Lawyers Want Special Prosecutor for Informants Inquiry

Two leading criminal defense lawyer groups, upset by the specter of the district attorney’s office investigating itself, will ask that a special prosecutor be named to probe the district attorney’s use of jailhouse informants.

Citing an obscure section of state law, the defense groups said Saturday that they will shortly ask the presiding judge of Los Angeles Superior Court to choose a prominent attorney and designate him as a special prosecutor.

The groups are the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, which numbers 2,000 private defense lawyers statewide, and the Los Angeles Criminal Courts Bar Assn.

If the presiding judge agrees, the special prosecutor would be empowered to compel testimony and subpoena evidence by conducting his investigation through the Los Angeles County Grand Jury.

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregory Thompson said through a spokesman Saturday that his office would have “no comment at this time.”

Spokesmen for the defense lawyers said they hoped an investigation would include a review of suggestions in recent newspaper articles that some deputy district attorneys may have obstructed justice or suborned perjury by using informants they knew to be untrustworthy, or violated other laws by giving favors, including money for moving expenses, to informants in return for their testimony.

“When the defense does that, it’s called bribery,” said Charles Lindner, president of the Los Angeles Criminal Courts Bar Assn. “When the prosecution does it, it’s called witness relocation.”

Lindner indicated he believed some jailhouse informants are given relocation money under a state witness protection program administered by the district attorney’s office so that they can buy illegal drugs, not so that they can move. “It’s called, ‘Here, stick it in your arm,’ ” he said.

Los Angeles defense lawyer Richard Hirsch, former president of the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice and a member of its board of trustees, said his group concluded it was inappropriate for the district attorney’s office to investigate itself when some of its “actions . . . may rise to the level of criminal activity.”

Usually, when it has a conflict of interest, the district attorney’s office asks prosecutors from the state attorney general’s office for help.

However, Hirsch said in this case, the attorney general’s office also may have a conflict of interest because it is the prosecutorial agency that is handling the appeals of defendants convicted in jailhouse informant cases.

Also, he noted, Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp is a former Los Angeles County district attorney.

Lindner said that the county counsel’s office, which could also step in, may have a conflict of interest in that “there may be lawsuits against the county because prisoners may have had their civil rights denied through false imprisonment as a result of district attorneys’ malfeasance. . . . Those lawsuits would be defended by the county counsel.”

Hirsch said his group’s 40-member board voted unanimously at its meeting Friday night in San Francisco to request some sort of independent investigation by the Legislature or a specially created governmental commission if the request for a special prosecutor is denied.

He said the group also decided to lobby for legislation that would require prosecutors to corroborate the accounts of jailhouse informants in court.

The defense attorney groups were responding to disclosures that began in late October when Leslie Vernon White, a longtime jailhouse informant, demonstrated that he could gather enough information to fabricate the murder confession of a defendant he had never met.

A convicted kidnaper, robber and car thief, White assembled the data from a Los Angeles County jail telephone by contacting law enforcement agencies while posing as a bail bondsman, prosecutor and police officer.

White’s demonstration to sheriff’s deputies triggered concerns that some criminal defendants may have been convicted on the basis of confessions fabricated by informants seeking leniency in their own cases.

The district attorney’s office subsequently began a review of all cases in the last decade in which jailhouse informants testified, with the aim of having questionable cases reviewed in court.

It also adopted strict, new controls on the use of informants in criminal cases.

Los Angeles county prosecutors are now required to have “concrete evidence” to corroborate the account of a jailhouse informant and they must obtain the unanimous consent of the office’s senior management to use such an informant’s testimony.

However, Hirsch said legislation remains necessary.

He said prosecutors in the past have offered “completely uncorroborated” accounts by jailhouse informants who typically testify in return for leniency.

“The district attorney’s office seems to be requiring (corroboration) in the future,” Hirsch said, “but we want to make sure that’s a legal obligation and not something that is at the whim of the particular prosecutor who is in office at a certain time.”

Officials of the district attorney’s office have refused to provide reporters with examples of what constitutes “concrete” corroboration other than tape-recorded or handwritten confessions. But they have said other types of corroboration will be acceptable.