‘Twilight’ Prosecutor Draws the Spotlight

With a world-famous movie director accused of manslaughter in the film set deaths of a veteran actor and two children, who would have thought that a prosecutor would instead become the focus of attention in the “Twilight Zone” trial?

Most anyone who knows nine-year Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino, that’s who.

“If Lea is there, something unusual is going to happen,” says a former courtroom foe, James N. Sussman.

Indeed, the petite prosecutor recently threw the showcase trial into a tizzy by voluntarily taking the witness stand and proceeding to dramatically question the credibility of a fellow deputy district attorney, Gary P. Kesselman, who preceded her as prosecutor in the case. The issue will probably come up again today as the trial, expected to last four months, enters its third week.

The legal fireworks have sparked motions from lawyers for director John Landis and four co-defendants to dismiss the case due to alleged prosecutorial misconduct. And other attorneys are questioning whether D’Agostino engaged in dubious legal strategy.

But the immaculately dressed, raven-haired prosecutor seems to take it all in stride.

“I don’t change when I get in a courtroom,” emphasized the sharp-tongued woman whom defense attorneys call “The Dragon Lady.” “If people think that’s theatrical, I can’t help it. . . . I am me.”

Mention D’Agostino’s name in the downtown criminal courthouse and most attorneys either smile or cringe. To admirers, she is quick-witted. To foes, she is abrasive.

Crime victims and prosecution witnesses appear to love her, saying she shows extraordinary sympathy and concern for them. Defense attorneys largely appear to loathe her, saying she is not above stepping beyond the bounds of fairness to prevail in court.

“I just wanted you to know that I think you are the greatest person I ever met!” wrote a kidnaping victim in a case she successfully prosecuted.

“She’s a good lawyer and extremely well-prepared, but she makes cases pretty much her crusades,” contends Wilbur Dettmar, a defense lawyer who battled her in a 1984 death penalty trial. “She has a way of pushing and pushing that antagonizes other attorneys.”

Some of her fellow deputies say she stands out above the crowd; others say she just sticks out.

“She doesn’t fit because she’s not a good old boy,” said one prosecutor who worked with her in Van Nuys for several years. “Some men are put off by her and she’s older than most of the women D.A.’s and she’s not like them.”

Without doubt, few prosecutors would launch an objection to the judge, as D’Agostino has done in the “Twilight Zone” case, when a defense lawyer referred to her as Ms. rather than Mrs. D’Agostino. And it’s not every woman of the 1980s who boasts a vanity license plate, a gift from her husband, which includes the initials HRH, for “Her Royal Highness.”

Unorthodox Background

Whatever their opinions, friend and foe alike concede that D’Agostino is extremely hard-working and competent. Her fiery style, they believe, stems from her unorthodox roots.

“I think her background has a hell of a lot to do with what she is,” says Dettmar. “It’s a desire to conquer all.”

Born in Tel Aviv, D’Agostino is the only child of a Lithuanian mother and a Polish father. Her father died of a ruptured ulcer when she was 5, and members of both her parents’ families were killed by the Nazis.

When D’Agostino was 6, her mother married an English soldier and the family moved to Birmingham, England. After the couple’s divorce six years later, D’Agostino and her mother emigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Chicago.

D’Agostino moved to Los Angeles after high school. She was still a long way from law school, though, working as a secretary and administrative assistant for an investment banking firm and then moving on to the entertainment industry.

Aide to Film Giant

First, she served as an administrative assistant for David O. Selznick, the producer of “Gone With the Wind,” and later with Freddie Fields & Associates, a prominent theatrical agency that represented Judy Garland, Paul Newman and Peter Sellers.

Fields, who eventually became president of MGM Film Co., remembers D’Agostino as efficient almost to the point of irritation.

“She was a hard worker, right on top of things. I never dreamed that she would become a district attorney, but in retrospect, she had that kind of head-on attacking-the-problems approach.”

Despite her exposure to the entertainment industry, D’Agostino, who says her childhood idol was Ingrid Bergman, says she never harbored dreams of becoming an actress herself. The only role she ever auditioned for was a voice-over in a radio advertisement. She wasn’t hired, she says, because the producer felt she sounded “too much like Lauren Bacall.”

During that period, D’Agostino was romantically linked to Peter Sellers. “If only things had been different, I could easily have become his first wife,” she is quoted as saying in a recent English tabloid article mounted on the wall of her office. Last week, D’Agostino refused to discuss the relationship, virtually the only taboo topic.

Nightclub Manager

Before enrolling in 1972 at the University of West Los Angeles School of Law, D’Agostino also worked as the manager of a trendy nightclub and as the social director at the Marina City Club. She finally settled on law, she said, after thumbing through career ads in TV Guide.

Despite her jobs in a more glamorous profession, she says going to law school was “the most gratifying thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

Besides, of course, meeting and marrying her husband, Joseph, then in charge of food and beverages at the Marina club and now the general manager of food services for the concessionaire at Hollywood Park.

The childless couple, who have been married 12 years, are particularly close to her mother, Berta Purwin, who lives in Los Angeles. Mother and daughter gab on the telephone at least four times a day.

“She still cooks for me on weekends,” D’Agostino sighs. “She makes big pots of stew, chicken, mandel bread. She wants to be sure I don’t lose weight . . . like most Jewish mothers, I’m her baby and I’ll always be, thank God.”

‘Born Skin and Bones’

Explains Berta: “She’s so thin, she was born skin and bones. She should gain weight. In the morning, she drinks only coffee and at lunch she doesn’t eat at all and then she’s too tired for dinner.

“All I have is my daughter and my son-in-law so I should be concerned.”

Besides her fashionable wardrobe--defense lawyers exaggerate only slightly when they claim she can go through a two-month case without wearing the same well-tailored outfit twice--D’Agostino is also noted for her superstitions.

Each day of trial, she carries six felt-tipped blue pens. It’s a habit she picked up, she says, when she did well on her first law school exam. The West Los Angeles resident also refuses to discuss her age, asserting that “any woman’s prerogative is to say anything they want to about age.” According to state Department of Motor Vehicle records, she is 49.

Symbol of Confidence

Then there is her habit of wearing a gold queen bee brooch on the right shoulder of her suits. She has gone through three or four different bees, and wouldn’t think of giving an opening statment or taking a verdict without wearing one.

“Superstitious?” she jokes, “I’m not superstitious.”

Even if she is, D’Agostino is never outwardly intimidated by her courtroom antagonists, who in the “Twilight Zone” trial include James F. Neal, one of the nation’s premier defense attorneys and a former Watergate special prosecutor, and one of Los Angeles’ most acerbic and successful defense attorneys, Harland Braun.

Outside of court, D’Agostino frequently mimics Neal’s Nashville drawl and with Braun, she breezily trades jibes.

“Harland, what is on your alleged mind today?” she asked the other day.

Amusing Circumstances

In the courtroom, D’Agostino attempts to use to her advantage the fact that she stands alone in a chamber packed with five defendants, seven lawyers, and lately, even a prosecutor who has a different account of the facts.

“I don’t find it a particular obstacle,” she reflects. “When the defense lawyers all stand up en masse and object, I find it amusing. They sound like a barbershop septet.”

The verbal sparring, however, appears to go beyond legal rivalry.

“I think she’s very competent,” says Neal, “but I can’t say that I like her and I can’t say that I admire her.”

“I think she is totally wrapped up in her own persona,” adds Braun. “She feels as if somehow she is better than other people.”

D’Agostino responds: “I find it somewhat pathetic that seven presumably adult men are apparently so concerned about a 90-pound woman that they would stoop to making such absurd remarks.”

Basis for Selection

Such comments seem to please Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Gilbert I. Garcetti, who selected her for the case when Kesselman withdrew in late 1985 for personal reasons.

“I was looking for an attorney . . . who could handle the case extremely well by herself in court and out of court as well, figuring that we were going to be dealing with some very suave, smooth-talking, high-priced lawyers and perhaps even some off-the-wall, rambunctious lawyers,” Garcetti explained. “I did not want another DeLorean case in which the defense was the only side talking to the media.”

Garcetti said D’Agostino, who worked in the Van Nuys career criminals prosecution unit before taking on her assignment in the elite downtown special trials team, also “has superior trial talents.”

“She has a dynamic presence and personality and she works extremely hard . . . and engenders tremendous faith and trust in witnesses.”

Even Garcetti, however, has indicated that he disagrees with her extremely unusual decision to take the stand, without the jury present, after she was accused by the defense of presenting false testimony from a key witness.

Question of Integrity

D’Agostino said she took the stand to defend her own integrity and the integrity of her office. During the brief encounter, she backed the credibility of her first witness in the case, production secretary Donna Schuman. But in so doing, she added questions about whether prosecutor Kesselman, who had been subpoenaed previously by the defense, had improperly withheld evidence from the defense. And if D’Agostino herself was telling the truth, the defense asked, why did she not bring the matter to her superiors’ attention before the trial?

Before she was finished testifying, D’Agostino also implied that someone in the district attorney’s office may have attempted to sabotage her preparation for the trial.

The defense says that as a result of her voluntary testimony, the prosecutor will eventually be called as a witness before the jury, opening up a potential hornet’s nest of legal complications.

“I did it deliberately, knowing my personality and her temper, she’d get on the stand,” says Braun. “I just figured I’d get her on there and let her sink herself.”

Appropriate Measure

D’Agostino countered: “You can interview every D.A. you want. I don’t care what they say. I did what I deemed appropriate at the time that I did it. Harland Braun accused the office of the district attorney of deliberately and knowingly putting on perjured testimony. That called into play my integrity.”

She terms the issue a defense ploy to divert attention from the heart of the matter: Alleged negligence and child endangerment by the five defendants that resulted in the 1982 deaths of Vic Morrow and Renee Chen, 6, and Myca Dinh Lee, 7, who were killed when a helicopter crashed into them as they acted out a battle scene involving special-effects explosions.

“The defense strategy has to be to go on the offensive and attack the witnesses and everything else they can attack because clearly the facts and the law are on our side,” D’Agostino maintains with a flourish.

“Your elevator doesn’t have to stop at the top floor to realize the scene was dangerous,” she adds.

Although she says she never asked for the case, it is obviously crucial to her career. Asked about her long-range plans, she said she has little interest in becoming a judge and no interest in becoming a defense attorney.

The office of district attorney, however, “appeals to me . . . but realistically, I don’t know if I have the patience or strength to get involved in the machinations of politics.”