Huffman Set for Hedgecock Retrial : Prosecutor Frustrated by First Trial, Confident About Second

Next to Mayor Roger Hedgecock, perhaps no one in San Diego has been under more pressure during the last six months as a result of the mayor’s felony trial than Assistant Dist. Atty. Richard D. Huffman.

As the prosecutor in Hedgecock’s felony conspiracy and perjury case, Huffman found himself more personally embroiled than even his boss, Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller, if for no other reason than the fact that it was Huffman, not Miller, who was in the courtroom every day.

Indeed, many argued that Huffman’s role as the prosecution’s point man in the case put him in essentially a no-win situation.

Even if Huffman won the trial, the theory went, he would find himself vilified by those who considered the case to be politically motivated. And if he lost--a defeat that would have been Huffman’s first during his 14 years in the district attorney’s office--his name would earn an unenviable footnote in local political and legal history.

“There was a lot of pressure, but not because I was worried about the outcome,” Huffman said in an interview in his courthouse office. “The pressure, the thing that put heat on both sides, was that this case was so highly visible.

“We’re all human beings, we all make mistakes, we all make statements that we would really love to pull back and not have said,” Huffman added. “We do that in common parlance. But in the environment of this case, you could hardly stutter without someone taking note of it. That kind of pressure increases the tension you feel in any case. Physically and mentally, it was a draining experience.”

The mistrial that concluded Hedgecock’s first trial last month means that that maelstrom is far from over--an unpleasant reality that no one is more acutely aware of than Huffman.

“I’m not terrified by the prospect of retrying the case, but I’m certainly not looking forward to going through it a second time,” Huffman said. “No one likes to have to do things twice, especially something like this.”

Nevertheless, Huffman said the fact that the first trial ended with the jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of conviction will make it easier for him “to get psyched up” for the second trial, expected to start in the fall.

“Naturally, I’m frustrated but . . . more confident than ever about the case,” Huffman said. “The 11-1 thing was disappointing, sure. But it’s also gratifying in another way. It eliminates a lot of uncertainty. We’ve seen the whites of their eyes. We felt from the beginning that we had a strong case. Now we know it.”

As a rule, prosecutors cannot take as much solace in hung juries as defendants can. For any defendant, the paramount goal is avoiding conviction.

Conversely, for a prosecutor, anything less than a conviction normally is an unsatisfactory resolution of a case. However, Huffman argues that the outcome of the first trial represented a victory, if not in the courtroom, at least in public relations for the district attorney’s office, which Hedgecock has consistently castigated for what the mayor once described as “a selective prosecution inspired by Ed Miller’s personal and political animosity toward” him.

“If nothing else, the 11-1 result sets to rest once and for all this absolute nonsense from (Hedgecock) about this prosecution being brought for any reason other than the district attorney legitimately believing that there is a basis in criminal law to try this case,” Huffman said. “This has nothing to do with politics, vendettas or any of the other grand conspiracies alleged by (Hedgecock).”

Scoffing at Hedgecock’s oft-stated characterization of the mistrial as a victory, Huffman called the mayor’s remarks “wishful thinking without an ounce of logic behind it.”

“Anybody who views 11 citizens impartially selected who not only found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but has been vocal about it as a victory, is simply taking great solace in having dodged a bullet, and narrowly so at that,” Huffman said. “If anybody wants to talk about vindication, it certainly wasn’t Roger Hedgecock who was vindicated. Ed Miller was vindicated in the discharge of his duties.”

In the month since the mistrial, Hedgecock has conceded that he realizes that his chances of an outright acquittal in the retrial are slim, largely because of the extensive publicity surrounding the case--in particular, news reports of how narrowly he avoided conviction in the first trial.

However, the mayor also has said that he believes that a conviction is equally unlikely because of the difficulty in getting 12 jurors to agree unanimously on either his innocence or guilt in the complex case. Indeed, Hedgecock has predicted that juries will “keep on hanging” as often as prosecutors retry the case.

Hedgecock’s lowered expectations--before the trial, he often boasted that a jury would “laugh the case out of court”--demonstrate how the 11-1 slant of the first jury has caused the mayor to “change his tune a bit,” Huffman argued.

“This talk of his about another hung jury is fascinating,” Huffman said. “When we started this process, we heard all the accusations from him about all the bad things the district attorney was doing, and how there was going to be a righteous vindication. Now what you’re hearing is, ‘They aren’t going to catch me.’ Well, we’ll see.”

Whatever the outcome of the case, Huffman probably will figure heavily in it. A 46-year-old Los Angeles native who joined the district attorney’s office in 1971 after five years with the California attorney general’s office, Huffman entered the trial with an imposing record--he has won all of the nearly 30 cases he has tried--and the reputation as a tenacious courtroom tactician.

The high-profile cases that Huffman has handled include convictions of cult deprogrammer Ted Patrick, and one in which he became the first prosecutor in the state to win a murder conviction without the body being found. Two years after the trial, the body was found.

Huffman also was responsible for putting Robert Alton Harris, who could become the first person to be executed in San Quentin’s gas chamber since 1967, on Death Row. Harris outraged the community in 1978 by killing two Clairemont teen-agers to use their car in a bank robbery and then nonchalantly eating the fast-food hamburgers that the youths had ordered minutes earlier. Huffman has said of the case, “If a person like Harris can’t be executed under California law and federal procedure, then we should be honest and say we’re incapable of handling capital punishment.”

Despite the inconclusive outcome of Hedgecock’s first trial, Huffman’s formidable reputation is intact, and, among some courtroom observers, perhaps was even enhanced by his performance.

With his mostly gray hair atop a solid 5-foot, 10-inch frame, his normally mild mannerisms and preference for decidedly unflashy, solid-color suits, Huffman projects a rather calming, undramatic image that disguises his powerful courtroom presence.

A master at establishing rapport with a jury, Huffman began that process in the Hedgecock trial by asking prospective jurors--and, more importantly, showing interest in their responses--about subjects such as their hobbies and children. Throughout the trial, Huffman effectively played to the jury, often through self-effacing humor.

Blessed with the theatrical instincts that are as necessary for success in the courtroom as on the stage, Huffman also at times skillfully blended sarcasm with facial expressions of incredulity--real or feigned--to clearly convey his disbelief in the explanations that Hedgecock and key defense witnesses provided about the mayor’s personal and campaign finances.

However, even Hedgecock’s own attorney conceded that Huffman’s finest moment in the trial came during his closing argument. Using simple language and a common-sense approach, Huffman pulled together a series of seemingly disparate personal and political financial transactions into a persuasive, coherent story that the prosecution views as a conspiracy by Hedgecock and three of his prominent backers to funnel tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions into his 1983 race.

“This guy is good,” defense attorney Michael Pancer said during one break in Huffman’s summation. “I listen to him for a while, and even I start believing him!”

Even some of Hedgecock’s closest aides concede that they would breathe easier during the retrial if another prosecutor handled the case. Typically, Huffman says he is amused by such talk and appears to be the person least concerned about that question.

“It’s very flattering to have all this speculation about how important it is for me to personally retry this case, as if I were Superman,” Huffman said. “But the fact of the matter is that the district attorney’s office has some of the best trial lawyers in this county, and others could do just as good a job.”

Huffman said that he plans to handle the retrial, but emphasizes that his status is “somewhat contingent on the timetable” established for the second trial.

A Superior Court judge has set May 8 as the date for the start of the retrial, but both sides in the case have doubts about the likelihood of the trial’s beginning then. Later this month, Pancer, who says that his commitments to other clients will make it “physically impossible” for him to handle the case this spring, plans to ask a judge to relieve him of the trial.

In an attempt to preserve the May 8 start date, Huffman plans to oppose Pancer’s motion to be removed from the case. However, if Pancer’s request is approved at a March 25 hearing, a delay is likely, because any other attorney chosen by Hedgecock would need months to prepare for the case.

Huffman’s availability for the retrial hinges on several factors. He is scheduled to teach a course on international law in England from July 1 to Aug. 9, and there is speculation that he is in line to be appointed to a judgeship by Gov. George Deukmejian. As the No. 2 man in the district attorney’s office, Huffman also oversees more than 150 lawyers and a department with a $15-million budget.

“I look on this case as a piece of unfinished business, so it would be difficult to just walk away from it now,” Huffman said. “I feel some obligation to finish it. But whether I’m asked to go on to something else or just the press of this office are going to be factors.”

Considered by friends to be a workaholic, Huffman worked 12- to 15-hour days throughout most of the seven-week trial, usually arriving at his office early and leaving late to prepare for the questioning of witnesses. The director of the Center for Criminal Justice at the University of San Diego, Huffman also taught a law course one night a week during the trial. Huffman lost about 20 pounds during the trial, but jokes that he now is “working at putting it back on.”

In addition to working most weekends, Huffman worked on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. His major concessions toward attempting to maintain even a semblance of a personal life during the holidays, Huffman said, were “doing some quick Christmas shopping,” spending Christmas Day with his family, and watching television for several hours on New Year’s Day as USC, from which he received his law degree, won the Rose Bowl.

“Most days, we just passed each other coming and going, and that was about it,” said Huffman’s wife, Caroline. However, because she was heavily engrossed in interior design classes at the time, she said, her husband’s grueling schedule “actually worked out pretty well. Nobody felt neglected around here.” The couple has one son, a 25-year-old first-year law student at the University of San Diego.

Huffman said he has “gone through the normal amount of self-analysis” about the case, but has spent relatively little time second-guessing himself on his decision not to remove Leon Crowder, a city sanitation official who has the only juror to side with Hedgecock, from the jury.

“It didn’t bother me about Mr. Crowder being a city employee, because the city manager, not the mayor, runs the city,” Huffman said. “You might say that just on instinct, you’d kick him (off the jury). But I felt comfortable with him.

“Frankly, given the same information that I had, coming at the same time in the same room with the same people present, I could well have made the same decision over again. That just shows what a non-scientific process jury selection is. A big part of it is the luck of the draw on both sides. If Mr. Crowder hadn’t been there, someone else might have.”

Prosecutors have charged that Hedgecock conspired with former J. David & Co. principals Nancy Hoover and J. David (Jerry) Dominelli in a scheme to funnel illegal campaign donations to his 1983 race through a political consulting firm owned by Tom Shepard, a close friend and former employee of the mayor. To cover up that and other allegedly improper personal financial aid from Dominelli and Hoover, Hedgecock intentionally falsified financial disclosure statements, according to the prosecution’s theory.

Hedgecock, however, has characterized the more than $360,000 that Hoover and Dominelli 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. The errors and omissions on his financial reports, Hedgecock contends, were inadvertent ones.

Barring a dramatic change in the defense’s strategy--a possibility that seems remote, considering Hedgecock’s unwavering reiteration of his version of events--Huffman said he expects the retrial to be “essentially a replay” of the first trial.

“The music will be the same, but it will have a slightly different pace to it,” Huffman said. “It’s difficult to imagine the witnesses coming up with anything startlingly different. Then again, trials are living things and can change. There might be new evidence out there. It really all comes down to how those 12 (jurors) see things.”

The fact that the Hedgecock case could be his final prosecution adds no special significance to the trial, Huffman said.

“I’m not approaching this case as my last at-bat or the last or next-to-last hurrah,” Huffman said. “If things like a possible judgeship are going to happen, then they happen. But I’m not going into this case or anything else I’m doing with the attitude that that is going to happen. I’ve known people who speculate about judgeships for an entire career.”

Despite his uncompromising adversarial stance in the courtroom, Huffman concedes that he feels some sympathy for Hedgecock--an admission that might surprise those who watched the two clash verbally during the trial.

“The good part and the bad part about criminal law is that it involves people,” Huffman said. “There’s a lot of sadness but not much joy in criminal law. We often deal with situations where the real sadness runs to the victims, but sometimes you feel a sadness for the defendant and his family.

“On a personal level, I can imagine that even people who don’t like (Hedgecock) feel sorry for him. He’s a bright person with a rising star that now probably will not rise as far. On a personal level, that is tragic.

“On the other hand, we’re establishing in this community that the system of justice functions impartially. We’re proving that this city has the courage to step forward and litigate issues, investigate and take cases wherever they go, whatever outcome that produces. And that is not sad.”