Inside Man: A Jailer Turns Informant

Crimes of the Times

L.A. Times Studios

Christopher Goffard, Los Angeles, La Times, Los Angeles Times, True Crime, Chris Goffard, News, Society & Culture

4.6 • 42.8K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

James Sexton thinks Operation Pandora’s Box is behind him. When he reports a superior officer for misconduct, he is branded a snitch and treated as a pariah. Ostracized and scared, he does what he once thought unthinkable: he begins feeding information about the Sheriff’s Department to the FBI, and tells a grand jury about the scheme to hide Anthony Brown. In the U.S. Attorney’s first major thrust against the sheriff’s department, Sexton becomes one of 18 current or former sheriff’s employees to be indicted. Desperate to keep his badge, he decides the fight the charges, and his lawyer portrays him as the “Walter Middy” of the scandal, a man who exaggerated his role. Nevertheless, a jury finds him guilty and he begins his prison sentence. Sexton’s decision to talk to investigators opened a rare window into the inner workings of the Sheriff’s Department. His testimony about Anthony Brown tied deputies and supervisors to a widening obstruction scandal. The story is reported and narrated by Chris Goffard, the Los Angeles Times journalist behind Dirty John.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Everybody loves the treason, but they hate the traitor.
0:09.0	They hate the person that steps up and says,
0:12.0	this is what we were doing behind the curtain.
0:14.0	This is what was going on inside the LA County jail.
0:17.0	I became a man without a country.
0:20.0	I heard your snitch.
0:21.6	I heard your rat.
0:22.6	It was the first of probably three times that I wept because I was starting to process
0:28.6	the fall from grace.
0:29.6	I'd worked hard not to be a sheriff's son.
0:31.6	I'd worked hard to be considered a worker.
0:48.4	At the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, James Sexton had struggled to shed his image as a so-called brass baby. He was the son of a decorated lawman, the longtime sheriff of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama,
0:56.3	who happened to be a close friend of L.A. Sheriff Lee Baca, who was now Sexton's boss.
1:02.0	At the county jail, Sexton had learned to obey orders uncritically, and he had passed a big test of loyalty.
1:10.0	With his mastery of the jail computer system,
1:12.6	he had helped his bosses hide a federal informant from the FBI.
1:17.1	He thought the episode was behind him forever.
1:20.2	He had just done what he was told, he says,
1:22.6	trusting that his bosses had his back,
1:25.3	trusting the command structure at an institution he had learned not to defy.
1:30.4	But now, on an unrelated case six months later, he felt the institution was betraying him.
1:37.4	It was early 2012, and he was scared.
	...

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