County to Study Cost of Background Checks

LOS ANGELES — The Board of Supervisors Tuesday asked county staff to evaluate the cost of doing complete background checks before hiring lawyers to work in the district attorney’s or public defender’s offices.

The move was spurred by a Times story on how the district attorney’s office hired a prosecutor whom a civil jury had found liable for stabbing to death a teenager at a San Pedro party in 1989.

Matt Horeczko was never prosecuted for the alleged attack, so it did not appear on a routine criminal background check by the district attorney’s office. When the judgment in a wrongful death lawsuit was discovered during a comprehensive check five months after Horeczko was hired as a prosecutor, he resigned.

The district attorney’s office has said they were simply following existing county policy by conducting a full background check only after the hiring.

The motion by Supervisor Mike Antonovich calls for county officials to consider how other law enforcement agencies perform background checks and the cost of performing those checks before hiring.