By Robert Phillips, Deputy District Attorney (Ret).

Penal Code § 502(c)(2); Illegally Accessing and Using Confidential Computer Data: 

Rule:  Penal Code § 502(c)(2) does not make criminal a person’s use of confidential personnel computerized files when the same information is also available via non-confidential sources, such as public court records.   

Facts: Diana Maria Teran, petitioner in this post-preliminary examination motion to dismiss pursuant to Pen. Code § 995, had been an employee of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) from 2015 to 2018, working as a “constitutional policing advisor.”  In this capacity, she was tasked with providing advice about the “best practices” for running LASD in a manner “consistent with . . . constitutionally supported polic[e] activities.” She also assisted with efforts to ensure compliance with LASD’s discovery obligations pursuant to Brady v. Maryland (1963) 373 U.S. 83, which requires law enforcement to take the initiative in providing criminal defendants with any potentially material exculpatory information. 

In order to execute her responsibilities in this regard, Teran reviewed and tracked complaints, investigations, and discipline involving deputies employed by LASD, accessing this information in several ways. For instance, Teran had access to LASD’s Performance Recording and Monitoring System (PRMS), a computer database that contained personnel information, including information about complaints against sheriff’s deputies, materials compiled during a resulting investigation, findings of fact made by investigators, and documents stemming from civil service proceedings such as court decisions following an appeal filed by a deputy or LASD. Teran also reviewed similar information that LASD maintained in an excel spreadsheet tracking deputies’ disciplinary proceedings. In addition to all this, other LASD employees e-mailed to Teran court documents from proceedings in which deputies challenged civil service commission decisions.  Teran further required that her assistant download files from PRMS and share them with her through either e-mail or a shared drive.

Teran quit this job in November, 2018, joining the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office in 2021 as a “special advisor” in the then District Attorney George Gascón’s Discovery Compliance Unit (“DCU”). The DCU is responsible for maintaining the District Attorney’s databases that contain exculpatory and impeachment evidence that must be turned over to the defense under Brady as well as other information about law enforcement personnel that is not required to be disclosed.  On April 26, 2021, in her capacity as Gascón’s special advisor, Teran sent an email to another attorney in the DCU in which she shared a digital folder entitled “Writ Discipline Decisions,” and which contained tentative and final superior court writ decisions that arose out of civil service proceedings involving numerous sheriff’s deputies. This information was alleged to have come from the Sheriff’s Department Performance Recording and Monitoring System (“PRMS”); a computer database that contained personnel information, including information about complaints against sheriff’s deputies, materials compiled during any resulting investigation, findings of fact made by investigators, and documents stemming from civil service proceedings, such as court decisions following an appeal filed by a deputy or LASD.  The file name for each writ decision included the deputy’s name.  Some of this information was not available via the public domain but was found only in a LASD shared drive folder created by an assistant who had worked for Teran when she was at LASD, and that had been emailed to Teran during the time she was working at LASD.It was therefore believed that Teran improperly used information she learned when employed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department during her later employment with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. 

As a result, Los Angeles County’s new District Attorney, Nathan J. Hochman, filed a felony complaint on April 24, 2024, charging Teran with eleven violations of Penal Code § 502, subdivision (c)(2): “Knowingly access(ing) and without permission tak(ing), cop(ying), or mak(ing) use of any data from a computer, computer system, or computer network, or tak(ing) or cop(ying) any supporting documentation, whether existing or residing internal or external to a computer, computer system, or computer network.” Following a preliminary examination, Teran was held to answer on eight counts, the magistrate finding that there was sufficient evidence to believe that Teran had logged into PRMS and accessed certain sheriff’s deputies’ personnel records, which contained information about the complaint or discipline as to each listed deputy.  Upon being arraigned in Superior Court, Teran filed a Penal Code § 995 motion to dismiss.  The trial court denied this motion. Teran subsequently filed a petition for writ of prohibition 

Held: The Second District Court of Appeals (Div. 5) reversed.  The issue here was whether the 995 motion to dismiss should have been granted by the trial court.  Penal Code § 995 requires an information to be set aside if the defendant “had been committed (following a preliminary examination) without reasonable or probable cause.” (P.C. § 995(a)(2)(B).) “Reasonable or probable cause . . . exists ‘if there is some rational ground for assuming the possibility that an offense has been committed and the [defendant] is guilty of it.’” (People v. Moyer (2023) 94 Cal.App.5th 999, 1018.)

In this case, it was an issue of statutory interpretation; i.e., did Teran violate Penal Code § 502(c)(2) as this section is written? The Court first set out the rules for interpreting a statute, noting that the Court’s “fundamental task … is to determine the Legislature’s intent so as to effectuate the law’s purpose.”  In so doing the Court must “first examine the statutory language, giving it a plain and commonsense meaning.” The Court must “not examine that language in isolation, but in the context of the statutory framework as a whole in order to determine its scope and purpose and to harmonize the various parts of the enactment. If the language is clear, courts must generally follow its plain meaning unless a literal interpretation would result in absurd consequences the Legislature did not intend. If the statutory language permits more than one reasonable interpretation, courts may consider other aids, such as the statute’s purpose, legislative history, and public policy.” (Sierra Club v. Superior Court (2013) 57 Cal.4th 157, 165–166.)  The charged offense in this case—subdivision (c)(2) of Penal Code § 502—makes it felony to; “(k)nowingly access and without permission take, copy, or make use of any data from a computer, computer system, or computer network, or take or copy any supporting documentation, whether existing or residing internal or external to a computer, computer system, or computer network.” 

As alleged by the prosecution, it was argued that Teran “knowingly accessed the data from the Sheriff’s Data Network” regarding the six deputies in the charged counts “during her LASD employment,” and then, years later, on April 26, 2021, “made use of” that data.  Although the felony complaint here, referencing the statutory language, alleged that Teran “did knowingly access and without permission take, copy, or make use of data,” the People conceded that they were not pursuing a theory of “taking or copying.” Rather, the People’s theory was solely that Teran “used” the data without permission. As alleged, she did this by “identifying the deputies from data on the Sheriff’s Data Network, selecting documents pertaining to each, titling those documents so that they revealed the deputies’ names, and sending the curated group of names and documents to [her DCU colleague].”  This, the People argued, falls under the dictionary definition of “to make use of.” 

In analyzing this issue, and while interpreting what the Legislature intended to make illegal when it enacted Section 502(c)(2), the Court proceeded into a long esoteric tough-to-follow discussion, eventually concluding that “section 502(c)(2) does not make criminal the acts alleged in this case.” (Italics added) It was first noted that the term “use” is not defined in the statute, nor does the statute include any language to explain the permission necessary for a given use of data. But the requirement that an individual obtain permission for the use of data that resides on an entity’s computer can only be reasonably understood to apply to situations where the entity has some dominion over, or right to control, the uses made of that data.  Here, everything Teran used was also available elsewhere other than the LASD’s computers. Specifically, the same information had been openly used in court.  As noted by the Ninth Circuit: “These court documents convey nothing that a member of the public could not learn by sitting in a courtroom attending the court proceedings or reviewing publicly available information from the court’s docket and files.”  As such, the Court held that it did not believe that “the Legislature intended to allow for criminal prosecution of an individual who shares a public court document just because the document had been stored as data on, and then retrieved by the individual from, LASD’s PRMS.” In other words, just because the LASD placed a public record in a particular file on a computer database does not transform an otherwise public court record into a confidential file over which a criminal prosecution then becomes possible when someone with computer access uses the document without permission of the owner of the computer.

The Court therefore concluded from the statutory language in section 502(c)(2), and in particular its reference to the use of allegedly private documents without permission, does not make what Teran did a crime. Looking at the legislative history together with its statement of intent, along with the arbitrary and unreasonable consequences that flow from the People’s unconstrained reading of the statute, the Court held that section 502(c)(2) did not apply to the circumstances of this case, where only purely public court records had been shared by the defendant. The Court therefore ordered that a peremptory writ of prohibition issue restraining the Superior Court from further proceedings other than dismissal pursuant to Penal Code § 995. .  

Note: The Prosecution has not yet determined, as of the writing of this brief, whether it will seek a review of this decision by the California Supreme Court. It would be interesting, however, if it does. I had an extremely difficult time interpreting what the Appellate Court was talking about, feeling at times that the justices were engaged in a lot of confusing doubletalk.  I had to read the decision several times and am still not sure of the validity of their reasoning.