The State Bar of California has suspended former San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos from practicing law for six months for destroying evidence requested in a civil lawsuit the county settled for $65 million.
Ramos admitted to the misconduct that the State Bar concluded was “an act of moral turpitude, dishonesty and corruption.” He also was ordered to pay $1,250 in monetary sanctions and $2,494 in investigation fees to the State Bar, which also placed Ramos on probation for two years, according to an order filed on March 20.
Ramos, 67, of Redlands, served as the district attorney from 2002 until he was defeated by Jason Anderson in the 2018 election. It followed a devastating loss in 2017 for both his office and the state Attorney General’s Office in a highly publicized public corruption case that saw all but one defendant vindicated.
From 2016 until 2020, Ramos deleted text messages from his personal cellphone and also deleted his campaign email account, both of which included communications regarding the nearly decadelong criminal investigation and prosecution of Rancho Cucamonga developer Jeff Burum and three former top county officials — all of whom were acquitted or had their charges dismissed in 2017.
Those text messages and emails were requested in a civil lawsuit filed in 2018 by Burum and his Colonies Partners investor group following Burum’s acquittal. Ramos, however, could not produce those records because they had been deleted.
U.S District Court Judge Jesus Bernal determined in April 2020 that Ramos had acted in bad faith and had a duty to preserve the electronic records sought by attorneys representing Burum and Colonies Partners.
The State Bar noted that Ramos was not advised by county counsel during the civil litigation to maintain his campaign email account.
“Respondent (Ramos) thereby unlawfully destroyed material having potential evidentiary value, ” according to the order, which also noted Bernal’s determination that Ramos asserting “ignorance of his obligation to preserve the ESI (electronically stored information) when he is a sophisticated party who had the assistance of experienced counsel was not persuasive.”
Ramos did not respond to repeated telephone calls and requests for comment.
Attorney Stephen G. Larson, who represented Burum in both the criminal trial and the civil case, said, “Given their power in our justice system, holding prosecutors accountable is the most important function of the State Bar in supporting the rule of law. In our highly politicized environment, it is essential that those who enforce the law be subject to the law.”
At the time of the $65 million settlement in November 2020, county spokesman David Wert said the settlement protected taxpayers from what could have been a more costly outcome. From 2006 to 2020, the county paid out $167 million to Colonies Partners to settle lawsuits the company had filed against the county.
The lengthy prosecution was launched in May 2011, when a grand jury indicted Burum, former county Supervisor Paul Biane, former Assistant Assessor Jim Erwin and Mark Kirk, a former chief of staff to former county Supervisor Gary Ovitt. Prosecutors charged Burum with conspiring with the other three defendants and former county Supervisor and Assessor Bill Postmus in a bribery scheme. That scheme, prosecutors alleged, influenced a $102 million settlement in 2006 between the county and Colonies Partners to settle a longstanding legal dispute over flood control easements at the Colonies’ residential and commercial development in Upland.
Burum, Biane, Erwin and Kirk maintained their innocence from the start and claimed the prosecution was politically motivated. Postmus, however, entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors two months before the other four defendants were indicted. He agreed to testify against the other defendants at trial and pleaded guilty in March 2011 to 15 felony charges in connection with the Colonies case and a companion case in which he was accused of corrupt practices while serving as county assessor. The charges included conspiracy to accept a bribe, conflict of interest, misappropriation of public funds and asking for and receiving bribes.
Postmus was sentenced to three years in state prison, but was released before serving his full term.
While the State Bar found Ramos to be “grossly negligent,” it took into account his nearly 30-year career as a county prosecutor and district attorney, with no prior record of discipline, and his service as president of the California District Attorneys Association Foundation, as a former board member of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Redlands-Riverside, and as a volunteer board member for the California Crime Victims Alliance.
Since his election defeat in 2018, Ramos has taken up writing crime novels and now serves as an external relations director at UC Riverside’s Presley Center of Crime and Justice Studies. He also is an instructor at UCR’s School of Public Policy, said spokesman John Warren.
