A Case Against Him in His Own Words

Colton Simpson’s autobiography impressed literary critics last fall with its raw account of the L.A. gang underworld and his war stories of life as a thief, thug and triggerman in the bloody battle between the Crips and Bloods.

The book, “Inside the Crips: Life Inside L.A.’s Most Notorious Gang,” was publicized as a tale of the former Crip’s redemption, one meant to divert youngsters from street crime and jewelry heists.

Instead, the book could help a Riverside County prosecutor send Simpson, 39, to prison for life, without possibility of parole, for the theft of an $800 diamond earring.

A Superior Court judge is allowing portions of Simpson’s book to be used as evidence when jurors in his robbery trial, set to begin next month, consider whether he drove the getaway car in a Temecula jewel heist in 2003.

Allowing a book to be used as evidence is a rarity in a criminal trial -- so too is having a defendant accused of a felony so similar to crimes he admits in a tell-all autobiography.

“We’re not digging into somebody’s private rap sheet or background,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Gallon argued in court. “This is something that he has caused to be published.”

“Inside the Crips,” published in August by St. Martin’s Press with a first run of 12,000 copies, was publicized as a “true and accurate” account. It is among a handful of gang memoirs by veteran street warriors, including “Life in Prison” by the recently executed Stanley Tookie Williams, none of which appeared to have been used in court, legal experts said.

Jodie Rhodes, Simpson’s La Jolla literary agent, said prosecutors were “using the book to crucify” Simpson.

The judge agreed with Gallon’s argument that Simpson’s accounts of jewel thefts could prove that he intended to rob a Robinsons-May in the Promenade mall.

And since Gallon is pursuing the robbery as a third of “three strikes,” Simpson’s fate may hinge, in part, on page 42:

“I love doing jewelry licks. I love the power I wield over adults.... It gets so I go in alone, ask to see a Rolex, grab two, dash out the store, turn them around, and have eight thousand dollars stuffed in my pocket.”

The passages to be submitted to jurors portray the onetime Crip soldier casing and robbing jewelry stores, whose wares are pawned for cars, booze and more jewelry.

Rhodes and others said Simpson had shed the gang life described in the book and pieced together an honest living: the book deal and a job as the personal assistant to rapper and actor Ice-T.

Simpson, who has been jailed in Riverside for more than a year, said he had been carjacked and forced to drive to and from the robbery -- the story he told Escondido police and co-author Ann Pearlman, according to court documents.

He sent at least two letters to the court saying that his cellphone had been confiscated and that it contained a phone number for a man who witnessed the carjacking.

“I don’t think for $800 that he would put his life on hold, that he would go back to prison for $800,” said Van Cotright, Simpson’s uncle and a former Los Angeles police officer.

At age 10, Simpson and his brothers were struggling to cope with a detached father, Dick Simpson, who had been an outfielder for the Los Angeles Angels in the early 1960s, and a mother who Simpson and his father said neglected the boys. She could not be reached for comment.

Simpson found refuge in the Rollin’ Thirties Harlem Crips; he was initiated after a Little League game. The neighborhood gangbangers sprayed gunfire and thrashed him in an alley, rewarding his tenacity with a nickname, Li’l Cee, and a .38 Special, he wrote.

Later that night, he said he shot two Bloods with the ease of firing a toy gun.

Simpson dropped out of school in eighth grade, perfecting smash-and-grabs at jewelry stores and wading through Blood territory in South-Central, “where people live and die in dog years,” he wrote.

The gangbanger bounced in and out of jail, spending much of his adult life locked up for burglary and attempted murder. He tacked “Loc” onto his nickname, for loco, or crazy.

“He was too deep,” his father said. “He knew it wasn’t right, but it was quicksand.”

In 1986, during a robbery at a Ben Bridge Jeweler in Redondo Beach, Simpson stole a $30,000 diamond ring and then shot a man who grabbed him from behind, according to court documents.

“Yeah, some good citizen,” he wrote in the book. “Turned a simple theft into an armed robbery with attempted-murder charges. Gonna cost the citizens of the state a pile of money. Got himself put in a wheelchair. Stupid people complicating my life.”

Simpson served about a dozen years in prison, during which his buddies outside died and his cellmates got stabbed, fraying his ties to gangbanging, he wrote.

While behind bars for a subsequent conviction for assault with a firearm, Simpson contacted Rhodes. She put him in touch with Pearlman, his co-author and a psychotherapist, who flew from Ann Arbor, Mich., to South Los Angeles to interview key players in Simpson’s life and walk the alleyway where he became a Crip.

While he and Pearlman hashed out the manuscript, prosecutors allege, Simpson acted as the getaway driver during a robbery at the Robinsons-May in Temecula. Witnesses said that on March 17, 2003, a man grabbed a 14-karat round-cut diamond earring before leaping over the counter and trying to pry open a display case, according to court records.

The robber and another man, neither of whom have been identified, hustled out of the store and jumped into a silver Ford Taurus. A friend of Simpson’s had leased the Taurus from Budget rent-a-car, court records said, and listed Simpson as a driver on the rental agreement.

When police detained Simpson days later at a border checkpoint near San Clemente, his rented Mercedes Benz contained several jewelry store pamphlets and a manuscript for “Inside the Crips,” the prosector said.

Gallon argued to Superior Court Judge Mark A. Cope that the charges against Simpson hinged on his intent to commit robbery.

The book -- a “vehicle to make money off the blood and terror of innocent victims” -- would prove this heist was one in a string, Gallon argued in a motion filed days after the book was published.

Prosecutors routinely press for letters and memos that the defendant wrote to be used as evidence, since they can show intent to commit a crime or a criminal pattern and are tough to deny, said Loyola Law School Professor Laurie L. Levenson, a former federal prosecutor.

The twist is that Simpson’s gritty book was intended to reach an audience, as opposed to a diary that a defendant stowed away and that prosecutors subpoenaed, several legal experts said.

“But it should be considered no different just because it was published,” said USC Law School professor Jean Rosenbluth, also a former federal prosecutor.

Simpson’s former attorney, H. Clay Jacke II, fought the book’s admission as evidence, calling the Temecula robbery a milquetoast crime that in no way resembled the tell-all’s misdeeds, which happened decades ago.

Colleen Lawler, Simpson’s public defender, said there was little difference between the jury being told of Simpson’s past convictions, which courts bar in most circumstances, and jurors reading “Inside the Crips” excerpts.

“This book is the most positive thing he’s done in his life, and it’s being used to send him to prison for the rest of it,” lamented co-author Pearlman, who is expected to testify.

Wes McBride, a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s gang investigator, called hoodlum books such as Simpson’s “self-aggrandizing,” with narratives that inflate the gangster’s role on the street, though the war stories are often rooted in truth.

“He bragged and he’ll have to pay for it,” said McBride, president of the California Gang Investigators Assn.

Williams, the former gang member who was recently executed, was among the gang genre’s contributors, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cited the dedications in his 1998 book, “Life in Prison,” as proof that the former Crip, who was convicted of killing four people during two robberies, had not been redeemed.

In particular, the dedication to George Jackson, who founded the Black Guerrilla Family prison gang, showed that Williams “still sees violence and lawlessness as a legitimate means to address societal problems,” the governor wrote.

Williams’ supporters countered that his series of books aimed at kids, with titles such as “Gangs and Your Neighborhood,” showed he had rejected thug life.

Similarly, Simpson’s defenders point to ruminations in the afterword to “Inside the Crips”:

“I’m out here struggling to fight the causes of gangsterism, struggling to end something I once devoted my life to.... Instead of winning a war and protecting our communities, we increased the fear and tragedy, building that tower of terror. I regret being a part of that.”

Times staff writer Nick Owchar contributed to this report.