Judge to Rule in D.A. Probe of Irvine Case

An Orange County Superior Court judge Thursday ordered the district attorney’s office to turn over to her within a week the results of an investigation into the arrest by Irvine police of Guido Rodriguez Jr., an autistic youth whose parents charged that he lost a kidney as a result of rough treatment by the officers.

Judge Greer H. Stroud told attorneys representing Irvine and the city’s Police Department, two of the three officers involved and the district attorney’s office that, after examining the bulk of the material privately, she probably will release most of it to the Rodriguez family, which is suing all those involved in the April 21 arrest.

The district attorney’s report was handed over to the Irvine Police Department on July 24, along with a two-page cover letter from Maurice L. Evans, deputy district attorney in charge of special assignments, summarizing the findings.

Officers Exonerated

Evans’ letter exonerated the three officers, who said they had arrested Rodriguez in the mistaken belief that the 18-year-old had stolen the bicycle he was riding near his home and that he was under the influence of drugs.

No charges were filed against the youth, who has a mental age of 4 or 5 years. Three days after the incident, doctors removed Rodriguez’s kidney after he began urinating blood. In his letter, Evans stated that the kidney was congenitally enlarged as a result of a birth defect and that its eventual removal was “inevitable.”

Five days after the report was delivered to the Irvine Police Department, Chief Leo E. Peart held a press conference where Evans’ letter was distributed and the complete, two-volume report was displayed on a table. However, police and city officials refused to release the report or related investigative material to Richard Peterson, the Rodriguez family lawyer, or to the press. On Thursday, after attorneys debated whether material from the Irvine officers’ personnel files --which is protected by state law--may have been reproduced or cited in the report or the related data, Stroud told Peterson that she was going to have to “weigh your right to the information versus their (the officers’) right to privacy.”

Attorney’s Charge

In his arguments, Peterson referred to Peart’s press conference and the display of the report, charging that the district attorney’s office gathered the material as part of a criminal investigation and then turned the material over to the defendants in a civil suit, but not to the plaintiffs.

“They got the jump on us,” he said, asking that the judge “give us everything but the personnel files.”

Peterson also noted that the Rodriguez family had cooperated with the Irvine investigation, waiving privileged relationships with Guido Rodriguez’s teachers and doctors, and had been promised material from the investigation in return.

Linda Bauermeister-Schlott, representing the City of Irvine and the Irvine Police Department, noted that a separate hearing already was scheduled for October to consider the release of pertinent material from the officers’ personnel files and argued that Peterson should not be permitted to “go in the backdoor” to gain access to such material.

Unknown Factor

“We don’t know what’s going to turn up” in the investigative file, she said.

Asked by the judge whether any material from the personnel files was in the report, Bauermeister-Schlott said she had not read it. In general, the attorney said, the Rodriguez family is “entitled to” any information in the file which “is not privileged.”

Stroud ordered the district attorney’s office to turn over all materials from the investigation Wednesday, at which time some of those documents promised to the Rodriguez family are to be delivered to Peterson.

The remainder will be examined by Stroud and culled for privileged information from the officers’ files. On Sept. 24, she will turn over the rest of the material to Rodriguez’s attorney unless there are further objections from lawyers representing the officers or the city.