An attorney who usually defends criminal suspects is now suspected of a crime by the Marin County District Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors allege that Tyler Rogers Smith bribed a witness to not testify against his client in a vandalism case. If convicted, Smith could face up to four years in prison.
Smith’s lawyer, Charles Dresow, said the timing of the charges suggests a prosecutor was trying to interfere in the relationship between Smith and the vandalism defendant.
“This is a troubling situation for several reasons, starting with the fact that we are dealing with criminal charges brought by a county prosecutor against a criminal defense attorney who currently is an adversary in a matter proceeding to jury trial,” Dresow wrote in an opposition filing.
Smith, who joined the state bar in 2013, works for Heisler Rosenfeld LLP in Walnut Creek. According to a biography on the law firm’s website, Smith’s career has included work on high-profile cases such as the “Ghost Ship” warehouse fire in Oakland and the federal trial of Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, who was sentenced to life in prison on murder and racketeering charges in 2016.
His client in the Marin vandalism case, a misdemeanor matter filed in July, is Nicholas Pasichuke. Pasichuke admitted to damaging his ex-girlfriend’s laptop, according to an investigative report that Dresow included in a court filing.
In October, Pasichuke proposed an out-of-court settlement to pay his ex-girlfriend $3,000 for the damages. In exchange, she would not voluntarily testify in court and would not cooperate with the prosecution. Smith and the witness both signed the agreement, according to a copy filed by Dresow.
Smith later notified prosecutor Roopa Krishna about the civil agreement and indicated that his client’s ex-girlfriend was paid for the damages to her computer along with the costs of moving out-of-state, according to the investigative report.
The Marin County District Attorney’s Office alleges that the case is not eligible for such a civil settlement and that Smith used it to subvert the prosecution. The office charged Smith with the felonies of offering to bribe a witness and dissuading a witness from testifying.
Smith was arraigned Friday. Judge Geoffrey Howard set a hearing for Feb. 29 on a defense motion challenging the charges.
In a court filing last week, Dresow wrote that although Smith signed his approval of the civil agreement, the deal was only between Pasichuke and the witness.
“This does not make him a party to the agreement and therefore not a party to the alleged bribery or dissuasion of a witness,” he wrote.
Dresow also wrote that there is no evidence the agreement was made within Marin County; that the deal never prevented the witness from giving testimony at a trial; and that a civil agreement was permissible because the case only involved property damage.
Curtis Briggs, another attorney in the Chow case, attended Smith’s arraignment on Friday to show his support.
“I’ve seen him make a lot of difficult and courageous decisions under the most intense pressure a trial attorney can face, and he never once compromised his ethics,” Briggs said.
Briggs said the criminal charges against Smith are “bogus.”
“It’s reckless and ultimately this will reflect extremely poorly on the Marin County District Attorney’s Office,” Briggs said. “This will work out in Tyler’s favor, there’s no doubt in my mind about that.”
Smith declined a request for comment.
Pasichuke is scheduled to be sentenced on July 15 in the vandalism case.
District Attorney Lori Frugoli declined to explain Tuesday why Smith was charged with bribery and witness dissuasion and Pasichuke was not. A report by a prosecution investigator said that based on his interview with the victim, “I believe there is a strong likelihood that the actions taken by Mr. Smith to include moving her out of state, dissuaded a once cooperative victim and therein made an important material witness unavailable to the prosecution for trial.”
