Internal Conflicts Over D.A.’s Policies Turn Ugly, Public

After winning a lopsided election victory with overwhelming support from prosecutors, Tony Rackauckas pledged to usher in a new era as Orange County’s district attorney. He spoke of adopting a hands-off leadership style to boost sagging morale within the office and give more decision-making power to deputies.

But it’s been a rocky road for Rackauckas during the first two years as district attorney, with some of his biggest election supporters in the office now publicly criticizing what they see as an autocratic management structure and bad decisions based on favoritism and politics.

Until last week, the dissension was largely kept within the walls of the district attorney’s office.

Now, a handful of prosecutors and investigators have gone public to accuse their boss of protecting a friend and political supporter from scrutiny after the man complained he was the victim of an extortion plot. Both Rackauckas and his detractors have asked the state’s attorney general to investigate various claims of wrongdoing within the office.

It’s not the kind of headlines Rackauckas supporters expected when he took office, and it disappoints some.

“We did have high hopes for this administration--everyone expected that politics were going to be secondary and we were going to have an improvement,” said Christopher Evans, a former top Rackauckas administrator who quit in 1999 to head the environmentalist Surfrider Foundation. “I regret seeing these latest developments in the office.”

For his part, Rackauckas professes to be unfazed by the controversy and said his biggest worry is that the public’s image of the district attorney’s office remain intact despite the claims and counterclaims.

“I’m not concerned--those accusations are not going to get any traction. It’s small stuff and it’s not true,” he said.

Rackauckas dismisses the criticism of him as sour grapes from a few disgruntled officials.

“I think everybody has to go through some tests--and this is mine,” he said. “Times like this, you have to stand tall and carry on. I insist the people around me do the same thing.”

But critics say they simply can’t do that given what they have called a pattern of questionable actions by their boss.

Mike Jacobs, a respected homicide prosecutor and onetime Rackauckas loyalist, took the extraordinary step this month of meeting with the state attorney general’s office to request an investigation into a charity Rackauckas founded last year.

At issue is whether Rackauckas violated any laws when he asked district attorney investigators to use sensitive criminal databases to run background checks on candidates for the charity. Such databases are supposed to be used only for law enforcement purposes, but Rackauckas has said his use of the database met that standard.

Critics also want a probe of whether public resources were misused by having D.A. employees work on charity business on county time. Rackauckas said such work was minimal and would benefit prosecutors because the foundation would raise money for programs in the office.

This comes as the attorney general is already looking at allegations by Rackauckas that two investigators in his office stole evidence related to an extortion case involving a friend and political donor, Newport Beach businessman Patrick DiCarlo.

Last April, DiCarlo came to Rackauckas to say he was being extorted by possible Mafia figures. Rackauckas assigned two investigators but pulled them off the case weeks later, saying they were treating his friend more like a crime suspect than a victim.

Some in the district attorney’s office have complained that Rackauckas, by halting the investigation, abused his authority to help a friend. His relationship with DiCarlo has concerned some district attorney officials, who have investigated DiCarlo but never charged him with a crime.

Aborted Investigation Raises Aides’ Antennae

Jacobs also has asked the state attorney general’s office to probe whether Rackauckas obstructed justice by pulling his investigators off the case.

Since 1997, Rackauckas has accepted $5,000 in political contributions from DiCarlo, his family and business, according to campaign records. DiCarlo also hosted a fund-raiser for the campaign and later counseled the district attorney and his wife on an Internet venture they ultimately decided not to pursue.

Few could have predicted that Rackauckas would preside over such tumult at an office where he was once honored as prosecutor of the year.

A deputy district attorney for 16 years, Rackauckas left for private practice in 1988. With politics in the blood, he led a successful drive to remove Chief Justice Rose Bird from the California Supreme Court over her opposition to the death penalty.

He spent the next decade as a judge, and in 1998, won the post of top prosecutor in a bare-knuckle election fight with Wallace Wade, a top manager in the office under Rackauckas’ predecessor, Mike Capizzi.

Some of Rackauckas’ initiatives have been widely praised, including an outreach program for the Vietnamese and Latino communities. He also won accolades from both prosecutors and judges when he lifted an unpopular ban on plea bargaining imposed by Capizzi.

But within office, tensions quickly mounted.

In an early reshuffle, 10 out of 12 promotions went to prosecutors who donated to Rackauckas’ campaign. The new district attorney defended the moves, but promised not to accept donations in the future from employees of the office.

Since then, three of Rackauckas’ five top managers resigned or were demoted within his first 18 months in office. One of them, former chief assistant Devallis Rutledge, contends in a federal lawsuit that Rackauckas demoted him because his wife pursued a lawsuit against the office.

“The D.A.’s office is being destroyed,” said one veteran prosecutor and Rackauckas critic who asked not to be identified.

D.A.’s Backers Say Critics Distorting Facts

Supporters say the criticism against Rackauckas should be expected because of the radical changes he’s made to management and that morale is better than detractors allege.

“It’s ridiculous what’s going,” added Chuck Middleton, Rackauckas’ chief assistant. “The way it’s being painted, our whole office is going to hell in a hand basket. It’s not that way at all.”

Rackauckas said he’s not looking back and is already planning to run for reelection next year. But with controversy swirling around the office, many courthouse observers expect he will face a spirited challenge--probably from a critic within the office.

In the meantime, some worry about the effect the furor is having on prosecutors in the trenches.

“These allegations don’t make it easier for the rank and file deputies in the courtrooms to do their jobs,” said Evans, the Surfrider Foundation president.