The lawyer running to unseat Orange County’s district attorney is calling for additional investigation into allegations of hazing in Mater Dei High School’s famed football program.
Pete Hardin, a former federal prosecutor, questioned on Wednesday why Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer had not followed a local police department’s recommendation to file felony charges in the aftermath of a violent locker-room fight that, according to a recently filed lawsuit, left a teenage football player with a traumatic brain injury.
Hardin also criticized what he described as a “lack of any investigation” into longtime head coach Bruce Rollinson on suspicion of child endangerment. One of the best-known figures in high school football, Rollinson has been profiled in Sports Illustrated and has led the team from Santa Ana to eight Southern Section championships and four national titles since 1988.
“These kids were under his care,” Hardin told The Times. “As the head coach of the team, he apparently knew that there was a ritualistic hazing process that these kids went through and did nothing to stop it.”
In a case like this, parents understandably want answers quickly, said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who teaches law at Loyola Marymount University. But, she said, “it’s the kind of case where you have to be very careful with both the investigation and the charging decision.”
Spitzer said Tuesday that his office had not filed criminal charges because there was “no evidence of hazing or any other crime that we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The office’s most experienced prosecutors had reviewed the case, Spitzer said, and had not found “a single shred of evidence to show that this was anything other than a mutual combat situation with two willing participants who traded blow for blow, including repeated punches to each other’s heads.”
“At no time did one of the players in the fight tell the other player to stop, even when the punches…