- Judge Goldstein found the prosecution team’s tactics to be so “reprehensible” that the most severe punishment could no longer constitutionally stand.
A man once sentenced to life without parole for a brutal 1988 torture-murder in Orange County will be released in roughly five years after extensive prosecutorial misconduct undermined his conviction, marking another major consequence of the county’s long-running jailhouse informant scandal.
Paul Gentile Smith, whose 2010 conviction for murder with special circumstances was overturned in 2021, pleaded guilty Jan. 26 to voluntary manslaughter on the eve of a retrial.
The plea agreement calls for a 12-year sentence in addition to the 16 years Smith has already served, with custody credits expected to reduce the remaining time by more than half. With the agreement, Smith is expected to serve approximately five more years.
The deal was approved by Judge Daniel Goldstein of the Orange County Superior Court, who described the outcome as a “tragic outcome” driven not by mercy, but by the misconduct of law enforcement and prosecutors involved in the original case.
“It is because of his (Wert’s) conduct, his unethical behavior and engaging in behavior that may have bordered on the limits of criminal that I have to do what I really don’t want to do today,” Goldstein said during the plea hearing. “You can thank Mr. Wert for this plea that I’m stuck taking.”
Smith was originally convicted of stabbing Robert Haugen 18 times and setting fire to his body in a Sunset Beach apartment. The case was revived decades later through DNA evidence and resulted in a life-without-parole sentence after Smith was convicted of murder with a torture special circumstance.
That conviction was later overturned after it was revealed that prosecutors and sheriff’s investigators illegally used jailhouse informants to elicit incriminating statements from Smith while he was represented by counsel and then failed to disclose that information to the defense.
Goldstein presided over extensive evidentiary hearings examining the misconduct, including testimony from former prosecutor Ebrahim Baytieh and sheriff’s investigators. Baytieh was later elected to the Orange County Superior Court bench. Following those hearings, Goldstein struck the torture special circumstance, eliminating life without parole as a possible sentence in any retrial.
Goldstein found the prosecution team’s tactics to be so “reprehensible” that the most severe punishment could no longer constitutionally stand.
In a written ruling, he sharply criticized the handling of evidence between the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Department.
“The manner in which evidence was logged and transferred between OCSD and OCDA was rife for abuse and exhibited a level of recklessness that bordered on bad faith,” Goldstein wrote.
Goldstein also questioned the credibility of Baytieh’s testimony regarding jailhouse informants, noting that inconsistencies in Baytieh’s explanations raised serious concerns.
“This inconsistency amounts to, at best, gross negligence, and, at worst, additional evidence Baytieh was not truthful during these proceedings,” Goldstein wrote.
The Smith case is one of more than 60 Orange County convictions that have unraveled since 2014 after the discovery of a widespread, illegally operated jailhouse informant program. A civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice later confirmed systemic violations of defendants’ constitutional rights, including the failure to disclose informant evidence.
Scott Sanders, Smith’s attorney, said the resolution reflected both the gravity of the misconduct and the court’s insistence on accountability.
“The District Attorney’s Office has worked with us to reach a fair resolution, and we appreciate their willingness to consider the ‘reprehensible’ misconduct that Judge Goldstein found to have infected this case,” Sanders told the Vanguard.
Sanders also credited Goldstein with ensuring that the proceedings focused on fact-finding rather than institutional self-protection.
“There is no question that both sides were tremendously fortunate to have Judge Goldstein assigned as the presiding judge,” Sanders said. “He insisted on an evidentiary hearing that would serve solely as a search for the truth. He never allowed the process to deviate from that objective.”
Sanders warned that the consequences of the Smith case extend far beyond a single prosecution, calling for renewed scrutiny of Baytieh’s past convictions.
“The revelations in Mr. Smith’s case do not mark the end of the informant scandal,” Sanders said. “Rather, the next chapter requires re-examining Baytieh’s other 40 plus murder convictions.”
Sanders said the evidence uncovered in Smith’s case showed that the misconduct was not isolated.
“The only reasonable conclusion from Baytieh’s actions in this case is that concealment was his standard operating procedure,” Sanders said. “It is sickening to think of a criminal justice system that would permit Baytieh as a judge to decide the fate of those accused of crimes while ignoring the incredible likelihood that as a prosecutor he prevented fair trials for countless defendants.”
He added that uncovering the full scope of the damage should be an urgent priority.
“Discovering the true expanse of Baytieh’s damage to fair trials should be an urgent concern,” Sanders said. “We must put his other cases under a microscope. The clock is ticking on people’s lives.”
During Monday’s hearing, former sheriff’s Sgt. Raymond Wert opposed the plea agreement through his attorney. Goldstein responded by sharply criticizing Wert’s role in the case.
“That’s rich of him not to be here,” Goldstein said. “I heard from him for a year and a half. His unethical behavior and that of his cohorts got us here.”
Goldstein ultimately approved the plea, making clear that the reduced sentence was the unavoidable result of state misconduct, not a reassessment of the crime itself.
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