Defense Lawyer Sues to Lift Ban on Prison Visits : Lawsuit: Action by Alex Landon challenges a directive stemming from a 1972 prison break that bars him from seeing jailed clients.

San Diego criminal defense lawyer Alex Landon has sued state prison officials to compel an end to a 17-year-old directive that bars him from prison grounds, claiming the ban is unjustified and unfairly keeps him from visiting clients behind bars.

The ban, prompted by allegations tying Landon to a 1972 Chino jailbreak, was imposed without cause because no reliable evidence has ever linked Landon to wrongdoing in the escape, according to the suit, filed last week in Marin County Superior Court.

Prison officials, however, consistently have declined to explain why the ban was imposed and have never allowed Landon to contest it at a hearing, according to the suit. Since the ban remains in effect, it denies Landon’s right to work at his profession and his clients’ rights to attorney access, the suit claims.

One of those clients is David Allen Lucas, convicted last year in San Diego of three murders and now on Death Row at San Quentin. In a separate but related action, Lucas also filed suit last week in Marin County--where San Quentin is situated--asking that the ban on Landon be lifted.

Landon, who has built a practice dedicated to protecting the rights of poor people charged with crimes, has long maintained that the ban is based on political considerations. “I have faith in the courts that they will correct the injustice,” he said Friday.

The ban had largely been forgotten until two years ago, when San Diego County supervisors were pondering whether to award the nonprofit group Landon then headed a $40-million contract to represent indigent criminal defendants. Early in 1988, Landon formally asked prison officials for the first time to lift the ban.

About the same time, then-Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego), now a San Diego Municipal Court judge, sent a pack of documents to supervisors that told of the ban. In May, 1988, the board reversed its decision to award the contract to Landon’s group and voted instead to launch an in-house public defenders office.

The ban stems from allegations that have dogged Landon in connection with the Oct. 6, 1972, escape of Ronald Beaty from the California Institution for Men at Chino.

Beaty escaped when a vehicle being used to transport him to a San Bernardino court hearing was run off the road. One guard was shot to death and a second was wounded.

In 1973, Beaty, who turned state’s witness and helped convict others implicated in the plot, said that Landon had smuggled hacksaw blades in to him and had ferried out escape plans. Beaty later reversed himself and said variously that Landon had nothing to do with the escape or had carried out the plans unwittingly.

Landon, who was representing Beaty in a civil rights matter at the time, consistently has denied any involvement in the escape.

A 1973 investigation by the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office ended with no criminal charges filed against Landon. The State Bar of California also conducted an inquiry at the time and found insufficient evidence for disciplinary action.

On June 25, 1973, however, prison officials imposed the ban, concluding that Landon had smuggled blades into the prison and had carried out an escape plan, according to Landon’s suit, which was filed July 6 in Marin County.

Both the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office and the state bar reopened their investigations into the escape in 1988, about the time San Diego county supervisors were deciding who should run the local system of indigent defense.

The district attorney’s investigation closed in October, 1988, and the bar association’s in May, 1989, both with announcements that the case was closed without action against Landon.

Stirling, who had been instrumental in requesting the second bar association probe, asked the California Supreme Court to review the closure of the association’s investigation, according to the suit. He made the request after becoming a judge.

Last April 4, the Supreme Court denied Stirling’s request without comment, the suit said.

Reached Friday at the downtown San Diego County Courthouse, Stirling said he could not comment on Landon’s suit, citing ethical rules that forbid judges from comments on pending cases.

Over the years, meanwhile, Landon questioned the ban, only to be told in 1975 and 1980 that it would stay in effect. After asking formally in 1988 that it be lifted, Landon was told in a three-sentence July, 1989, letter that it would continue.

That denial prompted Landon’s lawsuit.

According to the suit, prison officials have never shown that Landon presents a serious threat to security and can no longer show that he is being investigated for the 1972 escape.

The initial decision to impose the ban without affording Landon a hearing violated his constitutional right to due process, the suit says. And, to continue it interferes with his “fundamental right” to meet with his clients and the rights of his clients--in particular, convicted killer Lucas--to attorney access.

Lucas, a carpet cleaner from Spring Valley, was sentenced to die last August for three throat-slash murders, one in 1979 and two in 1984. Landon needs to confer with Lucas on his death-penalty appeal, now pending before the state Supreme Court, the suit says.

Prison officials have until Aug. 6 to reply to Landon’s suit. The state attorney general’s office, which will be handling the case for prison authorities, plans to contend that the ban is warranted, Deputy Atty. Gen. Karl Mayer said Friday.

An initial hearing has been set for Sept. 14.