Sen. Roderick Wright case expected to go to jury Friday

With only the prosecution’s rebuttal remaining in the perjury and voter fraud trial of state Sen. Roderick D. Wright, the case is expected to go to jury Friday.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy delivered detailed instructions to the jury Thursday before both sides presented their closing arguments.

Wright, 61, an Inglewood Democrat, was indicted more than three years ago on eight counts of perjury and voter fraud stemming from steps he took to run for what was then the 25th Senate District.

Prosecutors allege Wright cooked up an elaborate scheme in 2007 to make it appear he was eligible to run when he registered to vote and made other moves to establish as his legal residence an Inglewood rental complex he owns. They allege his true residence, or “domicile” as state law puts it, was a single-family home in Baldwin Hills, outside the district he wanted to run in.

Wright, who pleaded not guilty to all counts, and his attorney insist the senator intended to play by the rules and did everything he thought was required when he arranged to share space in the Inglewood home he was renting to a woman he considers his stepmother.

Defense attorney Winston Kevin McKesson said the law was unclear and called prosecuting Wright a waste of taxpayers’ money.

In his 90-minute closing argument Thursday morning, Deputy Dist. Atty. Bjorn Dodd went through the applicable laws for the jurors, translating the legal terminology into everyday language. A domicile, for example, is a person’s fixed place of residence, where one expects to live more or less permanently and where one expects to return after an absence.

Dodd, summarizing testimony and showing photos of the Baldwin Hills and Inglewood properties, said Wright was not entitled to call the Inglewood complex his domicile or “fixed habitation” because most of his possessions were in Baldwin Hills and that is where he spent the bulk of his time when not traveling or in Sacramento for his legislative duties.

There was almost no evidence Wright spent any significant time in the Inglewood home, Dodd said.

Prosecutors also produced utility bills from the Baldwin Hills home that fluctuated with the legislative sessions and showed photos of full closets, collectibles and artworks and three luxury cars parked there. Only a few items belonging to Wright were found when investigators searched the Inglewood home, prosecutors said.

“Don’t leave your common sense behind,” when deciding the case, Dodd told jurors.

McKesson spent his afternoon-long closing argument on the attack. He repeatedly called the district attorney’s public integrity division staff members “liars” who conducted a “sloppy investigation” and were unfamiliar with the law when they obtained search warrants on the two properties in December 2008 and proceeded to prosecute Wright. (The district attorney won a county grand jury indictment of Wright in September 2010.)

“They didn’t understand the law,” McKesson told jurors. “This is not a case about where Senator Wright lives.... ‘Lives’ is not in the law.”

McKesson called Wright a “dedicated public servant” and a “compassionate man” who did not evict a tenant behind on his rent. He referred to Wright’s long career in politics and made reference to various commendations he had received from constituents and interest groups over the years.

More than once, McKesson referred to his longtime friend as “Roddy Wright.”

A Tuolomne County case figured prominently in both sides’ closing statements. The case involved a candidate, Anne L. Fenton, who was elected to a local board but was refused her seat because she and her husband had been living in another home outside the district. The court ruled she could claim her old home as her “domicile” in part because she had never changed the address on her driver’s license, voter registration or other documents.

Wright said he used the Fenton case as a basis for claiming the Inglewood home as his legal residence. McKesson said the Fenton ruling “clarified” what were “murky” areas of state law.

Dodd, however, said that case was substantially different from Wright’s situation. He said Wright had never registered to vote at the Inglewood address between the time he bought the property in 1977 and prepared to run for office in 2007.

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jean.merl@latimes.com

Twitter: @jeanmerl