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The sheriff of Santa Clara county California, Laurie Smith, was removed from office by a judge’s order after being convicted in the civil trial of six counts of corruption.

Since this was a civil trial, not a criminal one, the only penalty was removal from office. She had resigned from office in October to try to short circuit the trial, but the trial continued anyway. She will still receive a pension which may be in the range of a couple hundred thousand dollars.

I have searched but not found any reason for why her trial was conducted in civil court instead of criminal court. There have been a couple other people convicted of criminal charges as part of this overall case, and I believe there are still two of her subordinates awaiting criminal trial.

Giving the benefit of the doubt, I could suppose that a civil case was chosen because the standard of judgment is lower, i.e. preponderance of the evidence versus beyond a reasonable doubt, And possibly they had some trouble actually tying her directly to the bribery-in-return-for-concealed-carry-license.

My cynical side says the civil case was chosen precisely because she would not be penalized anything other than removed from office, and she already had 50 years in law enforcement so she was probably going to retire soon anyway.

Both could be true I suppose.

Interestingly, one of the other articles I read said this all came about because of that shooting on the Google campus a few years ago by a somewhat unhinged vegan woman whose YouTube videos had been demonetized. I believe that was covered somewhere here on the forum when it happened. Her family had been trying to find her, and they had alerted the police that she might be suicidal. She was found by a couple cops who did not know the part about her possibly being suicidal or attempting to harm others, and they let her go because she was an adult (30+ yo) and there was no real crime in progress that they could see. Day or so later she went on the Google campus and killed a couple of three people, including herself.

Somehow one of the local Bay Area media outlets got interested in concealed carry permits because of that shooting incident, and as they dug into it they discovered the pay for play roulette you have to go through to get a concealed carry permit in Santa Clara.

One of the headliners is that the head of Apple security was arrested for bribery when he was trying to get concealed carry permits for his staff, but later this was dismissed. I suspect his case was dismissed because one of the sheriffs subordinates approached him for free iPads for the sheriffs department in return for the concealed carry permits.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/11/29/ ... rie-smith/

puma guy wrote: ↑Tue Aug 11, 2020 12:51 pm
I wonder how much money was involved and why the sheriff hasn't been indicted since her approval is required if I understand the process.

The linked article discusses the money, at least the money that got them indicted. Who knows how much in the previous 20 years.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/08/06/ ... n-permits/

The indictment marks the first criminal case to come out of a decade’s worth of complaints regarding political favoritism in [Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie] Smith’s issuing of the hard-to-get concealed-carry permits. [Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff] Rosen said Friday that an 18-month investigation uncovered a two-tiered policy for the concealed gun permits: a process for regular citizens whose applications were destined for a filing cabinet, and another for VIPs whose applications were fast-tracked for approval.

A Sheriff's captain, two attorneys, and a "gun parts maker", political supporters of the Sheriff, were indicted on felony charges. The Sheriff herself was not indicted at this time, but the DA said, "We are not done."

The specific scheme covered by the indictments is said to be political donations by executive security company based in Seattle, apparently with clients like Jeff Zuckerberg, in exchange for the security company employees (about 10 or so) getting concealed carry permits. The story says the employees were directed to fill out permit applications with false info indicating they were county residents. No indictments of company yet, but again DA says more charges are coming.

The Sheriff's captain is also charged with falsifying proficiency tests for six other people not related to the security company, including an county supervisor. It seems they were getting renewals without having to complete the required range test.

Santa Clara County issues only about 150 permits per year total.

Lots more at the link, RTWT.