Hedgecock Convicted in San Diego

Mayor Roger Hedgecock was convicted today of conspiracy and perjury in a scheme to illegally finance his 1983 mayoral campaign, a verdict that means he must forfeit his job as head of the nation’s eighth-largest city.

The verdict came on the seventh day of deliberations at the second trial for Hedgecock. An earlier trial ended with the jury deadlocked 11 to 1 for conviction.

The sequestered Superior Court jury, composed of eight women and four men, received the case last Thursday following a two-month trial.

Hedgecock, who faced a maximum prison term of eight years, has been mayor since winning a May, 1983, election to fill the unexpired term of Pete Wilson, who ascended to the U.S. Senate after 11 years as mayor of the nation’s eighth-largest city.

Hedgecock characterized the charges against him as untrue and said he was unaware that money from the J. David & Co. investment firm was used to fund the political consulting firm he retained for his 1983 mayoral campaign.

The mayor’s legal problems coincided with the multimillion-dollar collapse of J. David, which was forced into bankruptcy in February, 1984, by disgruntled investors. Company founder J. David “Jerry” Dominelli is serving a 20-year federal prison term for defrauding investors of $80 million and failing to pay more than $2 million in taxes.

In addition, Hedgecock is a defendant in a $1.2-million civil suit filed by the state Fair Political Practices Commission. The suit accuses Hedgecock and five political associates of breaking campaign and financial disclosure laws.

A key prosecution witness in both trials was businessman Harvey Schuster, who testified that Hedgecock told him in November, 1981, that Dominelli had agreed to bankroll Shepard’s consulting firm to help Hedgecock become mayor.

The controversy over Hedgecock’s personal and campaign finances has dominated San Diego for 18 months. It was ignited by his admission in early 1984 that in the previous year he had made an oral agreement with Nancy Hoover, a longtime Hedgecock political supporter, to borrow $130,000 to renovate his house.

Hoover was at that time a business and personal associate of La Jolla’s J. DavidDominelli, who later was convicted of defrauding his investors of millions of dollars.

Although Hedgecock insisted that there was nothing improper about the loan, the unorthodox transaction brought to light related deals that forced the mayor to amend earlier financial disclosure statements to correct omissions and errors. Those amendments, combined with the inconsistencies and inaccuracies in Hedgecock’s initial explanations of his financial dealings, attracted the scrutiny of San Diego County Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller and the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

Although Hedgecock was reelected by a convincing 58% to 42% margin over La Jolla millionaire Dick Carlson only seven weeks after his indictment, the mayor then was forced to battle in the courtroom to preserve what he had won at the polls. However, the mayor’s seven-week first trial, highlighted by his three-day testimony, ended inconclusively in February.