Civil Jury Found Prosecutor Liable in Stabbing Death

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s office hired a staff prosecutor who had been found liable in a civil case for fatally stabbing a man, officials confirmed Wednesday.

Matt Horeczko, who was hired five months ago and assigned to prosecute cases in Inglewood, resigned Friday after colleagues in Garcetti’s office belatedly discovered his role in a deadly brawl at a party in San Pedro in 1989.

While Horeczko was never charged with a crime, a Los Angeles civil jury unanimously found him responsible for the killing, in which 19-year-old Wade Hashimoto was stabbed four times, once through the heart. The jury in 1993 returned a $4.75-million judgment in favor of Hashimoto’s parents.

That verdict was affirmed in 1996 by a state appeals court, which stated there was evidence Horeczko also stabbed two other men in the melee between rival teenage groups.

Horeczko, now 28, declined to comment.

Garcetti refused Wednesday to directly discuss details of Horeczko’s hiring. His spokeswoman Victoria Pipkin said the civil case was not discovered until after Horeczko was hired.

The pre-employment application for a job only asks people if they have been convicted of a criminal offense. Background checks are done after deputy district attorneys are hired and can take 120 days to complete, officials said.

“As a result of the background check, we found out about this situation,” Pipkin said. Asked whether Garcetti’s office would have rejected Horeczko’s employment application if they knew of the civil judgment, Pipkin said “That’s safe to assume.”

However, a civil judgment does not automatically disqualify a candidate from being hired as a deputy district attorney, said Sandi Gibbons, another spokeswoman.

But his hiring by Garcetti’s office has raised serious questions about the hiring process.

“I am appalled that they are doing background checks after people are hired,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Al MacKenzie, president of the Assn. of Deputy District Attorneys. MacKenzie said the office did a background check before he was hired 26 years ago and it should immediately take steps to return to that practice.

Garcetti’s decision to hire Horeczko was sharply criticized by the stabbing victim’s father, Claude Hashimoto, who said Horeczko should never have been allowed to represent the people of California in the courtroom.

“I was shocked,” Hashimoto said. “It seems very, very strange. He is working on the other side prosecuting criminals when from our eyes he is the criminal.”

But not in the eyes of the law. Despite the civil judgment, Horeczko has never faced any criminal charges that would have automatically barred him from becoming an attorney and would have disqualified him from becoming a deputy district attorney.

Although the LAPD lists the case as cleared, the district attorney’s office declined to file charges, saying more evidence was needed to prove the case.

“The case was rejected pending further investigation,” Pipkin said. “There is no statute of limitations on homicide. It’s still open as far as our shop.”

Thomas Stolpman, an attorney representing the Hashimotos, said the standard of proof in a civil negligence case is much lower than the standard in a criminal case.

Stolpman said none of the judgment has been paid by Matt Horeczko or his insurance company, so with interest, the amount owed the Hashimotos is about $8 million today.

Horeczko went on after high school to become a star defensive back on the University of San Diego football team before getting his law degree from Southwestern University School of Law.

Kathleen Beitiks, a spokeswoman for the state bar, said Horeczkos was admitted to the bar in April 1998 and has no record of discipline.

Every new attorney must fill out an application that asks whether the person was a party to a civil action. That raises red flags that can be looked at to determine whether it raises sufficient questions about the person’s moral character to reject their application.

“He passed that,” Beitiks said, adding that confidentiality rules prohibit her from disclosing what Horeczko put on his application.

The civil suit grew out of a melee after a party attended by 150 teenagers in 1989 at the home of Horeczko’s parents.

The police arrested Horeczko, then 18. Detectives said at the time and during the civil trial that they had evidence that Horeczko used a switchblade knife he had purchased in Mexico to stab Hashimoto four times, including one wound that penetrated his heart.

A 1989 memo by Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Boag said, “There was sufficient probable cause to arrest and to hold a preliminary hearing.”