Sheriff Pleads Not Guilty in Sting Case

Yolo County Sheriff Rod Graham, the first elected official indicted in a three-year political corruption investigation, pleaded not guilty in federal court Wednesday to charges that he offered to “manufacture” crime statistics in exchange for $3,650 in campaign contributions.

After his release without bail, the veteran lawman told reporters that he is innocent and has no intention of resigning from the post he was first elected to in 1982.

“I’ve said all along that I’d like to have my day in court, and that’s what I intend to do,” said the grim-faced Graham. “It’s a situation that I never dreamed of when I started out in law enforcement 25 years ago. It’s certainly not fun.”

Accused of using his office to extort campaign contributions from the developer of a $600-million marina and condominium project on the Sacramento River, Graham faces a maximum sentence of 75 years in federal prison and a fine of $1 million or more if convicted.

The charges against Graham grew out of an elaborate federal sting operation in which FBI agents posing as businessmen paid out campaign contributions and honorariums to legislators while seeking support for special-interest bills to help them build a shrimp-processing plant in West Sacramento. The Graham case was an indirect spinoff of the Legislature probe.

No one in the Capitol has been indicted, but sources close to the investigation say that several legislators and legislative aides are likely to be charged with violating federal anti-extortion laws. The timing, however, is uncertain.

In the Yolo County case, court documents say that Graham and his former undersheriff, Wendell Luttrull, approached developer Marvin Levin for financial help in Graham’s contested 1986 reelection campaign. Levin is a partner in Lighthouse Marina and a former lobbyist who was secretly working with the FBI to set up the Capitol sting.

Luttrull, who pleaded guilty to federal extortion charges last month, has said that he and Graham promised to aid the marina project in return for campaign contributions--$2,000 in cash and a check for $1,650 drawn on the account of Gulf Shrimp Fisheries, one of the bogus companies set up by the FBI for the Capitol sting.