Orange County officials on Tuesday agreed to pay $595,000 to ex-jail inmate Joshua Waring, the son of a former “Real Housewives of Orange County” cast member, to settle accusations that deputies illegally monitored his telephone conversations with an attorney and set him up to be beaten by another inmate.
The settlement of Waring’s federal lawsuit, unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors, still must be formally accepted by his legal team. Meanwhile, an arrest warrant has been issued for Waring after he failed to show up for court on two new drug cases. On two separate occasions, Waring was arrested for possession of drugs and paraphernalia, as well as for one charge of misidentifying himself to an officer, according to court records identifying Waring as a fugitive.
Waring had spent four years in lockup after he was accused of shooting a 35-year-old man outside a Costa Mesa sober living home in June 2016. Two other people escaped injury. The motive was unclear.
Facing a potential life sentence, Waring accepted a plea bargain on lesser charges in March 2020 that allowed him to be released on time served.
His release was accompanied by statements by the judge, Jonathan Fish, his mother, Lauri Peterson, and his attorney, Joel Garson, about how Waring had changed and was ready to turn his life around.
While Waring was in jail, his attorney learned that nearly 34,000 recordings of attorney-client calls were made by the jail’s phone vendor, although those calls were legally confidential.
Deputies and their supervisors were subpoenaed to testify about the illegal recordings, sparking one of the largest controversies in the history of the county’s criminal justice system. Waring and his attorney alleged that, in retaliation, deputies either set Waring up for attacks by other inmates or failed to protect him.
In June 2018, two deputies came into a jail module where Waring and other inmates were sleeping and fired off pepper balls. More than a year later, Waring was attacked by an inmate wielding a blade in a jail housing area where inmates are supposed to be kept apart.
With a media fascinated by his mother’s celebrity status and yet another justice system scandal, Waring’s case and federal lawsuit generated intense media coverage.
