City Attorney Candidate Hits Hahn’s Prosecution Record

In the harshest attack of the campaign, Los Angeles city attorney candidate Murray Kane on Tuesday called front-runner James Hahn “a fraud” who “has an appalling prosecution record.”

Kane charged that Hahn, who worked for four years as a deputy city attorney before being elected city controller in 1981, “was simply afraid to go to trial if there was ever any doubt about getting a conviction.” Kane said that Hahn had allowed numerous “open-and-shut” cases to be plea-bargained to lesser offenses and had a higher than average record of cases in which defendants pleaded guilty to reduced charges.

Hahn retorted that Kane’s charges, based on nine court cases, were “an act of desperation” by a candidate fighting for a runoff slot in a tight five-way race.

“I’m proud of my record as a prosecutor in the city attorney’s office,” Hahn said. “I had an 85% conviction rate. I wasn’t afraid to take cases to trial.

“In fact, if everyone in the city attorney’s office had my conviction rate--the office average is 70%--there would be a lot more criminals behind bars. (Kane’s charge) shows he doesn’t understand the courts of the city of Los Angeles, and if he did know, then he’s being deliberately deceptive.”

A spokesman for the city attorney’s office said, however, that it keeps no records on individual deputies’ conviction and plea-bargaining records and thus could not confirm either Kane’s or Hahn’s claims.

Kane, an attorney for the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, is trying to secure a runoff spot in the April 9 primary. Polls show that he is locked in a tight contest for second place with Westside lawyer Lisa Specht, with Hahn far ahead of both.

If Hahn receives a majority of the primary vote, there will be no runoff.

The Kane campaign alerted Hahn’s staff several weeks ago that it was reviewing Hahn’s tenure in the city attorney’s office, much of it spent as a trial lawyer in the Van Nuys Municipal Court. On Monday afternoon, a Kane campaign staff member was promising reporters a “blockbuster” on Tuesday.

But in response, Hahn scoffed, “If this is his big bombshell, he’s going to have to do a lot better.”

Kane could not substantiate his claims that Hahn’s plea-bargaining record reflected an unusually high number of such cases. And Kane sidestepped several questions about how he would have treated those same cases had he been in Hahn’s shoes.

“Jimmy Hahn has embarked on a very expensive ad campaign to tell the public that he was a tough prosecutor,” Kane said. “His commercials are a fraud. Jimmy Hahn has a shameful prosecution record. . . .”

In the most serious case that Kane outlined, he said that Hahn plea-bargained an attempted rape case to a simple count of battery.

“The defendant beat up and attempted to forcibly rape a 25-year-old woman who was trying to mail a letter in a post office parking lot,” Kane said. “The evidence was there, and it was strongly in favor of contiction.”

Hahn’s campaign chairman, Nick Brestoff, said that when Hahn had received the case, it did not include the attempted rape count. Brestoff, also a former deputy city attorney, said that if the defendant had been charged with attempted rape, the district attorney would have prosecuted it because the allegation is a felony. The city attorney’s office handles only misdemeanors.

The court dockets do not contain some of the information that prosecutors normally have on hand before they make a decision to plea-bargain, including whether there was a reluctant or missing witness or faulty evidence that could make it difficult to obtain a conviction.

Kane, asked whether he knew why Hahn agreed to the plea bargains, sidestepped the question, saying: “You can’t explain all these away. We’re talking about hundreds of cases of plea bargaining. There’s only one conclusion to draw--the guy’s a fraud and has an appalling prosecution record.”

Hahn said he could not remember any of the cases referred to at Kane’s news conference.