Jan Goldsmith in an April 20 memo to employees of the office.
“There is no justification for what happened in this situation,” he wrote.
The San Diego Union-Tribune broke the story last week that file-handling procedures weren’t followed concerning 98 cases, but at that point could not get the memo. It was subsequently published by NBC San Diego.
Although Goldsmith declined to discuss specific personnel issues that led to the problem, his memo concludes with the information that “personnel issues related to this situation were addressed immediately and appropriately.”
Citing unidentified sources, the Union-Tribune article says a deputy prosecutor and her supervisor were held responsible and left the office after the unprocessed files situation was discovered and investigated in November.
Goldsmith told the newspaper that the one-year statute of limitations had expired on 81 of the 98 files, but 62 of those cases would not have been pursued. The problem was, procedures for closing the files and documenting the decision not to prosecute had not been completed.
The remaining 17 cases for which the statute of limitations had not run were assigned to other prosecutors.
