Appeals Court Upholds Lavelle’s Conviction

Rita M. Lavelle, the former Environmental Protection Agency official who was convicted of lying to Congress, was not sabotaged by her agency’s lawyers, a U.S. Court of Appeals panel said Friday in upholding her conviction.

The three-member panel, in an 27-page opinion written by Judge Edward Allen Tamm, affirmed Lavelle’s perjury conviction and her six-month prison sentence and $10,000 fine.

Lavelle, the former head of the EPA’s “Superfund” cleanup program, had argued before the appeals court that the agency’s attorneys had a “professional duty” to inform her that they suspected she submitted a false statement to Congress.

The statement, drafted by EPA lawyers and signed by Lavelle, said that she learned on June 17, 1982, that her former employer, Aerojet-General Corp., was involved in a California waste dump that the EPA was considering as a cleanup project. Lavelle said EPA lawyers believed that the correct date she learned of the involvement was May 28, 1982.

Her December, 1983, conviction and prison sentence centered on the statement--and her congressional testimony--that she did not learn of Aerojet’s involvement until June 17.

In the appeals court ruling, Judge Tamm said Lavelle’s “vague allegations that she was ‘duped’ into signing the Statement of Certification is directly contradicted by her own testimony.

“In an affidavit to the trial court, Ms. Lavelle swore that she still believed that statement was true,” the appeals court said. “During cross-examination, Ms. Lavelle stated she stood by the statement as an accurate account of the events as she understood them at the time she signed the statement.

“It is, therefore, difficult to conceive how Ms. Lavelle could have been duped into signing a statement which, after almost two years of cool reflection, she still believes to be true.”

Of the more than 20 EPA officials who left under a cloud of accusations, Lavelle was the only one indicted.

Lavelle had sworn under oath to two congressional committees in February, 1983, that she had not known until June 17, 1982, that Aerojet had dumped wastes at the Stringfellow Acid Pits in California.

The government charged that Lavelle was told May 28, 1982, about Aerojet’s involvement at Stringfellow and ignored repeated warnings to stop handling the case.

Lavelle said she did not consider the May 28 information conclusive and waited until she had better information on June 17 before deciding to remove herself from the Stringfellow enforcement efforts.