It’s understandable that an employee in a district attorney’s office might feel some kind of way about a guy who works on the same cases as a defense lawyer, but it’s insane to imagine him beating the living hell out of that defense lawyer in the middle of the day in a busy courthouse.
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The Orange County District Attorney’s office declined comment.
Crawford did not know the man who spoke out to him Wednesday in the hallway, but he has been identified as an investigator for the district attorney’s office.
When Crawford approached his client, the investigator allegedly disparaged defense attorneys as “sleazy”, Steering said.
Crawford has called out the D.A.’s office before.
Paul S. Meyer, an attorney for the investigator, told the newspaper that Crawford’s account was not accurate.
“It wasn’t personal”, Steering said of Crawford’s allegations against prosecutors. Sheriff Lt. Mark Stichter says Crawford was conducting business as usual with a client when his attacker pounced.
“I’ve been a lawyer for 32 years”, said Steering, who specializes in police misconduct cases.
Crawford’s head was smashed into a bench, and he was punched repeatedly until sheriff’s deputies and police officers pulled the investigator off, Steering said.
Crawford said, “They’re still angry over us getting a new trial”. Rodriguez has spent the past 15 years in state prison for the double murder of a pregnant Fullerton woman and her unborn daughter in 1998.
“There is nothing that prevents the District Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Department from doing so”.
The “sleazy” accusation sparked the argument, Steering said.
Steering said the DA’s investigator “lost it”, rushed Crawford and began “bashing his brains out” on a bench in the hallway and “punching his lights out”. “We are cooperating fully in that investigation and we look forward to the actual facts being released publicly”, Dominguez said.
Crawford began walking away, Steering said, when the investigator threw a paper clip at him.
Crawford, with blood still dripping from his nose, told HuffPost from his office in Orange that in his 22 years as an attorney, he’s never heard of or experienced anything like this before.
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No arrests were made, according to the Times. “The independent witnesses and favorable evidence and injuries to the investigator will be evaluated”. There were witnesses to the scuffle and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department is investigating.
