The American Civil Liberties Union and a group of community activists have dropped their 2018 lawsuit accusing the Orange County Sheriff’s Department of continuing to illegally use jailhouse informants.

Attorneys for the ACLU said the department has made substantial reforms in its informant practices in recent years. Most of those reforms came through negotiations with the U.S. Department of Justice, which found that, from 2007 to 2016, prosecutors and police systemically used jailhouse informants on defendants in violation of their right to have an attorney present.

“The OCDA and OCSD policy changes that occurred during this litigation are an important step in addressing the decades-long legacy of unconstitutional informant practices by both departments. But those past injustices can never be made right.” said Summer Lacey, senior staff attorney and director of criminal justice at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.

“The only reason they stopped is because they got caught,” said Theresa Smith, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Smith’s son was killed in 2009 by Anaheim police. The district attorney originally was included in the suit, but settled with the ACLU in January, said Kimberly Edds, spokesperson for the district attorney’s office.

Sheriff Don Barnes, in a prepared statement, said the litigation was without merit and a waste of millions of dollars in taxpayer money to defend against it.

“It is unfortunate that it took plaintiffs years to realize their lawsuit was baseless,” Barnes said.

The suit was filed by the ACLU and the People for the Ethical Operation of Prosecutors and Law Enforcement after the courts had shown prosecutors and police routinely violated the constitutional rights of inmates through the use of informants and kept the operation secret from defense attorneys.

The resulting “snitch scandal” sparked a federal investigation and prompted a judge to boot the district attorney’s office from the prosecution of confessed mass killer Scott Dekraai and take the death penalty off the table. Dekraai, convicted of killing his ex-wife and seven others at a Seal Beach hair salon, was sentenced to life in prison.

In January, the Department of Justice reached agreements with the district attorney’s office and Sheriff’s Department on how and when informants would be used in the future. Both agencies now require permission from their top officials to use jail informants.

At the Sheriff’s Department, those reforms include additional training for jail personnel about the legal requirements involving informants, requiring the sheriff to approve the use of informants and requiring that prosecutors be notified in writing “at the earliest possible time” when an informant is used by sheriff personnel.

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