A Tough Guy on Defense : Hedgecock’s New Attorney Doesn’t Mind Playing Rough

San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock is a politician who pulls no rhetorical punches. He once described one opponent as “mentally ill,” the wealthy husband of another political foe as “Daddy Big Bucks” and a colleague as “felony dumb.”

Oscar Goodman, Hedgecock’s attorney in the mayor’s second felony trial, is no shrinking violet, either. A fierce courtroom warrior widely considered to be one of the top criminal attorneys in the West, Goodman:

- Described Superior Court Judge William L. Todd Jr., the judge in Hedgecock’s case, as “a vicious man . . . He doesn’t like me and I don’t like him.”

- Jokes about the fact that his clients have included some of the most notorious alleged organized-crime figures in the nation. “I take it as a compliment,” he said. “Because if there is such a thing as a mob . . . you would hope that they’d be smart enough to go to the best lawyer.”

- Said that major prosecution witness Harvey Schuster, an asthmatic who kept several bottles of medicine in front of him on the witness stand when he testified during Hedgecock’s first trial, “may need a few more bottles of pills with him this time.”

- Characterized his courtroom style thus: “If I get hurt, I hurt back . . . preferably worse.”

“The guy (Hedgecock) has got the right lawyer,” Las Vegas lawyer Thomas Pitaro said last spring after Hedgecock selected Goodman to handle his retrial on felony perjury and conspiracy charges, scheduled to start Wednesday. “If anyone can go toe-to-toe with the government and make the other guy blink, it’s Oscar.”

Goodman, a husky 6-footer with an imposing voice and presence, does nothing to dissuade his Clint Eastwood-of-the-courtroom image. Indeed, he embraces it. He knows that his tough-guy mystique is a valuable commodity in the courtroom. He knows that his reputation for beating seemingly unbeatable odds has made him rich by acting as a magnet for a steady stream of clients ranging from federal judges and alleged mobsters to heavyweight boxing champions--and now a mayor. He knows that winning the Hedgecock case would put another big notch in his gun and cause the telephones in his Las Vegas office to ring even more frequently.

“I’ve been in bigger cases and cases a lot more interesting than this one,” Goodman said in an interview last week. “The possible penalty certainly can’t be equated with what you’re up against in a capital case where you realize you have a man’s life, his actual life, in your hands. Plus, this case doesn’t have any sex in it, it’s got no gore, there are no dead bodies. So it’s not the kind of factual background that piques one’s interest.

“What makes it interesting, though, are the stakes. And as far as the stakes, they couldn’t be much higher. When you represent a high-profile client, there’s an extra tension because you know the whole nuclear world surrounding the case is watching you very carefully. There’s an electricity in and out of the courtroom. So you better be pretty good. And I intend to be.”

It would be a vast understatement to say that Goodman, who turned 46 Friday, has been “pretty good” during most of the 21 years in which he has practiced law, a profession he half-jokingly claims he chose because he “failed biochemistry and couldn’t be a doctor, and my wife didn’t want to marry a rabbi.”

A native of Philadelphia, Goodman is the oldest of three children. His father was a prosecutor in the Philadelphia district attorney’s office, and his mother is an artist who teaches the blind and works with emotionally disturbed teen-agers.

Goodman was graduated from Haverford University, a small Quaker school outside Philadelphia, and received his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1964. After a short stint in the Philadelphia district attorney’s office, Goodman moved to Las Vegas in 1965 to become the chief public defender for Clark County.

His first “big-league case,” Goodman said, was a murder trial in which he was the junior counsel. When the jury returned a guilty verdict, Goodman said, he cried and then spent the next three days in a law library plotting appeal strategies. In the meantime, another man--”the spitting image” of his client--admitted being the killer, prompting the judge to vacate the verdict, Goodman said.

Affectionately called the “Big O” by other defense lawyers, Goodman says that he is “not afraid to get a little mean” when it comes to protecting his clients’ interests. Perhaps the most notable example of that characteristic can be found in his startlingly blunt and caustic remarks about Todd.

While lawyers generally go out of their way to avoid alienating a judge about to try one of their cases, Goodman seemed almost to relish the opportunity to castigate Todd during an interview conducted over two days.

“I have nothing but disdain for the man,” Goodman said. “Let’s be realistic. He doesn’t like me. He certainly doesn’t like my client. I don’t even think he likes Mike Pancer,” Hedgecock’s attorney during his first trial, which ended in February in a mistrial with the jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of conviction.

During the first trial, many of Todd’s rulings favored the prosecution, on issues ranging from evidence allowed to be introduced to legal interpretations of the Political Reform Act, the law from which some of the charges facing Hedgecock stem.

Saying he wanted to start the retrial with a “clean slate” and with a judge “who doesn’t have a lot of preconceived notions about the case,” Goodman filed a motion to have Todd removed from the retrial. Several courts have rejected that motion, but Goodman has appealed the decision. In addition, Todd has rejected a handful of other procedural motions filed by Goodman.

“Why play games about this?” Goodman asked. “Do I want (Todd) to know I don’t like him? Absolutely! I’m going to be professional and respectful in the courtroom. But the way this trial has been conducted so far suggests to me that this isn’t going to be a popularity contest. With (Todd) on the case again . . . I don’t think both sides are starting from an equal, neutral position. That’s my view and that’s my client’s view.”

Hedgecock, however, was a bit more restrained in his comments about Todd.

“Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far,” Hedgecock said. “I’m a little surprised Oscar’s that emotional about it. But what’s happened is that Oscar has formed a judgment about the ability of the judge to be fair, and I have, too.”

Asked whether he was concerned that his remarks might anger Todd, Goodman replied, “What more could he do to us? We can’t get any worse rulings than we did in the first trial and so far on our motions this time. Maybe he’ll bend over backwards and try to be fair.”

As those comments illustrate, Goodman did not earn his reputation--or, more importantly, his impressive track record--by being reticent to, as he put it, “act like a little tough punk from Philadelphia” when he believes the occasion demands it.

Goodman has represented clients in sensational cases throughout the country, winning far more often than he loses. One of his first cases to attract national attention occurred in 1970, when he successfully defended 12 suspected bookmakers who had been arrested in nationwide raids based on wiretaps authorized under the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act.

When Goodman learned that then-U.S. Atty. Gen. John Mitchell had delegated authority for approving the wiretaps to his executive assistant--rather than signing them personally, as the law required--the charges against all of his clients were dismissed.

The publicity from that case helped attract other high-profile clients, many of them with connections to organized crime. In the early 1970s, he defended Meyer Lansky, then considered the Mafia’s financial expert, who was accused of skimming millions of dollars from the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Goodman, however, succeeded in getting the charges against Lansky dropped by persuading a judge that Lansky was too ill to be tried.

Goodman also has represented Nick Civella and Carl DeLuna, the alleged boss and heir apparent of the Kansas City mob, and Chris Petti, a La Jolla resident frequently linked to organized crime by county and federal prosecutors.

Since 1972, Goodman has been retained by Anthony (Tony the Ant) Spilotro, the reputed overseer of the Chicago Mafia’s Las Vegas interests. The suspect in more than two dozen killings in the last 25 years, Spilotro has never been convicted. Goodman currently represents Spilotro in a Nevada racketeering case expected to be postponed until after the Hedgecock trial.

“My relationship with Tony is a professional one that definitely has elements of friendship in it, because you can’t go through the most serious parts of a person’s life without developing some strong personal bonds and ties,” Goodman said. “Tony’s always treated me 100%, he’s never lied to me and I enjoy representing him. He and all the other persons I’ve represented who supposedly were connected with the mob are the perfect clients as far as I’m concerned. They pay. They listen. And they don’t complain.”

Broad smile lines usually crease Goodman’s bearded face when he discusses his “mob attorney” image.

“I don’t have the same impression that law enforcement has of my clients,” Goodman said. “These people come to me with a particular legal problem and I represent them. Whether they are or aren’t part of some kind of national crime organization, if there is such a thing, is irrelevant. My business is their legal problem, not how they make their money.”

The street outside Goodman’s office frequently is monitored, he said, by law enforcement officials with cameras, binoculars and walkie-talkies, and an undercover FBI agent wired for sound once visited his office in an attempt to eavesdrop on a conversation between the lawyer and Spilotro.

“I have to laugh about it all,” Goodman said. “It’s a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money to have these cops out there, because all we do is talk about my clients’ business. Maybe the cops get a tan.”

Still, aware of the kind of scrutiny that his clientele brings, Goodman takes necessary precautions. One day last week, Goodman cut off one telephone conversation by saying, “I’m not sure we should even be talking about this on the phone, if you know what I mean.”

More often, though, Goodman jokes about the subject. For example, while waiting to catch a plane at Lindbergh Field last week, Goodman met an acquaintance whose heavy accent made him sound like he had been sent from central casting for a bit part in “Godfather III.”

“Now, does that guy sound like one of my clients should sound like, or what?” Goodman asked, smiling broadly.

Hedgecock said that Goodman’s reputed Mafia clientele did not make him hesitant to hire the lawyer, whose fee for the mayor’s case is reported to be between $25,000 and $50,000, a fraction of his normal charge.

“It was more important to me to have the best attorney I could get rather than be concerned about the reputations of some of his other clients,” Hedgecock said. “That has nothing to do with me. The shoe doesn’t fit so I don’t wear it.”

What was arguably Goodman’s biggest win came in 1983 when he successfully defended Jamiel (Jimmy) Chagra, a Texas gambler and drug dealer charged with plotting the 1979 assassination of U.S. District Judge John H. Wood Jr. in San Antonio. Chagra was acquitted, despite the fact that his brother pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the plot to kill the judge. The alleged hit man and his wife, as well as Chagra’s wife, also were found guilty, though his wife’s conspiracy conviction was overturned on appeal.

“That was a monumental decision,” Goodman said. “The prosecution was crying out for the community’s conscience to respond to the nature of the charges, which is the same type feeling I get from the district attorney’s arguments in the Hedgecock case. So I guess I know how to respond to that kind of argument.”

Goodman’s self-described “most crushing defeat” came in another celebrated case with some direct similarities to Hedgecock’s upcoming retrial on charges that he intentionally falsified financial disclosure statements in an attempt to conceal alleged illegal campaign and personal financial aid from J. David (Jerry) Dominelli and Nancy Hoover, principals in the bankrupt La Jolla investment firm of J. David & Co.

Last year, Goodman was the principal attorney in the tax evasion trial of U.S. District Judge Harry Claiborne, who in August became the first sitting federal judge to be convicted of a crime.

After Claiborne’s first trial ended in a mistrial, the prosecution dropped bribery, obstruction of justice and other serious charges, and focused its efforts in the retrial on two tax violation counts and an ethics reporting charge similar to the perjury charges facing Hedgecock. The jury acquitted the judge of the ethics charge but convicted him on the tax charges.

“The jury obviously would not accept a bright man filing a less than perfect return,” Goodman said. Prosecutors have used a similar argument in the Hedgecock case, arguing that the mayor is a very intelligent man who prides himself on his expertise on public issues, yet has contended that the errors on his financial reports were inadvertent ones caused by, at worse, carelessness, not criminal intent.

In his closing arguments in the Claiborne case, Goodman told the jurors, “Perhaps you may conclude Judge Claiborne was careless, negligent or even grossly negligent--but that’s not the standard. The standard is willfulness to evade the law, to do bad.”

If Hedgecock’s name were substituted for Claiborne’s in that passage, the argument would sound as if it had been lifted from remarks made by defense attorney Pancer during the mayor’s first trial.

Indeed, Goodman said that one of the major themes in his defense strategy for Hedgecock’s retrial would be a blend of Pancer’s contention that Hedgecock’s errors were unintentional ones that mostly occurred during the heat of a campaign when the mayor was preoccupied, and his own tactics in the Claiborne case.

“I don’t want to just parrot what Mike Pancer did in the first trial, because obviously, it didn’t work very well,” Goodman said. “That’s no reflection on Mike. I’ve read the transcripts and I think he should have won the case.

“But I think I’ve learned some lessons from the Claiborne case. This case isn’t a question of the mayor being forgetful or careless, but a question of priorities. He was concentrating on his public duties and a major political race, not filling out these (financial) reports. The Claiborne case showed me that I have to emphasize priorities, responsibilities, and put that in context. If I do that, I don’t think we’ll have any problems.”

During Hedgecock’s first trial, Pancer often spent considerable time trying to refute relatively minor points that reflected negatively on Hedgecock. Although Michael McCabe, a top San Diego defense lawyer, says that Goodman “can make mountains out of molehills,” Goodman describes himself as someone who attempts to “paint trials . . . in broader strokes.”

“Mike was very, very thorough, very precise, very incisive,” Goodman said. “He spent a lot of time going after small facts. I try cases differently. I’m a great believer in trying to create impressions and then arguing at the time of final argument. I’ve sometimes been compared to a race horse, because people say I still walk before I run during arguments.”

Known as a tough cross-examiner, Goodman said that his courtroom style “depends on whether people are giving me a hard time or not.”

“If nobody’s hurting me, I’m easygoing and nobody gets hurt. But if they hurt me, they can bet they’re going to be hurt back.”

Goodman gives the impression of being a driven man who has little time to enjoy the financial comforts that his legal successes have helped him attain. In addition to his house in Las Vegas, Goodman owns a condominium in Coronado and half of a Las Vegas office building that he and his partners share with other lawyers.

Yet Goodman, whose workdays usually begin before 7 a.m. and often stretch into early evening, said that he cannot remember when he and his wife of 23 years, Carolyn, last took a vacation of a week or longer. Before Todd last week advanced Hedgecock’s trial date from Aug. 22 to July 31, the couple, who have four children ranging in ages from 12 to 15, had planned to spend a long weekend at their Coronado condo to celebrate Goodman’s birthday.

“That was going to be our big summer vacation,” Goodman said, laughing. The change in trial dates, however, transformed the planned brief respite into a working vacation in which Goodman plans to make final preparations for the case.

Goodman says he avoids the Las Vegas casinos--”These big buildings didn’t get built because the players are smarter than the owners, so I don’t try to challenge the big buildings,” he remarked--and rarely does any pleasure reading except while flying home from trials.

“And then, it’s usually a junk book that probably has something to do with ninjas or cops and robbers, something like that,” Goodman said. “I pay about as much attention to it as the man in the moon, because several times I’ve bought the same book and read it without knowing it.”

“There isn’t much time to smell the roses,” Goodman conceded. But he quickly added that that characteristic of his life does not seriously bother him. As he started to explain why, however, Goodman’s telephone rang. It was another prospective client. Already overburdened in his efforts to “clear the decks” for the Hedgecock case, Goodman agreed to meet with the man before he left for San Diego the next day.

“I’m being pulled apart like a piece of saltwater taffy,” he lamented. “But what am I going to do? Tell somebody who needs help, ‘Sorry, I’m too busy?’ I can’t do that.

“Yeah, I guess Oscar Goodman comes last. But that’s OK, because that means my clients come first.”