Jury Possibly Confused, Judge Says : Perjury Conviction Thrown Out

An Orange County judge threw out the guilty verdict of an apparently confused jury Friday in a perjury case against a 35-year-old Los Angeles lawyer, provoking a stinging rebuttal from the prosecutor in open court.

Bonnie M. Lawrence, a lawyer who specializes in appeals work, dropped her head to her hands, hugged her attorney and thanked Superior Court Judge John H. Smith Jr.

“I hope you can understand my decision,” Smith said to Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans.

“With all due respect, your honor, I don’t,” Evans said.

“Well, I’m the one who has to live with it,” Smith said.

“No, we all do,” Evans answered.

A jury convicted Lawrence two months ago of committing perjury when she billed the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana for 206.3 hours of work as a court-appointed lawyer for an indigent defendant without being able to provide documentation to prove she had worked the hours.

But the same jury acquitted her on charges that she made false claims and had attempted to commit grand theft by billing the court for her work on a legal brief that closely resembled one already filed by her colleague, who was representing an indigent co-defendant in the same case.

At the time of the jury’s verdict, Smith took the unusual step of asking the jurors to explain how they had come up with their split decision.

Smith said in his Santa Ana courtroom Friday that he believes jurors must have been confused by the law, and he dismissed all charges.

The district attorney’s office filed the felony charges against Lawrence after John K. Trotter, then-presiding judge of the Santa Ana appellate court, complained about Lawrence’s billing.

Lawrence argued that she had worked the hours and that there was nothing improper about the briefs’ similarity because she and the other attorney had worked on the case together and planned it that way.

While the jurors accepted her arguments, they did not acquit her on the perjury charge because of evidence that she did not have documents showing she worked that many hours.

“They were following a court instruction that she committed perjury by billing the court that many hours when she had to be ignorant of how many hours she actually worked,” Evans said later. “The law permits a perjury conviction. The judge has let down those 12 jurors.”

Lawrence’s attorney, Arthur H. Lampel of Los Angeles, disagreed.

“The jury was obviously confused by the jury instructions,” Lampel said.

Lawrence later said she does not believe she did anything wrong, either criminally or ethically.

Asked why the charges were brought against her, she threw up her hands. “Ask me in five years; I don’t know,” she said.

Lampel acknowledged that it is unlikely, after this dispute, that the Santa Ana appellate court will ever again appoint her to represent an indigent defendant.

“But it’s also unlikely that she would ever want to accept an appointment from them,” Lampel said.