SUIT AGAINST FORMER ASSISTANT DA, HIS DAUGHTER, SETTLED
San Diego County has agreed to pay $125,000 to a man who filed a civil rights suit after discovering he was the target of a secret investigation ordered by the former assistant district attorney aimed at getting damaging information for use in a child custody battle.
The settlement reached on Nov. 16 resolves a lawsuit filed by Nathaniel Moore against the county, former Assistant DA Jesse Rodriguez and Elizabeth Rodriguez, his daughter who is also a prosecutor. Elizabeth Rodriguez and Moore had a relationship for several years and are parents of a child born in 2017.
He had sued in August 2020, slightly more than a year after a report in The San Diego Union-Tribune detailing how the senior Rodriguez had used District Attorney’s Office staff and resources to find evidence of fraud or perjury related to an unemployment claim Moore had filed with the state in 2017. Nothing was found, however.
At the time, Jesse Rodriguez was the longtime No. 2 official in the DA’s office, largely responsible for the daily operations of the office and one of the most influential figures in the local justice system. He retired at the end of 2018, months before the secret probe became public.
The report also revealed Chula Vista police had conducted a separate inquiry into allegations of domestic violence Elizabeth Rodriguez had made against Moore during the child-custody dispute. The results were sent to the District Attorney’s Office, then forwarded to the state Attorney General’s Office, which decided not to file any charges.
Moore also contended his rights were violated when the Rodriguezes used confidential psychiatric records from the state prison system in the custody battle. Moore was released from state prison in 2009 after serving 10 years on a manslaughter conviction after killing a man in a street fight in Los Angeles. He met Elizabeth Rodriguez four years later.
The relationship disintegrated and the couple landed in court. At a 2018 mediation session in the custody dispute, Elizabeth Rodriguez produced a copy of Moore’s psychiatric prison record. Those records are normally confidential.
The suit said that Moore and his lawyer eventually discovered the records were accessed by an unidentified state prison system worker just before the mediation.
Christopher Morris, Moore’s lawyer, said his client decided to settle the matter in order to avoid a protracted legal battle with the mother of his child and her family.
Neither the county nor the DA’s office, where Elizabeth Rodriguez still works, would comment on the settlement. Moore also declined to comment.
U.S. District Court Judge Cynthia Bashant had thrown out many of the claims in the lawsuit in a ruling in June, but she allowed the claims over the prison records to move forward.