When the Defense Wins a Tough Case, It’s Sweet

The public defenders at the Norwalk courthouse begin the day with pancakes and strawberries.

Attorney Michelle Paffile won a not guilty verdict in a trial, and by tradition she must bring treats for the 14 other public defenders and the staff assigned to this suburban courthouse in southeast Los Angeles County. This was an especially sweet victory for the young attorney, and she’s gone all out on this recent Wednesday with mounds of cakes and berries and whipped cream.

Paffile, 31, a five-year veteran of the public defender’s staff, shares an office with attorney Ramiro Cisneros, who has been serving as the newspaper’s courthouse guide through a week of ground-level justice -- the kind that almost never makes the headlines.

She is eager to tell the story, and Cisneros encourages a visitor to listen because it is one of those unsettling cases that arises in an instant and drags on for years.

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Her account: Four years ago, a young Alta Loma man in a silver Ford Expedition drove up the Washington Boulevard onramp to the 605 Freeway, straight into a colossal traffic jam. A big rig was disabled in the No. 4 lane, and cars were slowed to a creep.

Perhaps the prudent reaction would have been for the man to dial up some soothing music on the stereo, relax, chat with his friend who was a passenger and wait it out. But he was not prudent. He drove onto the shoulder to gain ground and then swung out to merge into traffic, where tempers were rising. He reached the No. 3 lane and then impatiently tried to find space to squeeze into the No. 2. He clipped the mirror of a delivery truck. A California Highway Patrol officer, on foot, witnessed the event. He attempted to stop traffic and signaled for the SUV driver to pull over. The man did not.

At the next offramp, the attorney continued, her client exited to square things with the driver of the delivery truck. Before that could happen, the officer pursued him, reporting that the SUV driver had tried to run him down. Marijuana was found in the SUV. The driver was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer, a felony, as well as drug possession and evading arrest.

While in the back seat of the patrol car, a hidden microphone recorded the driver’s hysteria. Over and over again he tells his friend, also in custody, that he never saw the officer and didn’t try to run him down. And the marijuana? The passenger confesses, oops, it was his.

As it happens, the two young men were partners in a record business. They hired an attorney. Over time, the passenger settled the drug offense. The driver went to trial and was convicted and sentenced to jail.

Their attorney never entered the tape recording into evidence.

The driver set an appeal in motion. Eventually, an appellate court ordered a new trial on grounds that one attorney is not supposed to represent two clients unless both sign a waiver.

During the interval, the driver lost his house, his business and his life savings. He could not afford a private attorney any more. He was able to qualify for a public defender.

The retrial lasted 2 1/2 days. By and large, the district attorney did not dispute Paffile’s recounting of the facts of the case -- except for the most important of them. The prosecutor argued that the driver had seen, and made eye contact, with the CHP officer and gunned his engine in reply, putting the officer in jeopardy.

Paffile had the tape recording played for the jury.

Deliberations lasted 45 minutes. Not guilty. Pancakes and strawberries.

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Incorporated in 1957, Norwalk is one of those postwar boomtown suburbs distinguished from the multitude of surrounding stucco suburbs only by the lines on a map. The writer D.J. Waldie calls this southeast portion of the basin “The Great Flat,” defined as the floodplain surrounding the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers.

For those who regard Southern California by its grandiose stereotypes, the terrain here is also the great unknown -- home to a healthy share of the region’s remaining middle class, to its rising working class, to its growing immigrant class and, of course, to its share of crime.

The everyday cities and unsung culture of this landscape define the reach of the Los Angeles County Superior Court in Norwalk: Bellflower, Whittier, Downey. These are neither the roughest nor the most privileged communities in our midst and thus perhaps the easiest to overlook.

“The combination of things -- square mile after square mile of tract housing, the working class, the uniform grid of streets -- all of it equals something terribly diminished in the minds of some,” says Waldie, who lives in adjacent Lakewood. “I choose to celebrate the flats rather than abandon them.”

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Cisneros retrieves a message on his office phone. He replays it on the speaker. The pleading, sweet, desperate voice of a young woman is heard. Her father is in jail. Will Cisneros help?

The inmate grapevine is alive with rumors about which lawyer is hot. But the accused have no say in picking which public defender gets their case. In Norwalk, head deputy Marvin Isaacson, a tall, mustachioed, Old West-looking man with a seersucker suit and 32 years of courthouse seniority, assigns the cases.

No small share of his work is then to follow up on clients’ complaints about their attorneys. Defendants are often disbelieving. When a public defender tells them they are likely to go to prison, the first thing they want is a different attorney, a better deal, a ticket home, a miracle. They want Perry Mason.

Cisneros offers a rough guess: Maybe half of the cases he handles are fairly well cut and dried. The facts are not much in dispute. There is no question whatsoever about the defendant’s prior record. Cisneros has combed through the law and found little give. These are cases Perry Mason wouldn’t touch, but the public defender must.

The other half of Cisneros’ caseload is different. There are flaws. If not flaws, then questions. Sometimes there is flat-out doubt about whether the police got the right guy.

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Cisneros has traveled to Whittier on his own Perry Mason mission now.

He has an upcoming car theft case that strikes him as fishy, and he wants the help of a colleague in the Whittier public defender’s office who happens to be a former sheriff’s deputy.

The police report from the scene recounts a sequence of events that led to the arrest: Deputies were suspicious of a passing vehicle. Using the computer terminal in their patrol car, they ran the license plate through a central law enforcement database. It came back as stolen. The vehicle was pulled over. Cisneros’ client was among the men inside. The arrest was made. Again using the computer, the deputies learned that Cisneros’ client had a long rap sheet.

But. But Cisneros has subpoenaed printouts of the computer traffic, which list all communications minute by minute. He needs help in deciphering the police codes of these multiple printouts.

His colleague reads a different story from the computer: It appears the suspect’s car was pulled over first. A report on the suspect’s rap sheets was received next. Only then was the license plate checked and found to match a stolen car.

(The following week, in Norwalk court, Cisneros moves to suppress the sheriff’s evidence in the case. On the stand, the arresting deputy cannot reconcile the differences between his report and the computer record. Motion granted. Having nothing on which to base the case, except for the deputy’s now-impeached account, the district attorney drops the charges.)

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Cisneros has another case to handle in Whittier, a tragedy. Most felonies go through arraignment and preliminary hearing at feeder courts like this one with local public defenders, before the cases are transferred to Norwalk. But this is a special case, a murder, and Cisneros is assigned to handle it start to finish.

A young defendant with a bewildered expression is brought into court in handcuffs. He offers a weak smile to his family, gathered in the spectator seats. He is to be arraigned on charges of stabbing his grandfather to death and attempting to kill his uncle during a furious argument.

Cisneros is granted a delay. He wants to arrange a psychiatric evaluation of the 21-year-old defendant.

Outside the courtroom, he is surrounded by the man’s extended family. With drawn, helpless faces, the father and mother besiege him, while children gather around. There is something wrong with their boy. Cisneros has to understand. The boy is not right.

Cisneros tells them he knows. For the first time his face cracks, and he reveals some of the sadness of the world in which he works. The week is barely half over.

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Ground-Level Justice

Monday

Going to bat for those who have hit bottom.

Tuesday

Should the judicial system lock up a man if he hasn’t broken the law?

Today

A retrial and a sweet victory for the public defender’s office.

Thursday

An extortionist is sentenced and a drug user returns to jail.

Friday

The case of the one-eyed man comes to a conclusion.

On the web

Find previous installments at latimes.com/norwalk.

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john.balzar@latimes.com