Defenders Lose Photo Battle to D.A. : Courts: In dispute over misuse of public funds, public defenders fail in bid to have district attorney’s office dropped from murder case.

Defense attorneys called it prosecutorial misconduct. Prosecutors called it a witch hunt by the defense to have a whistle-blower’s name disclosed.

Despite their differences, both sides expressed some satisfaction at a Superior Court judge’s decision Monday to deny a pretrial motion dismissing the district attorney’s office as the prosecutor in a death-penalty murder trial.

Sparking the dispute was $50 worth of personal photographs taken and developed by investigators from the Public Defenders Office and charged to the county as official expenses. Some of the pictures showed parties held by the investigators, pictures of their families and even an investigator’s dog reclined on a sofa, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Morley.

In June, 1990, someone from the Public Defender’s Office, which routinely opposes the district attorney in court, took the photographs to the district attorney’s Office Special Investigations Unit to report the $50 abuse of county funds, Morley said.

Accompanying log sheets showed that the expenses were related to photographs taken as evidence in several cases the public defenders office was involved in, Morley said. But the pictures turned over to the district attorney were personal shots, not evidence.

There was never any question that Public Defenders investigators abused $50 in county funds, said Deputy Public Defender Albert Tamayo, who with Deputy Public Defender Juliana Humphrey filed the motion. (The councy has since been reimbursed for the $50.)

“The problem is we’re just not sure how extensive this breach of confidentiality is,” Tamayo said, referring to a Public Defenders’ employee sharing information with the district attorney. “I’d like to be able to sit down with a client and say, ‘I can guarantee whatever you tell me is confidential.’ ”

Morley, on the other hand, claimed the motion was “no more than a witch hunt to try to get the name of the employee who came to us.” The district attorney refused to disclose the name out of fear that the person would be disciplined or fired.

On March 22, Tamayo and Humphrey filed a motion to remove the district attorney as the prosecutor in the only pertinent, pending case since the pictures were turned over to the district attorney, that of a couple accused of murdering their future daughter-in-law, Tamayo said.

Superior Court Judge Bernard Revack denied Monday the motion requesting dismissal of the district attorney’s office from the case or dropping of charges against the couple because of prosecutorial misconduct. He also ruled that the district attorney did not have to reveal the name of its source.

Revack did order the district attorney to have no contact with the source and to turn over any information received to the attorney general’s office, which the district attorney already has done, according to Morley.

Morley said he was pleased by the ruling, and Tamayo also indicated satisfaction. “The judge conveyed to the D.A.’s office to cease and desist this type of practice,” Tamayo said.

The trial at the center of the dispute involves defendants Virginia Agnes Rearden and Billy Joe McGinnis, who were arrested in September, 1989, in connection with the April 2, 1987, death of their future daughter-in-law, Deana Wild, 20, Tamayo said. Wild either fell or was pushed down a steep cliff to her death while sightseeing with Rearden and McGinnis at Big Sur on April 2, 1987, court records show.

The day before, a $35,000 life insurance policy that the couple had taken out on Wild became effective, Tamayo said.

Rearden, 52, whom Tamayo and Humphrey are defending, is being held in the Las Colinas Jail in Santee on $5-million bail on suspicion of murder and suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder, a jail spokeswoman said.

McGinnis, 50, is being in downtown County Jail, on the same charges, she said.

Arrested Sept. 15, 1989, the couple lived in Chula Vista at the time of Wild’s death and were divorced in 1989.