Jury Expected to Get Mayor’s Case Today : Prosecutor Urges Consideration of Irony in Hedgecock’s Claims of Inadvertent Errors

Describing Mayor Roger Hedgecock as a “competent, keen-minded person” who “knew exactly . . . what he was doing” when he filed inaccurate personal and campaign finance reports, Assistant Dist. Atty. Richard D. Huffman on Wednesday asked jurors in the mayor’s trial to declare Hedgecock guilty “in a loud and clear voice.”

This morning, nearly one year after Hedgecock’s finances became a major public issue, the six-man, six-woman jury is expected to begin its deliberations on a verdict that could result in Hedgecock’s ouster from City Hall. The case will go to the jury after Superior Court Judge William L. Todd Jr. reads to the jurors the last of nearly 100 instructions concerning points of law and evidence in the case--a process that occupied nearly two hours Wednesday afternoon.

Earlier Wednesday, Huffman, in a scathing rebuttal of defense attorney Michael Pancer’s closing arguments, argued that the mayor’s response to the felony conspiracy and perjury charges facing him consists of “silly explanations and inconsistent statements . . . intended only to confuse” the jury.

” The defendant did come into this courtroom cloaked with the presumption of innocence,” Huffman said as he concluded his two-hour, 11 minute rebuttal. “By the sheer force and weight of the evidence in the case, we’ve torn that cloak from the defendant and exposed the guilt to you.”

Outside the courtroom after Huffman’s rebuttal, Pancer expressed frustration over not being able to respond to the charges--the prosecutor gets the final word in the case because he carries the burden of proof--and described Huffman’s remarks as “a horrible mischaracterization of the evidence.” Both Pancer and Hedgecock, however, professed confidence in the jurors’ forthcoming decision.

“The jury was at the trial,” Hedgecock said. “They heard me speak. They heard me testify. They know that I was telling the truth.”

As Huffman reiterated many of the arguments he presented during his summation Monday, both Pancer and Hedgecock often shook their heads and grimaced in disgust, particularly when the prosecutor unleashed some of his most caustic rhetorical salvos.

Huffman, for example, characterized Hedgecock as a “pretty slick” witness who provided “well-practiced” answers and an “absurd charade” during his three-day testimony last month. He argued that the mayor tried to “wish away” purportedly damaging evidence “like Alice in Wonderland.” The prosecutor also sarcastically suggested that Pancer “put up some of the most absurd theories in the world” during his summation.

Pointing to Hedgecock’s background as a lawyer and his eight years in public office, Huffman also encouraged the jurors “to think of the irony” in the defense’s argument that Hedgecock “is unsophisticated in the handling of (and) . . . lost track of” his personal and campaign finances.

Hedgecock “is a very bright, articulate, knowledgeable individual,” Huffman said. “You know from the people who work with him that he has his hand on everything. And it serves him ill to stand here in this courtroom . . . and tell you that the omissions that he made on his (financial disclosure) statements were due to error and inadvertence.”

Prosecutors have charged Hedgecock with conspiring with former J. David & Co. principals Nancy Hoover and J. David (Jerry) Dominelli in a scheme to funnel tens of thousands of dollars in allegedly illegal contributions to Hedgecock’s 1983 campaign via a political consulting firm owned by Tom Shepard, a close friend of the mayor. The perjury charges facing Hedgecock allege that he intentionally falsified financial disclosure statements to conceal that and other allegedly illegal financial aid from Hoover and Dominelli.

The defense, however, has characterized the more than $360,000 that the two former J. David officials invested in Tom Shepard & Associates as a routine business investment designed primarily to help Shepard start his own business, not to get Hedgecock elected mayor. Hedgecock has conceded that there were errors and omissions on his personal and campaign financial reports, but he describes those mistakes as inadvertent ones caused by his “good-faith effort” to comply with complex regulations.

Arguing that Hedgecock and his attorney “defended against the straw army” through “silly . . . interpretations” of the evidence, Huffman added, “What’s offered to you are some wild-eyed theories in the hopes . . . of confusing you. Confusion of one of the jurors is all that the defendant needs.”

Huffman also sought to bolster the credibility of a key prosecution witness, Sorrento Valley investment counselor Harvey Schuster, who testified last month that the mayor had told him in November, 1981, that he knew that Dominelli planned to invest heavily in Shepard’s firm so that it could run Hedgecock’s campaign. Hedgecock has consistently denied being aware of Dominelli’s financial role in Shepard’s firm and has argued that Schuster lied because of his anger over not receiving a lucrative contract to develop the county’s bayfront parking lots that was awarded in 1982 when Hedgecock was a county supervisor.

However, if Schuster had been “really mad, steamed up and vengeful,” Huffman argued, he would have been unlikely to wait 2 1/2 years to seek his revenge against Hedgecock. A more opportune moment to act on such a vendetta, Huffman suggested, was the 1983 mayoral race, when Schuster could have seriously damaged Hedgecock’s candidacy by publicizing how then-Supervisor Hedgecock had solicited a $24,000 loan from the investment executive at the time that he was bidding on the county project.

“That . . . would blow his campaign right out of the water like a wooden boat,” Huffman said, raising his voice for dramatic effect. The prosecutor also stressed that Schuster did not volunteer to testify but rather was subpoenaed by the district attorney’s office.

“Mr. Schuster has undergone a terrible beating” to his reputation, Huffman said. “He’s testified to what we contend are illegal activities. No businessman needs that. In development and . . . government circles, Mr. Schuster will be about as popular as a communicable disease.”

Throughout his rebuttal, Huffman also sought to reinforce his central argument that one of the major reasons for the January, 1982, founding of Tom Shepard & Associates was to provide a mechanism for funneling illegal donations to Hedgecock to get him elected mayor.

The defense argues that, while Shepard’s firm lost money by handling Hedgecock’s race, Shepard realized that running a successful mayoral campaign would significantly enhance his fledgling firm’s reputation and help attract clients.

Under that defense theory, Shepard willingly accepted a short-term financial loss in the anticipation of long-range dividends--which, in fact, proved to be the case when Hedgecock’s victory drew other political and corporate clients to the firm. Although Hedgecock’s campaign committee paid Shepard’s firm about $30,000 over the course of the 1983 race, prosecutors argue that the firm lost tens of thousands of dollars on the contract in the form of free staff time and unreimbursed overhead.

Huffman, however, pointed out that Shepard “never lost one dime” on the Hedgecock campaign contract because Dominelli and Hoover were bankrolling his firm.

“The fact that Tom Shepard may be willing to lose as much money of somebody else’s as is necessary to get his friend elected and to pave the road to glory for (himself) . . . isn’t important,” Huffman said. Because of the city’s $250-per-person campaign contribution limit and ban on corporate political donations, “you cannot do legally what they (tried) to do,” Huffman added.

Huffman also reiterated his oft-stated argument that a $130,000 oral-agreement loan that Hedgecock received from Hoover to renovate his South Mission Hills house was actually intended to be a gift.

“There was no intention to have anybody aware of this,” Huffman said, contending that the deal came to light only because of the collapse of the J. David company last February. Evidence introduced at the trial, however, demonstrated that Hedgecock had begun steps to repay Hoover in late 1983.

As he concluded his rebuttal, Huffman invoked the legal tenet of “equal justice under the law” in asking jurors to “weigh the evidence with logic and reason” and not to be influenced by the fact that their verdict could result in Hedgecock’s ouster from office.

“If you vote your conscience, ladies and gentlemen, I predict that you will find no choice in the verdict,” Huffman said in a soft voice. “There is no other true or just verdict . . . other than to find this defendant guilty.”