A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Thursday canceled a contempt hearing that had been set for next month over Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s refusal to comply with a subpoena to testify before a civilian oversight panel.
Lawyers representing L.A. County dropped the case against Villanueva after he showed up voluntarily to this month’s Civilian Oversight Commission meeting — for the first time since July of last year — and agreed to appear again next month to discuss his agency’s coronavirus pandemic response in the jails.
The legal battle was a litmus test of the commission’s newly minted power to issue subpoenas as a tool to keep the sheriff in check. The county Board of Supervisors gave the commission the authority in January and voters reaffirmed the commission’s right to do so when they overwhelmingly approved Measure R in March. In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom gave the right to subpoena to oversight bodies statewide when he signed Assembly Bill 1185 into law.
Last month, Judge Holly J. Fujie ruled that the commission, a watchdog group appointed by the Board of Supervisors, was well within its power when it directed the county’s inspector general in May to subpoena the sheriff to testify about how the department was responding to the coronavirus inside the nation’s largest jail system.
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