D.A. Didn’t Withhold Evidence From McMartin Defense, Judge Rules

Prosecutors in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case did not intentionally or negligently withhold important evidence from defense lawyers, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled Monday.

The ruling followed a three-month hearing on a defense motion to dismiss the charges or take the case away from the district attorney’s office for “outrageous governmental conduct.”

It assures that the case will soon go to trial, leaving as the only matters still at issue where the trial will be held and whether the two defendants, Ray Buckey, 28, and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, 60, will be tried together or separately.

“My conclusion is there was no intentional suppression of material evidence by anyone in the district attorney’s office,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Pounders said in denying the motion, “--with the exception of Mr. Stevens.”

Pounders was referring to former Deputy Dist. Atty. Glenn Stevens, whose allegations were the basis of the motion. Stevens, granted immunity from prosecution, testified that he had failed to relay to the defense several conversations he had with the parent who made the first allegation that her son had been molested by a teacher at the Manhattan Beach nursery school. That parent, Judy Johnson, testified during the preliminary hearing in 1984, but died last December.

At the hearing’s center were two written reports, one by Johnson and one by a district attorney’s investigator, that contain detailed, bizarre allegations that raise questions about the woman’s sanity. Defense attorneys received one report two years later, and obtained the other from outside sources.

Pounders said that while mistakes were made by prosecutors in dealing with “a constantly changing ocean of material” in the 3-year-old case, he believes that most of the information contained in the two reports--which he said should have been provided--were given to the defense in other forms.

He said that he had allowed the lengthy, costly hearing because the defense had made “a very serious allegation,” an allegation that Pounders said was not unfounded--given statements that Stevens had made in taped conversations with a film maker planning a McMartin movie and in discussions with defense attorneys.

But the claim that the district attorney sat on crucial evidence that could have exonerated the Buckeys during grand jury proceedings and an 18-month preliminary hearing was not supported by testimony and evidence introduced at the hearing, Pounders found.

In fact, he said, as the prosecutor responsible for turning over information (known as “discovery”) to the defense, Stevens’ own testimony that he believed the defense had been given the disputed documents provides “dynamite evidence to show they were not suppressed.”

Pounders refused to dismiss even the single count that involves the Johnson child--which would have still left 100 counts of molestation and conspiracy against the defendants.

He said that the admissibility of Johnson’s previous testimony could become an issue at trial, “but my initial feeling is that (there was) an adequate cross-examination (of Johnson) that would allow prosecutors to read it at the time of trial.”

Defense attorneys had argued that they were not told of Johnson’s alleged mental problems before she testified, and that the massive case was the result of “social contagion” between her and other South Bay parents.