Mayor’s Legal, Political Fate Now Rests in Jurors’ Hands

San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock’s political and legal fate now is in the hands of the 12 most important voters he has ever faced. Jurors in the mayor’s felony conspiracy and perjury retrial began their deliberations on Thursday.

The jury began pondering its verdict on the 15 felony charges and single misdemeanor count facing Hedgecock early Thursday afternoon, shortly after Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Wickersham told the jurors that “no inference can be drawn” for either side based on defense attorney Oscar Goodman’s decision not to call a single witness in the case.

“Mr. Goodman told you that you can’t hold the fact that his client did not put on a defense against him,” Wickersham said in a 40-minute rebuttal of Goodman’s closing argument. “That’s right--you cannot hold it against him. You can’t hold it for him, either. Judge the case on the evidence that was presented in this courtroom, and nothing else.” Wickersham’s remarks were an apparent attempt to counter Goodman’s hope that jurors will interpret his strategy as indicative of weakness in the prosecution’s case.

After jurors were taken to an undisclosed location to begin their deliberations, Hedgecock said that waiting for the eight-woman, four-man jury’s decision “is almost like Election Day.”

“We’ve done our best and now . . . there’s nothing more for me to do but wait for the voters to come back with the verdict,” said Hedgecock, who faces likely ouster from office if convicted on any of the felony charges. City Atty. John Witt has said that if Hedgecock is found guilty, he would be required to resign when he is sentenced, probably about 30 days after the verdict is returned.

Wickersham, who got the final word in the case because he carries the burden of proof, contended in his rebuttal statement that the evidence in the nine-week case proves that “there is no reasonable doubt” that Hedgecock willingly accepted allegedly illegal personal and campaign financial aid from several of his closest backers and intentionally falsified public disclosure statements to conceal those transactions.

“We’re all answerable to the law,” Wickersham said, lowering his voice for effect. “Nobody’s above it, I don’t care what his position in life. If you feel comfortable . . . that there are no reasonable doubts . . . you have an obligation to come back and say, ‘I find you guilty.’ ”

After Wickersham’s statement, Superior Court Judge William L. Todd Jr. read nearly 100 instructions regarding points of law and evidence to the jury--a process that occupied nearly 1 1/2 hours. After the jurors left the courtroom, Todd explained why he decided to sequester the jury during its deliberations--a rarity in San Diego County trials.

“One of the major reasons was I thought there was, and continues to be, a tremendous amount of publicity concerning the case,” Todd said. While Todd explained that he is confident that the jurors have, to date, adhered to his admonition not to read or listen to news accounts of the trial, the judge added that he wanted to be particularly certain that the jurors were not exposed to possibly prejudicial information “now that they are embarked on their all-important deliberations.”

“I felt that if they were relieved of the obligation of travel to and from court, and the pressure of meeting with other people . . . they could more easily and more certainly render a just verdict,” Todd said.

Both attorneys said that Todd’s decision to sequester the jurors could expedite their deliberations. Indeed, while the jury in Hedgecock’s first trial deliberated only until 4 p.m. on weekdays, Todd encouraged the jurors on Thursday to deliberate during evenings and on weekends. Hedgecock’s first jury deliberated nearly four days before deadlocking 11-1 in favor of conviction, prompting Todd to declare a mistrial.

In his rebuttal statement, Wickersham reiterated a point that he had stressed Wednesday, arguing that a $3,000 check that Hedgecock received from Dominelli in December, 1981, showed that the mayor, contrary to his frequent denials, was aware that former financier J. David (Jerry) Dominelli was helping to bankroll Tom Shepard & Associates, the political consulting firm that ran Hedgecock’s 1983 race.

Although the check included the logo of the now-defunct La Jolla investment firm of J. David & Co. and was signed by Dominelli, Hedgecock has explained that Shepard gave him the money as compensation for the use of a computerized mailing list; the consultant told him, Hedgecock says, that he used J. David’s checking accounts until he set up his own after his firm was founded in January, 1982.

Wickersham, though, contended that, regardless of the source of the check, the transaction should have been reported on either Hedgecock’s personal or campaign financial disclosure statements. The fact that neither Dominelli’s nor Shepard’s name appeared on either of those statements--Hedgecock recorded the deal as a $3,000 personal loan to his campaign committee--suggests that, while Hedgecock was still a county supervisor, he already was attempting to conceal his ties to the J. David firm, Wickersham argued.

“On one or the other (statement), he lied,” Wickersham said. “If it’s a campaign contribution, he lied on his campaign statement. If it’s not a campaign contribution, he lied on his (personal) Statement of Economic Interest. All that’s left is his intent. Did he intend to swear falsely? He made a false statement, because that statement is not true and complete.”

Public officials sign financial disclosure statements under penalty of perjury, attesting that the reports are “true, correct and complete.”

Hedgecock contends that the errors and omissions on his financial reports were inadvertent ones stemming from, at worst, carelessness or inaccurate interpretations of the complex reporting laws, not criminal intent. Wickersham, however, disputed that explanation, saying that there is not “one single speck of evidence that he made a mistake when he signed . . . those statements.”

Wickersham also sought to bolster the credibility of key prosecution witness Harvey Schuster, whose testimony provides the only direct evidence linking Hedgecock to an alleged conspiracy to funnel tens of thousands of dollars in purported illegal donations from former J. David principals Dominelli and Nancy Hoover to Hedgecock’s 1983 race through Tom Shepard & Associates.

Saying he believed that only Hoover, not Dominelli, invested in Shepard’s firm, Hedgecock has characterized the more than $360,000 that the two former J. David executives pumped into Tom Shepard & Associates as a routine business investment designed primarily to help Shepard start his own business, not to get Hedgecock elected mayor.

However, Schuster, a Sorrento Valley investment counselor, testified that Hedgecock told him in November, 1981, that Dominelli intended to finance Shepard’s consulting firm so that it would be able to run Hedgecock’s future mayoral race.

Shepard, Hoover and Dominelli will be tried separately later as alleged co-conspirators.

During his closing argument on Wednesday, Goodman caustically referred to Schuster as “a liar (and) a sleazebag,” charging that he lied because of his anger over not receiving a lucrative county contract that was awarded in 1982 when Hedgecock was a county supervisor. Goodman also argued that Schuster’s business partner, Jean Kauth, also lied to reinforce her friend’s testimony.

“I’m not sure what kind of a rush it gives (Goodman) to destroy another person and . . . call (Schuster) a scumbag,” Wickersham said. “I’m not trying to say Harvey Schuster is an angel . . . (But) if this man was so bad, if Jean Kauth is so bad, they were like that in 1981 and 1982, when they were close to the defendant.”

Seeking to weave a pattern of conspiracy from a series of seemingly disparate acts, Wickersham also made one final reference Thursday to the other major issues involved in the trial, including:

- A $16,000 promissory note that Hedgecock sold to Hoover in late 1982, while asking that the sale not be recorded until June, 1983--a delay that prosecutors argue was designed to conceal the ties between the two until after the May, 1983, mayoral race. Hedgecock, though, said that the delay was prompted by tax considerations, noting that his former business partner told him that he would receive a major tax break if he did not sell the note for at least one year.

Arguing that Hedgecock delayed only the recording, not the actual sale, of the note, Wickersham said, “What’s he doing? Trying to cheat the government?”

- A controversial $130,000 oral-agreement loan that Hedgecock received from Hoover to renovate his South Mission Hills house. Claiming that the project cost much more than that, prosecutors argue that Hedgecock received additional unreported funds from J. David.

In support of that position, Wickersham offered this argument: “If (Hedgecock) wanted to do it legitimately, why didn’t he just go borrow money . . . from a bank?”

- The key question of whether Tom Shepard & Associates was a legitimate business or, as prosecutors argue, little more than an arm of Hedgecock’s campaign committee. The prosecution contends that Shepard’s firm lost more than $135,000 on Hedgecock’s race in the form of unreimbursed staff and overhead expenses. The defense counters by arguing that Shepard treated Hedgecock’s campaign as a “loss leader,” willingly absorbing a short-term financial loss in an effort to enhance his young firm’s reputation by running a successful citywide race.

“This is the most incredible loss leader you’ll ever, ever come across,” Wickersham told the jurors.

Goodman expressed frustration afterward over not being able to respond to Wickersham’s remarks before the jurors, comparing his feelings to “taking an exam at school.”

“Until you get the test results and you find out that you got 100, you’re never relieved,” Goodman said. “This is always the toughest part of a case, because we’re helpless now. We can’t do anything except wait. But we will wait with a spirit of optimism.”