D.A. Rejects Defender’s Claim That Police Mishandled Evidence

The Orange County district attorney’s office on Friday denied a request by the public defender’s office to investigate allegations that Newport Beach police mishandled evidence that linked an attempted rape suspect to another crime.

After reviewing a report by a public defender’s investigator, Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. John D. Conley said he found no information that disputes the Police Department’s statement “that mistakes were made, but no deliberate wrongdoing occurred.”

John V. Depko, the investigator who wrote the voluminous report, said he was “very disappointed” by Conley’s ruling and will consider “taking the matter to a higher authority,” possibly the state attorney general’s office.

Depko said he wrote the report after incriminating evidence “mysteriously appeared” during the trial of his client, Dan DeHaven, in March, 1989, on charges of robbery and attempted rape.

The evidence in question involves a gray jacket that DeHaven was wearing at the time of his arrest in January, 1988.

According to police records, nothing was reported to be inside the jacket pockets at the time of the arrest. But when the jacket was presented during DeHaven’s trial, three documents that had been stolen from another’s woman’s wallet were found in the pocket.

Police said that the documents--a gasoline card receipt, a medical identification card and a temporary Texas driver’s license--were in the jacket when DeHaven was arrested but were not properly recorded because of a bookkeeping error.

Depko, however, said the documents were not in the jacket when he examined it before the trial.

Newport Beach Police Lt. Tim Newman said the documents where either stored improperly in a locker or they were in the jacket and Depko missed them. “In either case, a mistake was made.”

Conley rejected Depko’s suggestion that the evidence was planted in the jacket to link DeHaven to the burglary of the second woman’s purse. “The idea that a Newport Beach officer ‘planted’ the papers . . . seems remote indeed,” he said in a letter to Orange County Chief Deputy Public Defender Carl Holmes.

The documents in dispute were not allowed as evidence in the trial, and DeHaven, 64, of Newport Beach was convicted of the attempted rape and robbery.