Jury to Resume Work in O.C. Sheriff’s Trial : Gates’ Political Image, Personal Fortune May Be on the Line in Private Investigator’s Lawsuit

A federal court jury today begins its first full day of deliberations in a trial in which both the political image and the personal fortune of Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates may be at stake.

For nearly 5 weeks, six jurors have been hearing testimony in U.S. District Court about allegations that Gates ordered charges trumped up against a private investigator who was working on behalf of Gates’ former and prospective election opponents.

The case caps nearly a decade of controversy over whether Gates has used his investigators to harass his political enemies. Gates’ image has already been tarnished by a $375,000 settlement in a related suit. This suit demands $5 million, most of it punitive damages from Gates himself. Gates has declared in court that his personal wealth amounts to $1.2 million gross, $716,000 net.

The central question before the jury is simple: Did Gates’ elite intelligence unit act reasonably when it investigated a report that private investigator Preston Guillory had illegally carried a concealed revolver?

Complicated Trial

But that is the only simple aspect of a remarkably wide-ranging and complicated trial.

Gates is named as defendant, but so are one of his investigators, two of his undercover informants, a former Anaheim police chief, an Anaheim police investigator, the Anaheim city attorney, the County of Orange and the City of Anaheim. In all, six attorneys have conducted the trial.

Testimony stretched for weeks about whether Guillory’s revolver had been covered by his jacket or shirt and whether he showed anyone a badge, virtually retrying the charges of which Guillory was acquitted in 1985. But testimony also reached back over years of political turmoil before Guillory was charged and years of legal maneuvering afterward.

The verdict in the case is so complicated that a 12-page questionnaire will be provided to the jury to guide their deliberations, which resume today.

The tangled roots of the case run deep--as far back as the 1970s--and have been examined during scores of hours of testimony.

Lt. Brad Gates of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, endorsed by the retiring sheriff, won election in 1974. Four years later when it was time for reelection, names began to pop up that would become troublesome to Gates for more than a decade.

The first was Preston Guillory, a former Los Angeles County deputy sheriff, salesman and house painter turned private investigator, who early in 1978 filed suit against Gates in Orange County Superior Court.

Guillory complained that Gates unjustly refused him a permit to carry concealed weapons. Gates granted such permits to friends and campaign contributors but had a policy of refusing them to private investigators, Guillory alleged.

Guillory won a partial victory later that year. A judge ruled that Gates did, in fact, unfairly discriminate against private investigators and ordered him to end that policy.

Denied Permit Again

But the judge expressed doubts about Guillory’s fitness to hold a concealed-weapon permit. When Gates denied the permit a second time, Guillory filed suit in U.S. District Court. There the suit was dismissed, then revived, and is expected to go to trial this summer.

Guillory claimed that copies he obtained of Gates’ gun permits prove that Gates virtually sold them for campaign contributions and gave them to friends as rewards.

The second name was George P. Wright, a former city, county and federal law officer who taught police administration at Santa Ana College (now Rancho Santiago Community College). In 1978 he joined the field of Gates’ reelection opponents, and while none of them could defeat Gates, Wright would remain a critic.

The third and foremost was Bobby D. Youngblood, who was a hotly controversial figure the moment he took office in 1980 as a Municipal Court judge in Santa Ana.

Youngblood, a former Marine reservist, Army military policeman and private investigator, had been forced to resign from the Santa Ana Police Department in 1968 after he crashed a patrol car while drunk.

Years later he publicly blamed his difficulties--including his judicial censure by the California Supreme Court--on his drinking problem. He said he sought medical treatment and quit drinking in 1982.

Attacks on Gates

Youngblood obtained a law degree in 1972, and despite his political liabilities was able to win a close election against the incumbent judge. Soon he was launching attacks against Gates from the Municipal Court bench.

In 1981, a rowdy drunk was booked into Orange County Jail and 8 hours later was found dead. The sheriff’s coroner division concluded that the man died of alcohol overdose.

Youngblood publicly labeled the death a homicide, saying there had been 18 other suspicious jail deaths in the previous 2 years. He attacked Gates for running a brutal jail and trying to cover it up.

Investigations were launched by the district attorney and the FBI. After 2 years, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles said none of the complaints warranted prosecution. But by then, the animosity between Youngblood and Gates was well rooted and well known.

Hammered at Gates

Youngblood continued to publicly hammer at Gates, and Gates often replied in kind. Youngblood suggested the jail be turned over to the Orange County marshal to get it out of Gates’ hands. Gates countered that he might contribute campaign funds to the best of Youngblood’s reelection opponents.

In 1982, the fourth name surfaced: George Patrick (Pat) Bland, Youngblood’s friend since childhood. Bland filed to run against Gates. Wright had considered running again as well but bowed out.

After Gates won reelection again, Youngblood called a press conference to accuse Gates of hiring private investigators to harass him. Gates shrugged off the accusation as absurd.

But a year later--in December, 1983--Youngblood, Bland and Wright combined to file suit against Gates in U.S. District Court, alleging that Gates had, for political reasons, ordered his intelligence unit to spy on them and try to set them up for prosecution. Guillory acted as their private investigator to help build their case.

One of Guillory’s duties was to find and serve court papers on a co-defendant in the lawsuit, Richard Wilder, an undercover informant free-lancing for both the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. The suit alleged that Wilder had helped in the harassment of Youngblood, Bland and Wright.

9-Month Search

In October, 1984, after a 9-month search, Guillory found Wilder’s residence: the Oakwood Apartments in Anaheim, where Wilder was living under one of his aliases, Richard Gross.

What happened there, and the subsequent investigation by sheriff’s and later Anaheim investigators, is the tangle the six-member jury now must unravel.

Guillory went to the apartment repeatedly, sometimes alone, once accompanied by an off-duty Los Angeles police officer he had hired, twice accompanied by Anaheim police patrolmen who, told by Guillory that Wilder was wanted on a traffic warrant, intended to arrest Wilder.

On one visit, Guillory accompanied the apartment assistant manager into Wilder’s apartment to confirm that Wilder still lived there, for Wilder had been late with his rent. Then 2 days later, Guillory called Anaheim police, found Wilder at home and served him with the court papers. Police arrested Wilder.

From the police station, Wilder called his contact at the sheriff’s intelligence unit, Randall (Randy) Blair, who with Gates and Wilder was a defendant in the Youngblood lawsuit.

According to Blair, Wilder said he had been arrested and asked Blair to inform the DEA. Then he told Blair that when Guillory had served the papers, he had been carrying a concealed weapon and had shown a concealed-weapon permit to police.

Conspiracy Theory

It is here, Guillory’s lawyers allege, that the conspiracy to “get” Guillory surfaced. Any normal report of a concealed-weapon violation, a misdemeanor, would have been referred to the Anaheim Police Department, in whose city it supposedly occurred, they contend. In Guillory’s case, referring it to an independent agency was imperative, because both the informant and the investigator were Guillory’s adversaries in a lawsuit.

But Blair saw it as an opportunity to harass and punish Guillory and began investigating the incident himself, they argue.

Blair telephoned Anaheim police and was told that the officer who had arrested Wilder remembered that Guillory’s gun had been exposed. Guillory had shown an exposed-weapon permit issued by the Orange County sheriff, the officer said.

Blair testified that the sheriff issues no such permits, but Blair discovered Guillory had a valid exposed-weapon permit from the state Department of Consumer Affairs, which regulates private investigators.

If Blair’s investigation had been impartial, it would have ended then, Guillory’s attorneys said, because both of Wilder’s allegations had been soundly refuted. But Blair testified that he came across more information that kept the investigation alive.

He called the DEA to tell them Wilder had been arrested. DEA agents told him that an Oakwood security guard had called, saying someone had been at the apartment passing himself off as attached to the DEA.

Serious Enough to Check

The DEA agents said they were not going to pursue the report, which is how Guillory’s attorneys say any disinterested law enforcement agency would have reacted. But Blair testified he thought it was serious enough to check out, and an investigator was assigned to the Guillory case.

Guillory’s attorneys point out that the case, instead of being referred to Anaheim police or to the sheriff’s 80-member investigation division, was assigned to another member of the intelligence unit. It was done so Gates could keep close control of the investigation, the attorneys allege. The unit is outside the sheriff’s normal chain of command; it reports directly to Gates’ chief assistant, Undersheriff Raul Ramos.

Gates’ lawyers argue that because the Sheriff’s Department issues concealed-weapon permits, it would naturally be interested in investigating permit violations. They contend that sheriff’s investigators often pursue their cases into other jurisdictions; there is no law or policy against it.

Eventually, the sheriff’s case was taken to the district attorney, who refused it because the Anaheim city attorney prosecutes misdemeanors that occur within Anaheim. But the way in which the case was taken to Anaheim is further indication of conspiracy, Guillory’s lawyers said.

Ramos, Gates’ chief assistant, called then-Police Chief Jimmie D. Kennedy for an appointment and brought the sheriff’s case file to him. Ramos testified that Gates had ordered him to do it and that he had never done such a chore before.

‘Professional Courtesy’

Kennedy said Ramos asked Kennedy’s permission to take the case to the city attorney, although Ramos didn’t need permission. Kennedy said he interpreted it as a gesture of “professional courtesy.” Guillory’s lawyers said it was an obvious message from Gates that he was personally interested in Guillory’s case being prosecuted.

Mark A. Logan, the city’s chief prosecutor, said Kennedy called him to say the Sheriff’s Department was bringing over a case “and I should look at it carefully.” Pressed by Logan, Kennedy said it involved the Youngblood-Gates controversy.

Both Kennedy and Logan testified they were very uncomfortable about the possible appearance of impropriety in the case. Logan eventually requested, and Kennedy granted, a new investigation of the charges by an Anaheim police detective, Gordon Blair (no relation to Randy Blair of the Sheriff’s Department).

Logan eventually filed nine charges, and Guillory was acquitted of all of them in December, 1985.

Guillory’s attorneys argue that Anaheim officials were remiss in not realizing that the sheriff’s investigation was flawed and improperly motivated. They were probably responding to Gates’ implicit call for a favor and therefore were part of the conspiracy, the lawyers contend. Logan, however, insisted that he based his charges solely on Anaheim police reports.

Independent Probes

In concluding arguments, defense attorneys contended that Guillory did just what he was charged with doing: He went to the Oakwood Apartments intending to make everyone think he was a police officer so he could get into Wilder’s apartment. The resulting sheriff’s and Anaheim police investigations were independent, logical and fair. Guillory has suffered because of the charges, but he is to blame; he finally got caught doing what he has done for years--impersonating a policeman, they charged.

Guillory’s attorneys argue that the sheriff’s investigation was flawed from the outset, that Gates’ only interest in the case was a chance to discredit Guillory and hamper him in his pending lawsuit over concealed weapon permits. Gates fears the pending trial on gun permits because it will prove he is corrupt, the attorneys contend.

U.S. District Judge Richard A. Gadbois Jr. permitted both sides to submit evidence that the opposition’s acts had been part of a pattern.

This opened the door to testimony about Youngblood’s lawsuit against Gates, including testimony that Wilder had assisted the sheriff’s intelligence unit in surreptitious tape-recording of telephone calls to, among others, Youngblood, Bland and an Orange County Register reporter, Chuck Cook, who was writing articles critical of Gates’ administration of the Orange County Jail. The taping was all at Randy Blair’s request.

They also placed into evidence sworn statements made by Gates and Blair in 1985 that no surveillance had been done on Cook or Wright. But after the statements were made, a tape-recording of Wright was found at the home of a sheriff’s intelligence unit investigator. It contained a classroom lecture Wright made in 1981, when he was considering running against Gates, which had been secretly recorded. Blair conceded he had been present in a car outside the lecture hall listening to the transmission of the lecture.

‘Bonehead Mistake’

Gates testified that at the time he made his sworn statement, he thought it was true. Blair testified that his denial of the Wright tape’s existence had been a lapse of memory and the denial of the Cook tape had been “a bonehead mistake.” (Cook’s lawsuit against Gates is pending in U.S. District Court.)

The judge’s ruling also opened the door for Gates’ attorneys to examine Guillory’s background.

They introduced testimony about Guillory’s disciplinary problems in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, where he had struck a handcuffed suspect with a blackjack. Guillory said the suspect had boasted that he could kill with his feet and then charged. Guillory was held liable for $3,000 in damages in the resulting civil suit.

The Los Angeles County sheriff’s internal affairs division had also investigated Guillory for failing to appear in court on a traffic citation he had issued and for unauthorized contact with the news media. Guillory resigned and conceded in testimony that the internal investigations were a “partial factor” in his decision.

Gates’ attorneys also brought up a Los Angeles district attorney’s investigation into allegations that Guillory claimed to be a police officer when confronting someone in a restaurant. They also referred to a Torrance case in which Guillory was arrested for carrying an exposed handgun in a municipal court building in Torrance after court guards had asked him to either conceal it or take it off. Charges were not filed in the first case and were dismissed in the second.

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Correction

The 6th paragraph of this story should read as follows:

Gates is named as defendant, but so are two of his undercover informants, a former Anaheim police chief, an Anaheim police investigator, the Anaheim city attorney, the County of Orange and the City of Anaheim. In all, six attorneys have conducted the trial.

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