Thursday, November 16, 2000

3 Rampart Officers Convicted of Corruption; 4th Found Not Guilty
Court: Defendants could face four years in prison. Chief Parks offers apology to city. Experts say probe has gained new steam.

By ANN W. O'NEILL , Times Staff Writer

    Three Los Angeles police officers were found guilty Wednesday of conspiring to obstruct justice by fabricating evidence and framing gang members--the first criminal felony convictions in the Rampart police corruption scandal. The Los Angeles Superior Court jury acquitted a fourth officer.
    Members of the ethnically diverse, middle-class panel of seven women and five men wore grim expressions as they returned their verdicts in the packed courtroom. A few sharp gasps erupted as the court clerk recited the first guilty verdict. Then the courtroom fell silent.
    Jurors deliberated for about 18 hours over five days before finding Sgts. Edward Ortiz, 44, and Brian Liddy, 39, and Officer Michael Buchanan, 30, guilty of the most serious conspiracy count, which carries a possible sentence of two to four years in prison.
    "There's good cops and there's bad cops," said jury foreman Victor Flores, 29. "They just didn't happen to cover themselves enough. They never thought it would come back to haunt them."
    As the verdicts were announced, Ortiz stared straight ahead, clenching his jaw, but the other defendants appeared stunned. Officer Paul Harper, 33, exhaled loudly when he heard the words "not guilty." He and his lawyer, Joel Isaacson, immediately left the courtroom.
    "I believe . . . that we're innocent and that we did our job keeping the citizens of L.A. safe from all the gangs and crime that's going on out there," said Ortiz as he left the courthouse. "It baffles me that the jury came to this decision."
    The verdicts came as the city has agreed to allow federal oversight of the LAPD--and one day before the Police Commission's anticipated report recommending reforms of administrative lapses that contributed to the scandal.
    "Since the jury spoke and [Rafael] Perez never testified, the term 'scandal' can now regrettably be used," said defense attorney Ira Salzman, who represents some officers implicated in the Rampart investigation. "It's no more in the area of allegations."
    LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks called the verdicts bittersweet, saying he was pleased the department's efforts to root out corruption were paying off, but expressing sorrow that several officers "dishonored their badges."
    Parks said he wanted to personally apologize to the citizens of Los Angeles for the shame that the convicted officers brought to the department and the city.

    Police and Gang Members Testified
    In addition to the convictions on the conspiracy charge, Liddy, Buchanan and Ortiz were found guilty of perjury for fabricating charges against two gang members, who the officers claimed ran down Liddy and Buchanan with a pickup truck during a July 1996 gang sweep.
    But the jury split its verdict, acquitting the officers of filing false police reports and court declarations in connection with a second arrest involving an allegedly planted gun found during a parking lot gang raid in April 1996.
    All four officers testified, but the jurors showed with their verdicts that they did not believe the testimony. Instead, jurors relied on testimony from gang members and their associates.
    The convictions provide a boost for prosecutors, who continue to investigate other allegations of police misconduct even as a new district attorney is poised to assume leadership.
    Three floors above the courtroom, several people pumped their fists in the air and shouted "Yes!" as they watched the verdicts over a closed-circuit television feed.
    Deputy Dist. Attys. Anne Ingalls, Laura Laesecke and Michael Carter, who at times seemed to be mounting an uphill battle, were met with rousing cheers and applause as they returned to their office on the 18th floor of the Criminal Courts Building. Their boss, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, hailed the verdicts at a news conference.
    "The issues in this case go to the heart of the criminal justice system," Garcetti said. "We must be able to depend on the honesty of police officers. When peace officers violate our trust, we must hold them accountable."
    Laesecke agreed. "This really is an important point in history," she said. "We're taking a step forward by recognizing that corruption can occur, and we're taking steps to clean up the city."
    Mayor Richard Riordan praised the verdicts.
    "I am pleased that justice has been served," he said. "These officers deserved to be punished for their crimes. They abused their power and the trust of the people they were sworn to serve and protect."
    The convictions were won without the testimony of Rafael Perez, the rogue former Rampart officer whose accusations set off the scandal a year ago.
    Perez's lawyer, Winston Kevin McKesson, said the verdicts were "a complete and total vindication of everything that Rafael Perez has said since he began cooperating with authorities. The truth of his words were borne out by the jury's verdicts."
    The defense was crestfallen. Attorneys for the three convicted officers said they would appeal and criticized the jury in unusually blunt terms.
    Harland W. Braun, attorney for Buchanan, said, "I find it hard to believe that someone would want to be a police officer when you can be convicted of a felony based on evidence like this. . . . I think the jury was wrong."
     Said lead defense attorney Barry Levin, "I think I failed my client in not seeking a change of venue."
     "I thought the citizens of Los Angeles would come into this trial and listen to the evidence, and I was wrong," Levin said. "Obviously, I was wrong in thinking the officers would get a fair shake."
     He said he regretted not calling Perez as a defense witness.
     "We lost this case because the jury speculated as to what the evidence was, and had listened to reports of corruption long before these charges were brought," said Levin, a former LAPD officer who represented Ortiz.
     "We were doomed from the very beginning."
     But several jurors who spoke after the verdicts said they found the defense effort heavy-handed and melodramatic. Some said the defense lawyers were condescending toward the female prosecutors. And they objected to the officers on trial being portrayed as heroes.
     "They weren't heroes. They were guilty," said juror Lucy M. Leon, 42, of La Puente, who said defense attorneys seated her on the jury "because they thought I was stupid."
     "We decided from the get-go that Harper was innocent," she said. "He was credible. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."
     As for Buchanan and Liddy, jurors believed that they made up the story about being hit by the truck, and that supervisor Ortiz signed off on it.
     "We might have found them innocent, but they were out to arrest those gang members, to do whatever they had to do to get them off the street," she said.
     Juror Bryan Loetz said there was some frustration in the jury room over not having heard from more people allegedly framed by the officers. He particularly wanted to hear from Allan Lobos, the gang member charged with possessing the allegedly planted gun. Lobos is serving a life term in state prison for murder and is suspected in an arson apartment fire that killed a dozen people.
     Other reports emerged concerning what happened inside and outside the jury room.
     One juror said the panelists prayed for guidance and recited the Pledge of Allegiance before beginning deliberations each day. "We asked the Lord to help us do the right thing," Leon said.
     Flores, the foreman, said one juror slept through much of the trial. "I told him, 'If you wouldn't have slept through half the trial, we'd be done [a day earlier].' "
     Alternate juror Wendy L. Christiansen, 30, who did not participate in the deliberations, said she would have acquitted the defendants on all counts. She said some of her fellow panelists demonstrated bias against police and discussed the case during breaks. Some jurors, she said, talked about the hazy memories of reluctant police officers called by the prosecution. She recalled that one juror said, "Of course the police officers aren't going to remember, because they're all buddies."
     "I believe the code of silence was a big issue," Christiansen added.
     Several jurors said late Wednesday that they were confident they had decided the case fairly. They said they were not biased toward or against police, but said the evidence showed a code of silence existed among officers.
     "We had a very open mind," said juror Leon. "We gave them the benefit of the doubt; we wanted to find them not guilty, but we tried to follow the letter of the law."

     New Life for Rampart Probe
     Legal observers said the guilty verdicts breathe new life into the Rampart investigation. It is possible now that other officers who face possible corruption charges might be encouraged to strike plea bargains and perhaps cooperate with the ongoing probe, sources close to the case said.
     Meanwhile, the city faces dozens of lawsuits from the wrongly accused. According to civil lawyers, Wednesday's verdicts could increase the incentive of anyone suing the LAPD to push their cases to trial--and, conversely, force lawyers for the city to consider making more costly settlement offers to keep those cases out of court.
     The four-week trial took jurors into the LAPD's busiest and most violent police division--8 square miles of gang territory. According to testimony, Rampart officers confiscated more than 500 guns during a three-year period.
     The trial also exposed the LAPD's close-knit culture, as expressed in the Rampart CRASH unit's "protocol"--written professional guidelines stressing pride and unity. One section in particular caught jurors' attention: "What is said in this unit stays in this unit. Do not bad-mouth the unit or its members."
     A juror asked in one note passed to the judge, "Does that mean 'Code of Silence?' "
     The trial went forward even after prosecutors lost Perez as their star witness. Caught stealing $1 million worth of cocaine from police evidence lockers, Perez cut a deal with prosecutors and started naming names. His confessions unleashed a police corruption scandal that turned Los Angeles' criminal justice system upside down, leading to more than 100 criminal convictions being overturned and exposing the city to perhaps more than $100 million in legal settlements with the wrongly accused. About 70 LAPD officers have come under suspicion.
     While lawyers picked the jury, Mexican authorities were digging for bodies in a Tijuana trash dump. Los Angeles police and federal agents had been directed there by Sonia Flores, a former girlfriend of Perez, who claimed that Perez and a former partner, convicted bank robber David Mack, had buried three corpses there. Flores said Perez was involved in at least two of the slayings, which she said occurred during a soured drug deal.
     The allegations diminished Perez's value as a witness. McKesson said Perez would not answer questions about the murder investigation and would invoke his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. In doing so, he would deny the defendants the right to confront their accuser, leading to a certain mistrial.
     As the jury retired to deliberate, the case took another twist. Flores tearfully recanted, saying she was a woman scorned who wanted to punish Perez for using her.
     The timing raised eyebrows among some legal observers, who found it suspicious and too convenient to be a coincidence.
     "Anyone watching this case closely thinks it stinks," said Los Angeles civil rights lawyer Samuel R. Paz.
     He called for a thorough investigation. "Flores made a fool out of a lot of law enforcement folks," Paz said.

* * *     Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Josh Meyer, Jim Newton, Twila Decker and Eric Malnic.
* * *     MORE COVERAGE
     LOOKING AHEAD--The verdicts against three Rampart officers inject a new momentum into the ongoing scandal probe. A19
     JURORS TALK--Members of the jury decided even gang members don't deserve to be framed. A19
     RESIDENTS REACT--People in the Rampart area express a mix of relief, dismay at guilty verdicts. B1