This is an LA Times Studios podcast.

Chris Gofford here at LA Times Studios.

Thanks for joining us on Crimes of the Times.

Today, part two of our dive into the Orange County Informant scandal and its impact.

Tell us what you think in the comments below.

Thank you. its impact. Tell us what you think in the comments below. In March 2014, a man in handcuffs was escorted to the witness stand of a Santa Ana courtroom.

He was in his early 30s, a small man covered in gang tattoos and wearing mustard-colored jail scrubs,

a career criminal, currently incarcerated and facing a possible life term. For the first time,

people were getting a look at the mysterious inmate F, an informant whose identity

prosecutors had fought to disguise. His real name was Fernando Perez, a former shot caller with a Mexican mafia.

He was the man to whom Orange County's worst mass shooter, Scott DeCry, had given a graphic

confession of his 2011 murder rampage at a Seal Beach salon.

DeCry's defense attorney, Scott Sanders, had been waiting for exactly this moment.

He wanted to prove that Perez was a professional informant,

that Perez had not materialized in a cell next to decry by accident,

but that jailers had put him there deliberately,

and that prosecutors had been covering it up, that it was part of a much larger

jailhouse informant scheme, illegal under the Sixth Amendment, because the snitches were pumping

information from defendants who already had lawyers. He wanted to prove that the sheriff's office

and the DA had been conspiring for years

to keep this hidden from defendants.

Fernando Perez is a very talented informant.

...