Tanaka lawyer: Prosecution witnesses were 'Caucasians and seemed to be angry'

Paul Tanaka’s defense attoey claimed Tuesday that some prosecution witnesses “had it out” for the former undersheriff and were jealous about his rise through Sheriff’s Department ranks as a young deputy.

During closing arguments, a federal prosecutor recounted phone records, audio and visual recordings and emails that he says show Tanaka participated in the conspiracy to thwart a federal investigation into civil rights violations in county jails and an attempt to obstruct a federal grand jury.

The jury in Tanaka’s federal criminal corruption trial began deliberating around noon on Tuesday after nine days of testimony. Deliberations are expected to continue Wednesday.

Tanaka is charged with conspiracy and obstruction of justice. He has pleaded not guilty.

Several retired or nearly retired Sheriff’s Department officials testified early on in the trial about how they waed Tanaka about excessive use of force years ago within the Men’s Central Jail and in some cases, they came up with plans to address those issues. But they claimed those plans were vetoed by Tanaka. Assistant U.S. Attoey Brandon Fox called the men “reformers.”

Defense attoey H. Dean Steward said the so-called reformers of the Sheriff’s Department were all “Caucasians and seemed to be angry,” during their testimony.

“You could just feel the spite as they came in here,” Steward told the jury.

He said Tanaka had ruffled some feathers and that some people didn’t like him or his leadership style.

“It’s not a crime to be a strong leader,” Steward said.

Fox questioned Steward’s tactic of bringing up race, noting one of the men was not Caucasian.

Fox said jurors throughout the trial have heard about the “many faces of Paul Tanaka.”

Tanaka, he said, was “the man who would overrule and undermine the people who sought to reform the Sheriff’s Department.”

He described Tanaka as the man whose authority everyone was operating under.

Steward, meanwhile, pointed to former Sheriff Lee Baca as the ringleader of the scheme.

“The driving force in everything that you’ve seen was Leroy Baca, not Paul Tanaka,” Steward said.

Prosecutors allege that once Tanaka and others within the Sheriff’s Department leaed about an FBI investigation into civil rights violations in the jails in 2011, they attempted to hide an inmate who was an FBI informant, told deputies not to cooperate with federal investigators and threatened to arrest the FBI agent leading the federal investigation.

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In his testimony, Tanaka characterized himself as a conduit of information and that the sheriff was constantly looking for updates that Tanaka sometimes didn’t have and he instructed the investigators on the case to speak directly to Baca.

Fox showed the jury summaries of phone records compiled by FBI special Agent Leah Taer that showed about 70 phone calls were exchanged between Tanaka and subordinates tasked with getting to the bottom of the FBI investigation. Just one phone call was exchanged between Baca and people other than Tanaka involved in the investigation in August and September 2011. Baca and Tanaka exchanged several phone calls during that time.

Tanaka’s name was invoked several times as the authority in emails and in conversations, Fox showed.

Fox likened Tanaka to a movie director. “This was Mr. Tanaka’s operation,” Fox said. “He was ruing the show.” Fox pointed out to the jury that in many cases on cross-examination, Tanaka couldn’t remember conversations or meetings.

“This was a scandal that Paul Tanaka had on his hands and he wanted to quash it as soon as he could,” Fox said.