Police Chiefs’ Conspiracy Trial Will Turn on Officers’ Credibility

Jurors are expected to begin hearing today the criminal conspiracy trial of Corona’s two highest-ranking police officers, a case in which they will have to decide whether to believe the police chief and his deputy or three subordinates who say their bosses told them to alter a police report about a fatal traffic accident.

The attorneys expect to begin presenting their cases today in Riverside County Superior Court after jury selection is completed for the trial of Corona Police Chief Bob J. Talbert and Deputy Chief Edward D. Sampson.

Each faces a single count of conspiring to delete from a police report facts potentially favorable to a drunk-driving suspect who went to jail after he pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter for the Jan. 4, 1982, traffic accident that killed 17-year-old Warren Henderson of Corona.

Both defendants have denied the charges, are free without bail and are receiving their regular salaries from the city while on administrative leaves of absence. They face up to three years in prison if convicted, said Kevin Ruddy, the deputy Riverside County district attorney prosecuting the case.

A central issue in the case will be the credibility of law enforcement officers’ testimony against other law enforcement officers, attorneys said.

“The case isn’t going to turn on the law,” said defense attorney Gerald Polis. “It’s going to turn on how sympathetic the jury is.”

The charges against the chiefs came to light after a bitter contract dispute that resulted in a five-day walkout by Corona patrolmen, sergeants and lieutenants in 1983.

A grand jury indictment charges that Talbert and Sampson ordered subordinates not to report that a stop sign run by an allegedly drunk driver was obscured by tree branches. Because of that omission, Ruddy said, both the district attorney and the driver’s defense attorney were unable to perform their duties adequately.

The driver, Claude Daniel Hinson, then 24, pleaded guilty to a charge of vehicular manslaughter and was sentenced to eight months in jail and three years’ probation for the death. The district attorney dropped an additional charge of felony drunk driving in exchange for Hinson’s guilty plea.

Hinson suffered severe brain injuries in the accident and amnesia afterward, Ruddy said. Both the vehicular manslaughter charge and Hinson’s plea, he said, were based on the mistaken belief that he had failed to obey “a clearly visible stop sign.”

If attorneys on both sides of the case had known the stop sign was obscured, Ruddy said, Hinson not only might have faced lesser charges, but also would have been better able to assemble a defense.

Whether the sign was visible is subject to dispute. Photographs of the intersection taken the night of the accident cast “a substantial doubt as to whether the sign was obscured or not,” said James Wheaton, Corona city manager.

A Corona Police Department traffic investigator who inspected the scene the day after the collision found that obstruction of the stop sign did not contribute to the accident, claimed Allan Sandquist, who is representing Sampson.

The defendants “have no idea” if the sign was obscured, Sandquist said. “Neither one of them ever saw it.”

“The whole case arose out of some drunk killing a person,” said Polis, who represents Talbert. There is “no evidence that Hinson didn’t see or couldn’t see the stop sign.”

A blood test showed Hinson’s blood-alcohol level at the time of the crash was .21%, or more than twice California’s legal limit for driving, Polis said.

“We’re not saying that this guy Hinson did nothing wrong,” Ruddy responded. “. . . All we’re alleging is that the entire process of evaluating cases . . . was subverted by (Talbert and Sampson’s) actions.”

Although “it’s not a crime to change a police report,” Polis said, defense attorneys will try to convince the jury of the veracity of the chiefs’ statements that they did not order subordinates to change the report and had no motive to do so.

The facts in his case against Talbert and Sampson are sufficient to convict them without proving a motive, Ruddy maintains.

Chiefs Named in Suit

Lawsuits filed by Henderson’s family, by the driver of the car in which Henderson rode, by Hinson himself, and by a passenger in Hinson’s car name the City of Corona, the two chiefs, and present and former Corona police officers as defendants.

Hinson’s suit alone seeks a total of $6.25 million in real and punitive damages, both for the injuries he suffered in the crash and for wrongful imprisonment, said Dee Lingenfelter, Corona city clerk.

Talbert and Sampson’s trial in Riverside County Superior Court follows months of delays and legal maneuvers that have included an attempt by the district attorney to prevent the City of Corona from paying for the chiefs’ defense and appeals by the chiefs’ attorneys to remove the district attorney from the case.

Among the key prosecution witnesses likely to testify at the trial are present and former Corona police officers Bob Terpening, David Berkley and Larry Thayer, who have already testified at a preliminary hearing that Talbert and Sampson told them to change and approve the accident report.

Sgt. Terpening has since retired from the Police Department; Berkley was demoted, at his own request, from lieutenant to detective after he was arrested in January, 1985, for driving under the influence of alcohol, and Lt. Thayer resigned from the force earlier this year to take a job as an investigator with the district attorney’s office.

Conflicts of Interest Debated

Thayer’s hiring is one of several conflicts of interest Polis and Sandquist maintain should disqualify the district attorney from prosecuting the case.

There are additional conflicts of interest, the attorneys have argued, because other members of the district attorney’s office also will testify at the trial and because Thayer is among the co-defendants named in civil suits stemming from the accident.

The defense attorneys also have argued that the district attorney’s office improperly tried to interfere with their attorney-client relationships by seeking a ruling from the state attorney general on the propriety of the Corona City Council decision to pay for the chiefs’ defense.

Superior Court Judge John H. Barnard last month denied the defense attorneys’ motion to remove the district attorney from the case, however, clearing the way for the trial to begin in his courtroom this week.

The charges against the chiefs came to light after a bitter contract dispute that resulted in a five-day walkout by Corona police patrolmen, sergeants and lieutenants in November, 1983.

A group of officers brought a list of 18 complaints about police management--including the allegation that the chiefs had ordered officers to alter and approve the accident report--to Corona City Council members early last summer, according to Wheaton.

The council asked the Riverside County district attorney to investigate the alleged criminal conduct by the police chief and his deputy and turned the results over to the Riverside County Grand Jury, which indicted Talbert and Sampson last August.