“I’ve been waiting 200 weeks, 1,400 days,” Goethals said of the Sheriff’s Department’s failure to turn over relevant documents.

The California attorney general’s office appealed Goethals’ decision, placing the blame for the withheld evidence on the Sheriff’s Department.

When jailers testified during extensive hearings before Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals  about their dealings with snitches, the jailers’ recollections proved sketchy.