Mistrial Called in Hedgecock Perjury Trial

Calling the jury in Mayor Roger Hedgecock’s conspiracy and perjury trial “hopelessly deadlocked” by one juror’s unwavering belief in the mayor’s innocence, Superior Court Judge William L. Todd Jr. on Wednesday declared a mistrial.

Although a beaming Hedgecock hailed the inconclusive result as “a significant . . . victory,” Assistant Dist. Atty. Richard D. Huffman, who prosecuted the case, noted that the jury deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of conviction on all 13 felony counts and said that Hedgecock escaped a guilty verdict “by the skin of his teeth.” He pledged to retry the case.

A hearing on a new trial date is scheduled for Friday.

Lone Holdout

The lone holdout on the jury was Leon Crowder, a 15-year City of San Diego employee who supervises garbage collection, who maintained he “was strong in my belief” in Hedgecock’s innocence. But other jurors interviewed were equally strong in their belief in the mayor’s guilt, and they also charged that Crowder paid little or no attention to the evidence and dozed or ate oranges during deliberations.

Hedgecock sought to downplay the significance of the jurors’ margin.

“The numbers under our system don’t count,” Hedgecock said. “This is not an election. You don’t have to win by 50% plus one. It was Mr. Huffman’s . . . burden to win the case, not mine. The rules are you’ve got to have 12 unanimous jurors for a verdict. He didn’t get that. It’s like bowling--you can’t call it a strike until all the pins go down.”

In declaring the mistrial, Todd said he saw “no reasonable possibility, let alone probability” that the jury, which deliberated for nearly four days, could end its impasse.

Interviewed as he left the courthouse, Crowder said he believed there was “too much inconsistency in the testimony” against the mayor.

“Most of the witnesses didn’t have the kind of credibility that would have convinced me that he was guilty,” Crowder said. “The evidence was too conflicting and I personally believed (Hedgecock’s) testimony.”

Jury Foreman Thomas Furtak, however, expressed the frustration shared by the 11 jurors who believed that Hedgecock had, as prosecutors charged, conspired with Nancy Hoover and J. David (Jerry) Dominelli--principals of the bankrupt J. David & Co. investment firm--in a scheme to funnel tens of thousands of dollars in illegal contributions to his 1983 campaign via a political consulting firm owned by Tom Shepard, a close friend of the mayor.

‘Objective and Fair’

“Every one of us felt we were objective and fair, and here was an individual who was not objective,” Furtak said of Crowder. “There was never a change in his attitude. Today, we broke down the simplest count on a poster board, in a very detailed way, so it was obvious that a crime was committed--checks were signed by the mayor--and (Crowder) still wouldn’t accept it.”

“It was extremely frustrating, exhausting and stressful,” said juror Christina Seabern, 35, a management services officer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She said Crowder “said he believed everything that Roger said and wouldn’t listen to reason.

“He was not paying attention; he did not wish to participate in going over the evidence,” she said.

Seabern, like several other jurors, said she entered the case with the view that Hedgecock was innocent. “Now I’m totally convinced that he’s guilty on all counts,” she declared. “His testimony was the most damaging thing. He was dishonest. It wasn’t his demeanor. It was the answers to the questions. That didn’t match up with the evidence.”

Juror ‘Sickened’

Juror Philip Villanueva, 50, a Pacific Bell employee from Santee, said he was “sickened” after he concluded that Hedgecock was guilty. He agreed with the others that the mayor did little to advance his cause when he testified on his own behalf.

Crowder said claims by the other jurors that he failed to pay attention were “ludicrous. I was a very observant juror,” he insisted. “I did listen and pay attention and try to deal with the facts.”

The jury went through 16 ballots before deadlocking.

The controversy over Hedgecock’s personal and campaign finances was ignited by his admission last year that he had received a $130,000 oral-agreement loan from Hoover in 1983 to remodel his house.

Although Hedgecock insisted there was nothing improper about the loan, since repaid with interest, the unorthodox transaction brought to light related deals that forced the mayor to amend earlier financial disclosure statements to correct omissions and errors. Those amendments, combined with the inaccuracies and inconsistencies in Hedgecock’s initial explanations of his financial dealings, attracted the scrutiny of Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller Jr. and the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

Grand Jury

Last Sept. 19, the San Diego County Grand Jury indicted Hedgecock, Hoover, Dominelli and Shepard on charges that they conspired to violate local and state election laws by using Shepard’s firm to illegally funnel contributions into Hedgecock’s 1983 campaign. The perjury charges filed against Hedgecock alleged that he intentionally falsified financial disclosure statements to conceal that scheme and other purportedly illegal financial aid from Hoover and Dominelli. About a month later, the FPPC filed a nearly $1-million civil lawsuit against Hedgecock on similar charges.

The case against Hedgecock turned on one major question: Was the $361,500 that Hoover and Dominelli invested in Tom Shepard & Associates in 1982 and 1983 a legitimate business investment, or an illegal subsidy to Hedgecock’s campaign designed to circumvent the city’s $250-per-person contribution limit?

According to the prosecution’s theory, the two J. David officials’ funding of Tom Shepard & Associates was the cornerstone of a conspiracy that had three major beneficiaries: Hedgecock, Shepard and Hoover.

Aim of Plan

“If the plan succeeded, Roger Hedgecock would be mayor, Tom Shepard would have a successful business and Nancy Hoover would be a big behind-the-scenes power broker,” Huffman told the jury during the trial.

Because Hedgecock’s mayoral campaign was Tom Shepard & Associates’ major client during most of the period in which Hoover and Dominelli pumped money into the consulting firm, Huffman argued that those investments were tantamount to illegal campaign donations that helped prop up an integral element of Hedgecock’s campaign.

Hedgecock, however, insisted that the major purpose behind Hoover’s and Dominelli’s investments was to help Shepard establish his own business, founded in January, 1982. That was 10 months before the election of then-mayor Pete Wilson to the U.S. Senate cleared the way for a special election for a new mayor. In that May, 1983, election Hedgecock narrowly defeated former City Councilwoman Maureen F. O’Connor.

Defense Claim

Defense attorney Michael Pancer emphasized to the jury that of the $361,500 that Hoover and Dominelli invested in Shepard’s firm, $189,000 was put into the firm before Hedgecock’s 1983 mayoral campaign began and after it was over.

“How is that for the benefit of the Roger Hedgecock campaign?” Pancer asked in his closing arguments.

A key prosecution witness, however, testified that Hedgecock had boasted to him in November, 1981, that Dominelli was “going to invest sufficient funds” in Shepard’s firm so that it would be able to run Hedgecock’s 1983 campaign. Sorrento Valley investment counselor Harvey Schuster said that Hedgecock told him in a conversation that month that Dominelli “was like putty in the hands of Nancy Hoover, and if Nancy asked Jerry to do this, he would do it.”

In an attempt to refute Schuster’s testimony--perhaps the most damaging against Hedgecock in the trial--the mayor and Pancer argued that Schuster lied because of his anger over not receiving a lucrative contract to develop the county’s bay front parking lots awarded in 1982 when Hedgecock was a county supervisor.

Two Major Areas

Beyond the allegedly unreported financial aid that prosecutors argue that Hedgecock received through Shepard’s firm, the perjury charges in the case focused on two major areas: the $130,000 loan that Hedgecock used to renovate his house, and a controversial $16,000 promissory note that the mayor sold to Hoover.

From the beginning of the investigation into his finances, Hedgecock insisted that the $130,000 loan came from Hoover and had been repaid in full through the transfer of his J. David account to Hoover in late 1983 and his sale of a piece of undeveloped property in the North City area in early 1984.

Huffman, however, argued that the renovation project cost much more than $130,000 and contended that the mayor received additional unreported money from J. David & Co. Furthermore, the prosecutor charged that Hoover’s loan actually was intended to be a gift and probably would never have been disclosed had it not been for the February, 1984, collapse of the J. David company.

Probable Removal

Hedgecock’s conviction on any of the felony counts would have meant probable removal from office. The conspiracy count carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison and each perjury count is punishable by up to four years in prison.

San Diego political figures reached Wednesday expressed dismay at the inconclusive result. “We would have been better off with a conviction or an acquittal,” said City Councilman Dick Murphy. “This city has been on hold now for a couple of months awaiting a decision on whether Roger Hedgecock would continue as mayor or not. This means the city will continue on hold.”

Also contributing to this story were Times staff writers Kathleen Cooley, Keay Davidson, Ralph Frammolino, David Freed, Tom Gorman, Tom Greeley, Jack Jones, Lanie Jones and Daniel M. Weintraub.