County of Orange v. Superior Court

The County of Orange, its sheriff, and various employees of the sheriff’s department (collectively, the County) seek extraordinary relief from an order allowing suspects in an ongoing criminal investigation to review the contents of the investigative file through the medium of civil discovery. The County argues the trial court abused its discretion in granting discovery of the file at this time. The County asserts the court should have stayed the civil action for a reasonable period to allow authorities to complete the investigation before having to divulge information that could compromise the investigation and derail a potential prosecution. We agree that the court erred in the breadth and timing of the discovery order and grant the writ requested, subject to specific limitations discussed below.

I

On the morning of August 12, 1996, Edith Marie and Feilong Wu reported the disappearance of Edith’s two-year-old son, C. T. Turner. The Wus claimed C. T. had either walked out of or been abducted from the family’s Mission Viejo home. A large search party of volunteers and military personnel did not find the child that day. The next morning, Orange County Sheriff’s…