Aborted Deals in ‘Twilight’ Trial Reported

Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner was so intent on winning the conviction of “Twilight Zone” film director John Landis on involuntary manslaughter charges that he personally offered a deal in mid-trial to an attorney for helicopter pilot Dorcey Wingo if the co-defendant would testify against Landis, a defense attorney said Saturday.

However, Reiner’s chief deputy, Gilbert I. Garcetti, countered that it was actually Wingo’s attorney, Eugene L. Trope, who broached the deal.

Trope told investigators that Wingo had incriminating evidence against Landis that he would reveal in exchange for a dismissal of the involuntary manslaughter charges against him, according to Garcetti. But, the prosecutor said, Wingo failed to disclose any such information in a subsequent taped three-hour interview with top officials, and the talks were then aborted.

Attorneys for the three other co-defendants disclosed that they too had discussions with the district attorney’s office during the course of the case about their clients’ testifying against the prominent director in exchange for charges being dropped.

“It was quite clear during the trial Landis was the only one important to (the prosecution),” said James Neal, Landis’ co-counsel. “I operated under the assumption that the district attorney would have given every one of the other defendants a free ride if they testified against Landis.”

“I think they wanted Landis because he was high-profile. In my many years, that’s not uncommon,” continued Neal, a former Watergate special prosecutor who won the conviction of some of former President Richard M. Nixon’s top aides.

Variety of Accounts

In the end, all negotiations came to naught. But the various accounts, provided in interviews Saturday, underscored the shadowy maneuvering that sometimes took place in the high-profile case.

After a ten-month trial, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury Friday acquitted Landis, Wingo and their three co-defendants of involuntary manslaughter charges stemming from the 1982 “Twilight Zone” film set deaths of actor Vic Morrow and child actors Renee Chen, 6, and Myca Dinh Lee, 7. The three performers were killed when Wingo’s helicopter, hit by the fireball of a special-effects explosive, careened out of control and crashed on them in the filming of a Vietnam battle scene.

Trope said Saturday the negotiations with Reiner’s office took place in early February, days before the prosecution rested its case. Trope claimed that Reiner said his office would agree to a dismissal of charges against Wingo based on a lack of sufficient evidence if he would “testify on our behalf in favor of the prosecution as to Landis.”

“We do this all the time,” Trope said Reiner added during the brief meeting, which Trope said came at the district attorney’s request and took place in Reiner’s Criminal Courts Building office.

Asks Second Hearing

Later that same day, Wingo was interviewed by other high-ranking officials to outline the testimony he would give. But the deal fell through, Trope charged, when a supervisor from Reiner’s office, Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard W. Hecht, called back and requested a second interview with Wingo. “Well, we frankly need something stronger than that, we’d like to do it again,” Hecht said, according to Trope.

Hecht then called Trope again at his home, the defense attorney asserted, and allegedly said: “Gene, I’d like to try this once more because I think Dorcey should really be out of the case.”

Trope said he replied: “If you think he should be out of the case, what the hell kind of prosecution is this? Release him.”

Reflecting on the negotiations, Trope said of the district attorney’s office: “They don’t care about justice. . . . They wanted to win a case against Landis because he was a high-profile defendant.”

Top officials of Reiner’s office acknowledged that the meeting between Trope and Reiner took place, but they strongly disputed Trope’s version of the events.

‘Willing to Meet’

“Mr. Trope on a number of occasions let it be known . . . that his client had information that would be highly inculpatory of both Landis and others,” said Garcetti. “We then came up with the idea that if he wants assurances that things would be treated fairly and properly at all stages, the district attorney was willing to meet with him and assure him.”

However, Wingo’s statement turned out to be “less than candid,” Garcetti added, and his office then refused to dismiss the charges against Wingo without getting the unspecified incriminating evidence Trope had claimed would be forthcoming.

Garcetti defended the negotiations, saying: “We felt there were one or two individuals who we felt should bear the brunt of the responsibility. . . . We probably would have never even asked for jail against Wingo. But if he indeed had evidence we were not aware of that was highly inculpatory of Landis and others, it was in our interest to pursue that evidence.”

Hecht, director of central trials, also said Trope’s “scenario is a little one-sided.” Hecht denied that he told Trope that Wingo should be out of the case because “I could not make a representation (like that). We had a good case against all the defendants and it was Trope that approached us.”

Another Offer Cited

Arnold Klein, who represented special-effects coordinator Paul Stewart, said the prosecution also offered to dismiss charges against Stewart during the jury selection process last summer if Stewart would testify against Landis.

Klein said the offer centered around Stewart testifying that he had told Landis that placing an explosive under a bamboo hut on the set was dangerous but that the film makers went ahead anyway.

Harland Braun, defense attorney for associate producer George Folsey Jr., said the district attorney’s office told him before the trial began that if Landis would forgo a trial and plead guilty to an involuntary manslaughter charge, all counts against the other defendants would be dismissed.

Garcetti said any potential deals with Klein or Braun were broached first by the defense.

Garcetti and Reiner acknowledged Friday that they had rejected pretrial offers by the defendants to plead guilty to lesser charges of violating child labor laws in the hiring of Chen and Lee. The reason, they said, was that such charges were irrelevant to the central issue in the case--the deaths of the three actors in the film set crash.

Tactic Called Shocking

Defense attorney Leonard Levine, who represented unit production manager Dan Allingham, called the prosecution’s negotiations with Trope “shocking.”

“Clearly, they were trying to put pressure on a defendant to shade his testimony to help the prosecution,” Levine said. Otherwise, he added, the prosecution could have just dismissed the charges against Wingo outright and subpoenaed him to take the witness stand.

Garcetti, however, vehemently disagreed. “It’s done all the time,” he maintained, “and has to be done.”

“Wingo had perhaps the least amount of culpability of anyone, but there was still a case where we felt the evidence warranted going forward,” the chief deputy explained.

Braun, meanwhile, called Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Roger W. Boren to task for not informing the other defense attorneys of the aborted Wingo deal.

Disclosure to Judge

According to Trope, after the deal was rejected, he and the trial prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino, met privately with Boren and disclosed the details of the discussions.

As it turned out, Wingo took the stand himself as a defense witness and defended his actions and those of the other defendants on the set.

Although Wingo made some eye-opening statements--he testified he was “distressed to the max” that Morrow did not try to elude the plummeting helicopter--jurors said his testimony did not hurt the defense case.

Assessing their victory Saturday, the defense lawyers said the prosecution had blundered in presenting the manslaughter case--and in even bringing it to trial.

“I think we must concentrate the limited resources available to the law enforcement system on stopping the enormous drug trafficking, street crimes, political corruption, organized crime and frauds against the government,” said Neal. “We must do something in this country to reduce the time, complexity and costly nature of our system of justice.

Trial Errors Seen

“Even if the decision, erroneous I think, were made to try this case, it could have and really should have been tried in a couple of months. After all, the accident scene was filmed by six cameras.

“It was outrageous to try this case. If it was wrong, it was a civil wrong and somebody should be made to pay.”

Civil suits totaling more than $200 million filed by the families of the two children are still pending, the families’ attorneys said Friday.

For her part, prosecutor D’Agostino said after the verdict that, even in defeat, she still felt strongly that she had proven her case against Landis and the others. “There’s nothing that can convince me their acts were not reckless,” she said.

But Braun said that D’Agostino had erred by “over-trying” the case, in which she called 77 witnesses, compared to 16 summoned by the defense. “If she had understood the case and made us put on all the witnesses,” said Braun, “it might have been more of a horse race. . . . She tried to prove a murder case.”

“I think Lea was the best thing that ever happened to us,” said Braun, taking a final swipe at the prosecutor with whom he clashed for almost a year.