(Read Corpus’ suit against Wagstaffe.)
(Read Corpus’ suit against the Board of Supervisors.)
BY EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Managing Editor
San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corps is trying to stop two attempts to remove her from office — including trying to shield herself from testifying before a civil grand jury.
Corpus had been subpoenaed to testify before the civil grand jury on Tuesday, but her attorneys filed a motion to stop her testimony, claiming that District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe’s office ought to be recused since he is acting as both the administrator of the civil grand jury and as prosecutor.
Wagstaffe has said his office has been looking into allegations against Corpus and her former chief of staff Victor Aenlle that were made in a 400-page report the county commissioned from retired Judge LaDoris Cordell. Wagstaffe said his office has spo- ken with the Attorney General’s Office many times to determine whether his office ought to be recused, and Wagstaffe has been given a green light to proceed.
Corpus’ attorneys say Wagstaffe’s office ought to be recused because:
• His office assigns investigators who are or were former members of the sheriff deputy’s union to investigate matters related to Deputy Carlos Tapia, the deputies union president who was arrested at Corpus’ orders for alleged time card fraud on the day the Cordell report came out.
• Wagstaffe has made statements “prejudging” the Tapia issue, saying that the union head should not have been arrested.
• Wagstaffe has close ties with County Executive Mike Callagy and his attorney Jim Hartnett. Wagstaffe and Hartnett serve on the 100 Club nonprofit board and Hartnett was once Wagstaffe’s campaign manager.
The DA said his office will be responding to Corpus’s motion, but their response will be filed under seal, meaning it will not be publicly available. Typically, with issues related to civil grand juries, everything is filed under seal, Wagstaffe said.
A hearing is scheduled for Thursday, Wagstaffe said.
What’s a civil grand jury?
A civil grand jury is different from a criminal grand jury that decides whether to bring charges against defendants.
The civil grand jury consists of county residents, often retirees, who investigate government operations and write non-binding reports with recommendations for improvements.
The jury has the authority under the law to bring an “accusation” against a public official.
The accused official, if found guilty, doesn’t face the possibility of incarceration. Instead, the only punishment is removal from office.
This happened in Santa Clara County with former Sheriff Laurie Smith. However, she resigned before the grand jury trial reached a guilty verdict, making her conviction moot. But she cannot run for sheriff again.
Judge denies other request
On Monday, Judge Nicole Healy turned down a request from Corpus’s attorneys to halt the county supervisors from deciding whether to fire her.
The county supervisors’ legal team had about 38 minutes of notice of the hearing on the temporary restraining order request. The public and press received no advance notice of the hearing. Typically, the opposing legal team gets about 24 hours’ notice, County Attorney John Nibbelin said yesterday at the board of supervisors meeting. Attorneys from the Keker Van Ness law firm, which is representing the county in the matter, had to appear in court via Zoom since they did not have time to get to Healy’s San Mateo courtroom.
Typically when a person seeks a temporary restraining order, they’re asking for the court to prevent the defendant from taking an action until a full hearing on the matter can be held.
Healy denied Corpus’ request, allowing for the removal proceedings to stay on track, Nibbelin said.
Healy said it would be premature to rule on the removal process before the proceedings were complete.
Nibbelin said Corpus’ attorneys tried to file the request for the TRO on Friday, but it was rejected by the court clerk because it was not filed properly.
Delaying the process
Corpus is trying to delay or stop the process that started in March with voter approval of Measure A, which gives the Board of Supervisors the ability to fire a sheriff for cause with a four-fifths vote. Supervisors are now moving forward with that process, sending Corpus a notice last week that lists the allegations against her.
Neither Corpus nor her attorneys from the firm of Murphy, Pearson, Bradley and Feeney responded to inquiries from a Post reporter on Tuesday.
Corpus is accused of corruption, including conflicts of interest, nepotism, retaliation, intimidation and making racial and homophobic slurs. She ordered the arrest of Tapia, who had been critical of her, on charges the DA later threw out. She fired her assistant sheriff after he spoke to Cordell.
Corpus has denied the allegations and said she is facing discrimination from the county government’s “Good Old Boys” network because she is the county’s first Latina sheriff.
She previously avoided testifying
This is not the first time Corpus has tried to avoid testifying in court. She has declined to sit for interviews with Cordell or investigator Christina Ro-Connolly, who looked into Corpus’ allegations of sexism and racism against Callagy. Callagy was exonerated in Ro-Connolly’s report.
The county last year paid Deputy Carryn Barker an $8 million settlement after she alleged in a lawsuit she was sexually assaulted by a former SWAT team leader and discriminated against by the department for years. At the time the county settled with Barker, a judge was poised to rule whether Corpus ought to testify in the case.
But why? Why would Corpus pursue this avenue to avoid testifying in front of a Grand Jury? Simple for few reasons. Grand Jury testimony is taken under oath and penalty of perjury. While Corpus demands those who offer information against her provide it under oath and penalty of perjury, she has no desire whatsoever to offer such testimony.
Witnesses who are subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury are generally not allowed to have an attorney accompany them into the grand jury room. While an attorney cannot generally be present during the testimony, they can be present outside the room and consulted with by the witness before, during, and after the testimony.
Witnesses have a right to legal representation and should consult with an attorney before testifying. The attorney can advise the witness on their rights and what to expect, but critically they cannot generally be present during the testimony itself. The purpose of the grand jury is to investigate allegations and determine whether to return a criminal indictment or a civil accusation. In a criminal case, the Grand Jury process brings the case to the Superior Court to proceed with criminal proceedings. In the case of a 3060 Government Code matter to remove an elected or appointed official, the Government Code specifies the steps and procedures of the Court, if an accusation is returned.
Avoiding testimony in front of a Grand Jury is generally not possible, without fleeing the jurisdiction. Although I personally expect Corpus will repeatedly invoke her fifth amendment right against self-incrimination in any matter of a criminal nature when called to testify in front of a grand jury. She has no desire to tell the truth and has made that quite clear.
Sue Sue Sue….that is all she knows how to do. She will lose this one big time! Sorry lady, the Grand Jury are impartial and will be presented with the FACTS! Not your delusional Latina good ole boys utter nonsense!!!! What you have done during your disastrous tenure is 100% criminal!!!!! No wiggling out of this one! Your boyfriend Aennle cannot save you from being held criminally responsible for your own actions!!!!! This made my day!!!!!!
Run baby run! You can’t hide behind Victor and Dan Noyes anymore. You are being seen for what you are…a despicable liar and a feckless coward. You’ll be working at the burger stand soon enough.
The civil grand jury is always ordered in the county the Sheriff works in how else would this work ? She works in San Mateo and the San Mateo DA does their job
Making up a new set of rules?
Hey you may think you’re a Legal Eagle, but your writing is incomprehensible. Why don’t you try this again. I can’t make sense of what you’re trying to say. I do know that the civil grand jury is an organization established by state law and exists in every county in the state. The San Mateo County version of the civil grand jury is incredibly lame, doing reports that matter little to the average person. If they bring an accusation against Corpus, it will be the most substantive thing they’ve done in decades. Not holding my breath.
How about this lil Vick.
The Sheriff works (or is supposed to) for and is supposed to alos protect the people within the County of San Mateo.
The DA has a confidential job to review wrongdoings and has an obligation to turn them over to a Grand Jury should there bw anything to review further.
The Grand jury is a confidential process- they review findings and decide if there are grounds for removal.
The Board of Supervisors and the County Manager are not part of that process.
For all we know the Grand Jury has been sitting on a case reviewing information since November 2024.
This process is non biased. Of the only argument Corpus has now is that the entire county is biased and corrupt there is some serious disconnect from reality.
The entire State of CA all of the County’s have this process. All of the county employees know each other . All county employees in CA would technically be biased then based on the Corpus attorney’s logic.
So the point my frenemy is that Corpus is looking for any excuse to delay a process that will remove her and at this point just stall an inevitable outcome. The Corpus was wastes an entire County of people’s time and county funds on lawyers.
Coherent enough for you now? Tell Corpus to RESIGN – work a plea deal.
For those wishing to read the cases Ms. Mibach so ably describes, they are case numbers 25-CIV-04325 (Wagstaffe and the civil grand jury) and 25-CIV-04319 (seeking injunction against Measure A). Both can be found in S.M.C. Superior Court’s online records.
Petitioner’s complaint in the former case is quite a humdinger. Sure enough, violation of the “due process”, “ex post facto”, and “writ of attainder” provisions in the US Constitution are alleged, among much else. They seek to have DA Wagstaffe and his entire staff ordered to no longer advise the civil grand jury on legal matters, and have an independent counsel instead fill that role. They also want to DA Office staff removed from pursuing criminal investigation of Sheriff Corpus, and that task instead assigned to CA’s Attorney General. And they want all grand jury proceeding stayed until that’s done.
Why? A bunch of rather wild claims about the US Constitution, several CA state statutes, DA Wagstaffe’s sundry doings, and the people he knows and works with. I’d probably need to do a lot of background reading and need a Westlaw subscription before I could analyze all that, so I’ll leave that to Judge Nicole Healy, who may be busy for a while.
Respondents have not yet had a chance to say anything, nor has Judge Healy. A case-management conference is scheduled for 9AM Friday, to get the ball rolling.
All of you who’ve been hating on Steve Wagstaffe are about to see that he’s been patiently biding his time and building his case. He’s a wicked smart lawyer. This really is the beginning of the end for Corpus, her little Latin leprechaun boy toy Victor, and Dan Perea, and anyone else dumb enough to hitch their wagon to this corrupt regime. I’m hoping criminal indictments soon follow as well. I wonder what the Vegas odds makers predictions are on how many times she invokes her 5th Amendment Rights under oath. You can’t hide behind the bus anymore, Christina!
Victor is held up at the ranch watching The Last Castle on heavy rotation.
“You see, I too share the burden of command. You may not think I have ever set foot on a battlefield, but that is because you have never sat behind this desk. This desk! My men and I are vastly outnumbered. We spend every day behind enemy lines because, make no mistake about it Mr. Irwin, they are the enemy!
Her attorneys are losing the plot a bit. Corpus cites as a conflict of interest that “both Hartnett and Wagstaffe serve together as board members of the 100 Club, further demonstrating their close association.” But Corpus was also on that Board until she resigned in January (see Amelia Biscardi’s January 9 article in the Post). So from that do we deduce that she is also close with them both?
She resigned from the 100 Club via … TEXT. Classy!
Actually the civil grand jury doesn’t render a guilty or not guilty verdict, contrary to what Karma is saying above. They issue an “accusation,” which is like a charge against a defendant. Once issued, a trial in superior court is scheduled. A new jury will be picked for the trial, and after the trial, the jury will determine if the official is guilty or not guilty of the accusation.
[Post removed — Violation of Terms of Use. Please don’t post comments using different names. Stick to one name so we know you’re not a sock puppet.]
[Post removed — Violation of Terms of Use. Please don’t post comments using different names. Stick to one name so we know you’re not a sock puppet.]
The “accusation” process is ruled by Government Code §§3060-3075. Issuing an accustation requires at least 12 juror votes out of the 19, and is delivered by the foreman to the DA and the accused. The accused then is required to appear in Superior Court to answer, and if denying charges, will be tried by jury. Conviction can order removal from office (only), “for willful or corrupt misconduct in office occurring at any time within the six years immediately preceding the presentation of an accusation by the grand jury”. Appeal can be made to the state Court of Appeal.