Morse, deputies timecard dispute spills into unrelated case

A timecard dispute between the Merced County district attorney and the sheriff’s detectives who earlier this year arrested his son received its first judicial review on Tuesday, but the judge’s ruling did not settle the controversy.

In a Sun-Star article published Saturday, District Attorney Larry Morse II said timecards submitted for reimbursement by sheriff’s Detective Roy Tighe could raise questions regarding the detective’s credibility.

Morse said Tighe was being paid out of grant monies to be used exclusively to fund agricultural crime investigations, but he was actually working on unrelated cases, including the one involving Ethan Morse. The district attorney said he was considering placing Tighe on a list of law enforcement officers whose credibility can be questioned in court based on the timecard issue.

Although the district attorney has not made a decision on the matter, the consequences of Morse raising credibility questions spilled over Tuesday into another case investigated by Tighe and his supervisor, Detective Sgt. Chuck Hale.

Jury selection was delayed for defendant Johnny Ray Munoz, who is accused of shooting two teenagers in 2010. Munoz’s attorney, William Davis, filed a motion asking for the information regarding Tighe’s timecards. Davis said he wanted to review the timecard information to see if it could be used to impeach Tighe’s credibility during the trial.

Judge John D. Kirihara, however, determined the timecard issue had little value to the defense and could be prejudicial to the case, attorneys on both sides confirmed.

Davis said the judge believed the issue would take up too much of the court’s time. “He felt there was limited value given (Tighe’s) limited role in this case,” Davis said.

Morse did not comment on the issue Tuesday.

However, Mathew Martinez, the deputy district attorney prosecuting the case, said prosecutors are “ethically bound” to bring up any potential Brady issue and can face liability personally if such information is not disclosed to the defense.

“If judges make the same ruling several times in the future, the defense bar could lose interest in bringing it up, but, if a judge makes a different ruling down the road, then it will likely increase interest in bringing it up by the defense,” Martinez said.

No wrongdoing, state said

Sheriff’s Department officials, including Tighe, denied any wrongdoing regarding the timecards. The California attorney general’s office also reviewed the timecard issue and determined no wrongdoing or dishonesty occurred.

Morse, however, said his office was not bound by the attorney general’s determination and said he continues to review the matter to determine whether Tighe and Hale would be placed on the Brady List.

The issue came to light in August, a month after the arrest of Ethan Morse. The district attorney’s office audited Tighe’s timecards, eventually learning that Tighe on at least five occasions billed the rural crime fund for time he actually spent investigating violent crimes.

Morse noted timecards were signed by Tighe under penalty of perjury. Morse said the timecards could be evidence used by defense attorneys to discredit Tighe and Hale in other cases, which he described as classic Brady material.

The district attorney’s office began requiring detectives to formally certify their timecards under penalty of perjury after the county was sanctioned for grant violations that were the result of detectives, including Tighe, billing the program for unrelated investigations, the audit says.

According to the audit, Tighe was previously scrutinized in 2009 on the same issue. The 2009 inquiry revealed that on four occasions that year, Tighe worked on nonagriculture crime investigations, but billed the rural crimes program for those hours. One of those timecards was directly related to the Munoz trial that was delayed Tuesday, authorities confirmed.

The Sheriff’s Department “concurred with those findings” in 2009 and characterized it as an “administrative oversight” that was made “inadvertently,” according to the audit.

The two agencies entered into a formal joint-powers agreement in November 2009, that included, in part, formal pledges to “maintain complete and accurate functional timesheets which support the time charged to the program ... ” according to a copy of the agreement.

The grant program and the joint-powers agreement expired in June 2013, along with the requirement for formal certification. The state continued to send money to the county to combat rural crimes, but the new money was not part of any grant program, so the state no longer required the county to certify how the funds were used, authorities said.

Jeannette Pacheco, the district attorney’s administrative services director, in a recent interview said that while state law does not specifically outline how those new funds should be claimed for reimbursement, it does map out how the Legislature intends those funds to be used.

Hale said the issue was addressed in 2009 by the Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney. “I thought it was understood by Larry Morse that in any large scale investigation, like a homicide or shooting, that it’s all hands on deck; that everybody in the unit helps investigate,” Hale said. “But, apparently, that’s not the case.”

Hale said all of the timecard issues involve only small amounts of time, “15 minutes here, or 30 minutes there.”

“My question would be, ‘Why wasn’t this issue sent to the attorney general in 2009 when there was a grant, but it was sent to them in 2014 when that grant no longer existed?’” Hale said.

Hale acknowledged disappointment that the issue will likely come up again.

“I was confident that if all of the evidence was heard, we’d have gotten a judge’s decision that mirrored the decision made by the attorney general,” Hale said.

This story was originally published December 2, 2014 at 7:00 PM with the headline "Morse, deputies timecard dispute spills into unrelated case."