No Prosecution of 2 Bailiffs in Hedgecock Case, State Decides

In a setback to Mayor Roger Hedgecock’s bid to reverse his felony conviction, the state attorney general’s office said Monday that there is insufficient evidence to prosecute court bailiffs on charges of tampering with Hedgecock’s jury during its deliberations.

After a two-week investigation, Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp’s office decided not to prosecute the bailiffs who supervised Hedgecock’s jury, citing “strong contradictory evidence” and the lack of “criminal intent.”

While prosecutors argued that the attorney general’s finding reinforces their contention that the jury-tampering allegations are groundless, Hedgecock’s attorneys noted that Monday’s decision does not necessarily mean that jury tampering did not occur, but only that the bailiffs will not be charged with any criminal wrongdoing.

Dismissing the attorney general’s probe as “a half-hearted effort . . . with a lot of foot dragging,” defense attorney Oscar Goodman said: “As far as I’m concerned, they’re a party to the whitewash.”

“The question of whether to prosecute the bailiffs is irrelevant to what we’re doing here,” Goodman said. “We never asked that the bailiffs be prosecuted. All we’re concerned about is whether some things that shouldn’t have happened did occur during deliberations. I think there’s plenty of evidence that that’s the case here. This (attorney general’s) opinion doesn’t change that.”

The attorney general’s report comes as both sides in the case await a decision by the California Supreme Court on whether it will review Hedgecock’s request to have Superior Court Judge William L. Todd Jr. disqualified from ruling on whether the mayor’s 13-count felony conviction should be reversed because of the jury-tampering allegations. If Hedgecock, who faces a maximum of eight years imprisonment, ultimately loses his motion for a new trial, he would be ousted from office at the time of sentencing.

Meeting in a special session Friday, the state Supreme Court postponed any future hearings in Hedgecock’s case, to give the justices additional time to decide whether there is merit to the mayor’s request that a judge other than Todd rule on his request for a new trial. In issuing the stay, the Supreme Court ordered Todd to postpone a scheduled Monday hearing on Hedgecock’s new-trial motion.

The high court is not scheduled to meet again until Nov. 13 but could conduct a special hearing to consider Hedgecock’s bid to remove Todd, who presided over both of the mayor’s trials, the first of which ended in a hung jury and the second in Hedgecock’s conviction on conspiracy and perjury counts stemming from allegations of illegal contributions to his 1983 mayoral campaign. The mayor’s attorneys have argued that Todd should be replaced because he is “both the employer . . . and friend” of Al Burroughs Jr., the bailiff accused of tampering with the jury.

Jurors Kathy Saxton-Calderwood and Stanley J. Bohensky have signed sworn statements alleging that Burroughs, in violation of court rules, frequently talked with jurors about the case and the progress in their 6 1/2-day deliberations. However, sworn affidavits from the 10 other jurors, Burroughs and bailiff Holly Murlin, who also supervised the jury, disputed those charges and have been cited by Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller as proof that “there was nothing even remotely approaching jury tampering.”

In a letter sent Monday to Miller and the mayor’s attorneys, Assistant Atty. Gen. Harley D. Mayfield emphasized that the disagreement among the jurors over the bailiff’s purported activities was one reason for the decision not to prosecute him.

“The strong contradictory evidence is one of two bases for our decision against prosecution,” Mayfield said in the one-page letter. “As a second and separate basis, we found no evidence, either direct or circumstantial, showing the criminal intent necessary for jury tampering.”

Steve Casey, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, praised the attorney general’s decision, but conceded that “it stopped a little short” of Miller’s own position on the jury-tampering allegations.

“The D.A. has said that not only is there not a prosecutable case against the bailiffs, but also that, in fact, jury tampering did not occur,” Casey said. “You get some of the same flavor in the attorney general’s letter, but it doesn’t spell it out quite that directly.”

Goodman, meanwhile, complained that “everyone’s putting too much attention on the 10-2 lineup of the jurors and losing sight of the real issue.”

“The point is, it doesn’t matter that two jurors said there was tampering and 10 said that there wasn’t,” Goodman said. “That’s totally irrelevant, because both the California and U.S. Supreme Courts have indicated that a defendant is entitled to 12 impartial jurors, not 9, not 10 and not 11. This isn’t a score card.”

Meanwhile, prosecutors said that they have learned that Bohensky was convicted of a drug-related felony in 1973.

Casey explained that information turned over to prosecutors by the attorney general’s office showed that Bohensky pleaded guilty in July, 1973, in Los Angeles to a charge of transportation and sale of marijuana.

The month before, Bohensky had been arraigned on that and two other felony charges--possession of marijuana for sale and the possession of a controlled substance, according to a spokesman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. The two other charges were dismissed in exchange for Bohensky’s guilty plea, for which he was sentenced to 120 days in jail and three years’ probation.

During juror questioning last summer, Bohensky referred to the incident as a misdemeanor conviction. The spokesman for the Los Angeles district attorney said that Bohensky’s charge could have been reduced to a misdemeanor when he was sentenced, but whether that occurred could not be determined Monday.

Casey, however, said that “there’s nothing at all in the court records” to indicate that the charge against Bohensky was reduced to a misdemeanor. In addition, Casey noted that local prosecutors have told him that “the sale of marijuana is not a reduceable offense.”

Bohensky’s attorney, John Learnard, said Monday that he didn’t know whether Bohensky’s conviction was a felony or a misdemeanor. Learnard said Bohensky told him he had informed the jury commissioner of the conviction and was told it would not affect his eligibility for jury duty.