D.A. in Penn Trial Convicted in 1983 : Old Charge Is Uncovered During Current Inquiry Into Missing Tools

Wayne C. Mayer, the deputy district attorney under investigation in a reported theft last weekend, was charged 4 1/2 years ago with petty theft and later pleaded no contest to a lesser offense.

Mayer, one of the prosecutors in the retrial of accused police killer Sagon Penn, never told his supervisors about the misdemeanor case, which was prosecuted by the San Diego city attorney’s office, according to Steve Casey, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office. Municipal Court records show that Mayer did not tell the arresting officer in the 1982-83 case that he was a deputy district attorney.

Casey, for the first time, publicly acknowledged Friday that prosecutors were concerned about the potential impact of the disclosures regarding Mayer on continuing jury deliberations in the Penn case.

Important Case

“When we’ve had a 14-week retrial of a case that’s very important to us, the community, the defendant and the Police Department, and we have a jury out actively deliberating, obviously there’s a concern that any extraneous, tangentially related matter might influence somebody one way or another,” he said.

Jurors in the case went home for the weekend after ending their eighth day of deliberations without reaching a verdict. San Diego County Superior Court Judge J. Morgan Lester has imposed a gag order on lawyers in the case and has repeatedly cautioned the jurors against exposing themselves to news reports about the proceedings.

Mayer, who earns about $65,000 a year in his county post, took a day of leave and was not at work Friday. He could not be reached for comment.

Though Casey said the district attorney’s office was “disappointed” to learn of Mayer’s 1983 conviction from a reporter’s inquiry and considered it “a serious matter,” no action was immediately planned against the 10-year veteran deputy.

Instead, Dist. Atty. Edwin L. Miller will wait until the attorney general’s office and San Diego police complete their investigation of last weekend’s reported theft before deciding if any steps will be taken concerning Mayer, Casey said.

“For the moment, we’re going to wait until the resolution of the other, pending matter,” he said.

Mayer, 41, is being investigated in connection with the reported theft Sunday of a power saw and a drill from the back of a pickup truck parked at De Anza Cove. A witness reported that the driver of a motor home registered to Mayer removed the tools from the truck, put them in the motor home and drove off.

According to a police report of the incident, the witness said the driver of the mobile home was a tall, thin, white male with brown hair. The brown-haired Mayer is 6-feet-4-inches tall and weighs about 200 pounds.

Shoplifting Charge

In the earlier case, Mayer was charged in October, 1982, with shoplifting a fishing reel from the Longs Drug Store on Friars Road in Serra Mesa. The misdemeanor offense carried a maximum penalty of 180 days in jail and a $500 fine.

According to Municipal Court records, Mayer pleaded no contest in February, 1983, to a reduced charge of trespassing. He was fined $250, but the sentence was suspended pending his successful completion of a three-year probation.

Mayer may have violated one term of the plea bargain by failing to appear for formal booking three weeks after his conviction. Though a warrant for his arrest was issued at the time, the warrant was recalled in August, 1983, and the formal booking was waived, court records indicate.

According to the records, Mayer told the arresting officer in the case that he was a teacher at National University and listed his business address as the school’s Mission Valley headquarters. Because of computer problems, university spokesmen said records were not available Friday to indicate whether Mayer had ever taught at the school.

Mayer’s failure to identify himself as a deputy district attorney--along with the facts that he did not personally appear in court during the proceedings and that the case was handled by city prosecutors--left the district attorney’s office with no way of knowing Mayer had been charged and convicted, Casey said.

“There was nothing to suggest this one, of literally thousands of misdemeanor defendants, was a member of this office,” he said.

The possible consequences for Mayer of his actions were not clear Friday. Casey said Mayer, to the best of his knowledge, was the first deputy district attorney ever accused or suspected in a theft-related case. As a result, he said, there was no precedent for disciplining a deputy in such circumstances.

But the district attorney’s office clearly was concerned about the situation.

‘Serious Matter’

“If an attorney or an investigator in the office is accused of a crime, even a minor offense, we regard that as a serious matter,” Casey said.

The Penn case is the second highly publicized prosecution in the past six months in which a San Diego County prosecutor has himself been accused of a crime.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Joseph Van Orshoven was charged with drunken driving in December, two months before he was assigned to prosecute former California Highway Patrol Officer Craig Peyer on a charge of murdering San Diego State University student Cara Knott.

At the time, Miller said the drunk-driving charge had “no connection” to the Peyer prosecution. According to Casey, other deputy district attorneys charged with drunken driving have been disciplined only if they were driving county vehicles.

The only deputy district attorney ever charged with a felony offense was fired, Casey noted. The deputy, Forrest Price, was acquitted on charges of tampering with evidence in a case.