Prosecutor Steven Kay Caught Letting Serial Rapist Go In Exchange For Lying In Other Cases

This article is posted on susanatkins.org by James Whitehouse.

This is the only news article we could find on the case:
http://articles.latimes.com/1989-12-11/news/mn-121_1_jailhouse-informant

--------------------------------------------

At Susan's 2009 Parole Hearing Jay Sebring's nephew, Anthony DiMaria, stated that prosecutor Steven Kay was his "hero" because Steven Kay had spent his entire career with the DA's Office prosecuting cases and advocating Susan's continued incarceration, and had even passed up promotions to do so.

The truth is Steven Kay did not "pass up promotions" in order to continue as a prosecutor,  he was promoted to a high ranking administrator in the LA DA's Office when it was discovered that some of his biggest court-room victories were achieved by making deals to release a diagnosed serial sexual predator. The evidence suggests Kay was demoted back to a prosecutor  once these deals were discovered by the media.

In an article by Los Angeles Times writer Ted Rohrlich, it was disclosed that at least ten women were kidnapped or raped because Steven Kay and the LA DA's Office got Stephen Jesse Cisneros released... twice.

Cisneros had already been in prison as a mentally disordered sex offender sentenced to 1-14 years in prison in a maximum security mental hospital. He had been released after 4 years. Only months later he was arrested for  attempted rape. This is what he was in jail for  when the LA Sheriff's Office moved a suspect in another case into his area of the jail because that "section of the jail [was] reserved for informants."  In what Cisneros later called his "big break"  he was told if he stated the suspect had given him "all the gory details" he would be freed. In one of the continuing farces in American Justice, District Attorneys are still allowed to pay jail-house informants with absolute immunity for their past crimes if they testify under oath that someone else in jail spontaneously "confessed" to them. Steven Kay himself wrote the letter to the Judge confessing that without Cisneros's claims of a confession Kay might not have been successful in convicting the other men. (One was given 45 years in prison, the other is on death row.)

The Judge in the case stated that before Kay intervened the Judge was convinced Cisneros belonged in prison, and only "reluctantly" agreed to set him free and only due to Kay's request. Even LA prosecutors state Cisneros was looking at imprisonment "for as long as [we] can keep him in prison," and the prosecutor handling Cisneros's case said he was someone with "a high potential for danger."

In addition to this, when Kay had Cisneros released, there were the reports of three court appointed psychiatrists that Cisneros should be back in a hospital, the request of the State Probation Department who did not want him out, and more than ten other physicians and outpatient programs all of whom agreed that "the general consensus... is that the defendant is not suitable or amenable to outpatient therapy" and that allowing him access to the public would be a danger to the community. The Probation Department investigator noted candidly that they did not have the ability to supervise someone like Cisneros.

In April 1980 Cisneros was released at Kay's request, and according to Court records within a few months Cisneros was attacking women again. He was arrested in early 1981 for more sexual assaults.  But now he knew how to get out.

Cisneros contacted the DA's Office and claimed he had a confession from a murder suspect. Though the DA's Office later admitted they did not need Cisneros's testimony, they decided it would help their case. By this time at least two more psychiatrists had informed the DA's Office that Cisneros was a "pathological liar." The DA's Office used his testimony anyway. (The suspect was convicted and sentenced to life.)

Cisneros was released again as part of deals with the DA's Office which the Court Commissioner stated "horrified" him.

Cisneros was arrested again for raping and robbing in 1984, but the DA's Office declined to prosecute. He claims this was because of his prior testimony. He was finally arrested in 1985 as the "Riverbed Rapist," and was sentenced to 70 years in prison.

Cisneros now admits all the "confessions" he gave Kay and the DA's Office were lies. He says he gave them simply because the DA's Office promised he'd be freed if he testified their suspects confessed to him..

When confronted with his successful attempts to have Cisneros released, Kay stated that the two men he was trying to convict (who he'd confessed a  jury might not have believed were guilty without Cisneros) were more dangerous, and that the ten women who were assaulted, kidnapped and raped were "just a small, teeny little offshoot."

It was shortly after this story was uncovered, I believe, that the "hero" Steven Kay was demoted back to a prosecutor - a position he never again rose above in his 30+ year career with the LA DA's Office. I was told he was also transferred to the DA's Compton office, which also represented a fall as far from the high-profile LA cases as was humanly possible without being fired.