Misconduct charge for S.F. prosecutor

The State Bar of California has charged a top San Francisco homicide prosecutor with misconduct related to a 2013 murder case he tried while working for the Solano County district attorney’s office, officials said Monday.

Andrew Ganz, 40, was charged in State Bar court with six counts of misconduct, including intentionally suppressing evidence and violating the defendant’s constitutional rights. He has 25 days to respond to the State Bar’s notice of disciplinary charges. If found culpable, he could face discipline ranging from probation or suspension to disbarment.

Officials with the San Francisco district attorney’s office, where Ganz currently works, would not say if he was still prosecuting cases, citing it as a personnel matter.

“We are aware of the State Bar’s filing and will be monitoring the developments of this case,” said Max Szabo, a spokesman for San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón.

Efforts to reach Ganz, who was admitted to the State Bar in 2004, and his attorney were not immediately successful.

The charges stem from the murder case against Michael Daniels, who was accused of killing his 37-year-old girlfriend, Jessica Brastow, in August 2012.

Daniels, 65, was found not guilty in the case, which was allegedly tainted by Ganz’s contact with the forensic pathologist who handled the autopsy.

On Jan. 10, 2013, prosecutors presented the pathologist, Dr. Susan Hogan, with their theory that Brastow had been murdered. They believed Daniels tied her up in a hotel room and suffocated her with a sock.

Hogan, though, determined the death was by asphyxiation, and said it was possible Brastow choked on her own vomit

while drunk. Brastow’s blood alcohol content was a staggering 0.37, and Hogan told prosecutors she would not list the death as a homicide.

Despite the conversation, Hogan “falsely testified” during Daniels’ preliminary hearing that she never met with prosecutors and “thought the manner of death was most likely a homicide and the victim was smothered,” Donald Steedman, assistant chief trial counsel for the State Bar, wrote in court papers.

Ganz also failed to correct Hogan’s testimony during the hearing, Steedman wrote, and he later tried to get the defense to take a plea bargain without telling them about his conversation with Hogan.

Before the trial started, the judge in the case said Ganz failed to disclose the meeting and the possible exculpatory material to Daniels’ defense attorneys.

Ganz displayed a “prosecutorial attitude either incapable of or disinterested in maintaining the minimum ethical standards that all prosecutors are sworn to uphold,” Judge Daniel Healy wrote in 2014.

Hogan retired in 2013 amid questions about her competence in other homicide cases.