A former Assistant District Attorney illegally hid evidence that conflicted with the office’s prosecution of a man accused of murder and retaliated against the prosecutor who found it, according to Oct. 3 testimony from former Riverside County Deputy DA Christopher Ross.
Ross took the stand as a witness in his 8-year-old case against Riverside County and the District Attorney’s office.
He claims the office effectively fired him in retaliation for finding evidence they were prosecuting the wrong man, and for requesting medical accommodations.
The trial is expected to continue until mid-December.
“I gave my life to that office for nine years. I picked up cases that no one else wanted,” Ross said in testimony.
“This destroyed my reputation. It took me years to build my reputation. Now, I had to leave the state,” he said later.
Ross was assigned to prosecute Roger Parker in 2011, who stood accused of killing Brandon Stevenson in Desert Hot Springs March 18, 2010, and who confessed at the end of a 12-hour interrogation.
Confession
The murder case had originally been assigned to Lisa DiMaria, who rejected it after saying Parker was not guilty. After reviewing the interrogation, Ross said Parker’s confession was obviously coerced.
During the Oct. 3 testimony, Ross claimed then-Assistant District Attorney Sean Lafferty was convinced of Parker’s guilt because Parker looked like he was going to throw up when he saw his roommate’s body when he returned home at 1 a.m.
Lafferty is now a Riverside Superior Judge. Attorneys were instructed not to refer to him by that title during this trial, to prevent potential jury bias.
Evidence
Ross had run and shared with the defense three DNA tests, and said that each test cleared Parker of the crime because Parker’s DNA was not on the victim’s sweater, or on the murder weapon. Ross claimed Lafferty became angry at him when Ross shared the test results to Parker’s defense team, as required by case law, state law and ethical guidelines.
Ross continued to investigate the crime, and sent an investigator to interview an imprisoned man who pointed them toward Stevenson’s roommate, Willie Womack, as the killer. Ross said he requested the recorded phone calls Womack had with Womack’s sister and Womack’s girlfriend, both imprisoned. Ross said the recordings captured Womack confessing to killing Stevenson.
“‘I killed this guy, ha, ha, ha. I cut his head off, ha, ha, ha,’” Womack said, according to court documents in a related case.
Allegations
Ross testified that when he told Lafferty about the discovered confession, on Oct. 29, 2013, Lafferty became angry and asked if he had shared the recorded calls with Parker’s defense attorney. When Ross said he hadn’t yet, Lafferty told him not to, which Ross objected to.
Eventually, Lafferty told Ross that he would take care of it, which Ross said he understood to mean that Lafferty would share the tapes with Parker’s defense.
Ross was removed from the case within the week, he said, and was unable to follow up with the defense to learn that they hadn’t received the tapes. The DA’s office then removed Ross from his other cases, and placed him on administrative leave, claiming it was related to a doctor’s note he had not provided relating to medical examinations he was undergoing.
Litigation
Lafferty did not share the confession. Parker was held in prison for six months after Ross discovered the confession, and in total served four years behind bars, despite not being charged.
He found out about the confession in 2020. Parker, too, is suing Riverside County, the district attorney, Lafferty and other members of the DA’s office, for both malicious prosecution and violating the rules that say evidence which exonerates defendants must be shared.
His case was dismissed in United States District Court for the Central District of California. The judge ruled his malicious prosecution charge was brought too late after the charges were filed, and that the DA’s office failing to turn over the confession did not violate his right to a fair trial, because his case was dismissed before he went to trial.
His appeal to the ruling is pending.
Medical examinations
During his investigation of the case, Ross asked for accommodations to his work schedule while he underwent examinations at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. He had suffered tinnitus and a bad hip from hostage rescue service in Iraq, where he served as a member of the U.S. Special Forces, and had come to believe, on doctors’ advice, that he might have a serious neurological issue that the Mayo Clinic should investigate.
Employer response
He said in testimony that in July, 2013, he requested less stress, as recommended by his doctors, and fewer trials, so that he would not be overwhelmed by going to both the Mayo Clinic and doing case work.
Instead, he testified, his supervisor handed him more cases the day after he requested fewer of them. One of the cases was a death-penalty case, and in another the prosecutor who had worked it before Ross did not share evidence of the defendant’s lack of guilt with the defense team, and the judge had found out, Ross said.
As a result, that case came with a court order that put Ross on edge. The resulting stress from the cases could make his neurological issues worse, he said.
At the time, he said he had 9 cases, while other prosecutors had 12, four, three or two cases.
Lafferty also assigned him to the filing unit, in addition to the homicide team he was already on, Ross said. Ross believed that the filing unit position came with a quota of 15 filings a day.
Ross claimed the DA’s office established the quota system to set employees up to fail, so that they would have impossible standards to meet, which would give grounds for performance reviews. The office did, however, remove him from being on call to respond to homicide scenes, he said.
Around Sept. 26, 2013, Lafferty began asking for a doctor’s note from the Mayo Clinic, which Ross said the clinic did not want to provide. Ross said the note was not required under the prosecutors’ union rules, and said the union representative agreed with him.
In mid-October, the tests concluded, and Ross was cleared of the neurological issues his doctors suspected he had. On Nov. 7, 2013, Lafferty placed Ross on administrative leave, Ross said.
Ross claimed Lafferty was yelling during the meeting, and did not provide him a chance to speak.
“(Lafferty) was yelling at me. I thought he was going to come across the table and start a physical confrontation,” Ross said.
On leave
The stated reason for the leave, as described in a Nov. 18, 2013, letter displayed in evidence, was that Ross did not provide a doctor’s note as Lafferty requested.
The letter directed Ross to stay away from all county properties, which Ross interpreted to also include libraries, county roads, county hospitals and most locations. It also told Ross to stay available for contact by mail or phone, and to contact his supervisor if he was going to leave the county for a day.
Ross said he believed the letter amounted to house arrest. He also said that, at that point, he was not asking for accommodations.
He was kept on administrative leave from Nov. 7, 2013 to April 21, 2014. The County Health Department contacted him, requesting his medical records. Ross claimed he was afraid of sharing his medical records, because the county might pay an expert to find some reason to fire him in them. They stopped requesting his records after his union stepped in, he said.
Resignation
In April, Ross’ attorney sent a letter to the county claiming they effectively fired him.
The DA’s office responded by saying he should come in to work, and that he would be fired if he did not, for job abandonment. Ross said he believed their offer was disingenuous and that they would find another reason to fire him if he returned, and replied that he quit.
“(Then-District Attorney Paul) Zellerbach offered me a job so they could put me on a personal improvement plan so they could fire me,” Ross speculated.
Ross said his career was ruined after the experience. He applied to thousands of jobs, he said, in district attorney, U.S. attorney and public defender’s offices around California. The news about his fight with the Riverside DA’s office negatively affected his job hunt, he said. He worked with his old commander, and eventually started working personal-injury law in Texas. He joined Greiner & Associates in San Antonio, Texas in 2021.
Case information
Ross filed his lawsuit July 10, 2014.
James Parkinson, Terry Singleton and Efaon Cobb of Hewgill, Cobb and Lockard represent Ross.
Daniel Spradlin of Woodruff, Spradlin & Smart represents Riverside County.
Case No. PSC1403729.
Riverside Superior Judge Kira Klatchko presides.
Read the complaint here.
