D.A. Asks Jail Time, Stiff Fine for Gabor

Zsa Zsa Gabor’s legal battles resumed with a flourish on Monday, with Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner announcing he will seek a 30-day jail term for the former glamour queen and Gabor’s attorney countering with a request for a new trial.

Reiner, in an attempt to make an example of the fiery actress, surprised many courthouse observers by recommending that the nearly 70-year-old Gabor be jailed for slapping Beverly Hills Police Officer Paul Kramer in June.

Gabor’s sentencing on the misdemeanor battery conviction, originally set for today, was delayed until Oct. 24 by Beverly Hills Municipal Judge Charles G. Rubin to allow time for Gabor’s new attorney, Harrison E. Bull, to prepare arguments on her behalf.

“She made her bed and she can lie in it--and that’s at Sybil Brand (women’s jail),” Reiner said before Monday’s brief hearing. Deputy Dist. Atty. Elden Fox, who jousted frequently with Gabor during the three-week trial in September, had hinted earlier that prosecutors might recommend only a fine and community service work.

But in discussions about the case, Fox and Reiner decided that the high visibility of the trial and Gabor’s apparent lack of penitence justified harsher punishment, Fox said. The district attorney’s office filed papers Monday seeking 30 days in jail, $3,100 in fines--the legal maximum--and more than $14,000 in assessments against Gabor to pay for costs incurred by the Beverly Hills Police Department because of the trial.

Prosecutors dropped a recommendation that Gabor pay a lesser fine of $1,000 and perform 150 hours of community service work.

“Unfortunately, her case is going to be a yardstick for all other battery cases on a police officer,” Fox said in an interview. “As a prosecutor, I would have a hard time . . . asking for jail time (in other cases) if I do not ask for it in a case like this. She is not contrite and she has no remorse about this.”

Reiner’s office, which handles all felony and misdemeanor cases in Beverly Hills and a number of other small cities, concluded that community service work would only create more publicity for Gabor, Fox said. Prosecutors also did not ask for a shorter jail term--one or two days, for example--for much the same reason, he added.

“To have her come waltzing in with her mink stole and cameras following her would make a farce of it,” Fox said. “My idea is punishment and not her continued promotion.”

Gabor, who did not appear in court Monday, got into the altercation with Kramer after a routine traffic stop. She was convicted of slapping the officer, driving without a license and possessing an open container of alcohol--a flask of Jack Daniels--in her $225,000 Rolls-Royce. All are misdemeanors.

Her sentencing was delayed when her new attorney, Bull, asked for a new trial, charging that she was poorly represented by her former lawyer, William Graysen.

Bull, a veteran criminal lawyer from Santa Barbara, accused Graysen of soliciting Gabor’s legal business merely to publicize his own practice. Bull told the court that Graysen represented Gabor for free and made unethical promises to her that she would not be sent to jail.

“He told her, ‘It’s no big deal; you cannot go to jail for this--it’s impossible,’ ” Bull said. “What we have here is a miscarriage of justice.”

Graysen, contacted later, denied promising Gabor she would not go to jail, saying he had only offered his opinion “that I didn’t think it was likely.”

In fact, he said, “During the course of the trial she made many comments to the media that she was concerned about going to jail.”

Graysen said that he is permitted under rules of the California State Bar to solicit cases as long as he is not paid for them.