Lawyers for Ex-DEA Agent Face Big Task : Trial: Attorneys had hoped to portray Darnell Garcia as a marked man who had angered colleagues with a discrimination suit. But the judge says that matter is not relevant.

As the second week of the corruption trial of former federal drug agent Darnell Garcia unfolds in a Los Angeles courtroom, defense lawyers face a seemingly daunting task in their efforts to convince jurors that Garcia is not an agent who switched sides.

Garcia, 43, of Rancho Palos Verdes, is charged with drug-trafficking, money-laundering and providing intelligence information to a fugitive drug dealer.

Garcia’s defense lawyers had hoped to paint a sympathetic picture for jurors of the former Drug Enforcement Administration agent, contending that Garcia feared assassination by former colleagues angry over a discrimination suit he had won against the agency.

In papers recently filed in federal court, defense attorneys said Garcia fled the United States in late 1988 because of a “genuine belief that (the) DEA was determined to retaliate . . . for Garcia’s discrimination claims, and its agents intended to harm him when an arrest would be made.”

Garcia claims that DEA agents even went so far as to threaten him with a weapon shortly before he became a fugitive.

But the jury is not expected to hear Garcia’s story because U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. ruled last week that events surrounding the discrimination suit are not relevant to the criminal case.

An international manhunt ended when Garcia was arrested in Luxembourg in July, 1989, and extradited to the United States.

His attorneys, Mark E. Overland and Mark A. Borenstein, argued that jurors should hear about Garcia’s suit because they expect incriminating statements about his fugitive status to be disclosed by prosecutors Joyce Karlin and Stefan D. Stein.

Garcia’s roots are Puerto Rican. His former DEA colleagues, John Jackson and Wayne Countryman, are black. They joined the DEA at a time of alleged discrimination against black agents that was not changed by the courts until the early 1980s.

Starting in 1981, about three years after he joined the DEA, Garcia filed a number of complaints against his employer, alleging that he was the victim of discrimination on the basis of his Latino origin.

Garcia apparently became upset when he was transferred from the DEA’s downtown Los Angeles headquarters to its office at Los Angeles International Airport. After the 1982 transfer, the DEA charged Garcia with being absent without leave and denied him a pay increase and a promotion.

For almost seven years, Garcia’s claims were fought in federal courts. At one point in 1983, his lawyers noted, the U.S. attorney general found that the DEA had discriminated against Garcia.

Two years later, defense attorneys said, the DEA “retaliated against Garcia” and ordered him transferred to Detroit. He refused to go and, as a result, was fired in December, 1985. The next year, however, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered him reinstated.

Among the DEA agents at loggerheads with Garcia during the bitter litigation was Al Dovetko, who ultimately headed the corruption investigation against Garcia. Dovetko sits alongside government prosecutors, directly across the courtroom from Garcia.

In August, 1987, before he was placed on administrative leave by the DEA, defense attorneys claim, “a DEA agent in Dovetko’s group who was conducting a surveillance of Garcia, drew his gun on Garcia and said that Garcia ‘was going to go down.’

“Garcia understood this to be a threat on his life,” the lawyers said. “Garcia believed that if arrested by DEA, it would appear as though Garcia was resisting arrest and Garcia would be killed.”

Then, on the evening of Nov. 21, 1988, with his arrest imminent, Garcia returned to his Rancho Palos Verdes home. As he approached the house, his lawyers wrote, Garcia’s “nightmare” of being killed by the DEA “became a reality.” At that time, they said, Garcia “observed numerous cars and people in flak jackets with shotguns.”

Shortly afterward, Garcia fled the country.

The criminal trial grew out of one of the biggest corruption scandals in the DEA’s 17-year history.

One of the key figures in the case, former agent Jackson, is expected to take the witness stand this week and testify for the prosecution.

Jackson, 41, of Claremont, pleaded guilty to drug-trafficking charges last August. Prosecutor Karlin told the jury that Jackson expects a maximum prison sentence of 15 years in exchange for his testimony.

Garcia’s lawyers are confident they can all but neutralize Jackson’s testimony by arguing that he would say anything to reduce a potentially long prison sentence.

The defense also believes it can explain the $3 million that Garcia had accumulated in European bank accounts because they plan to argue that Garcia was involved in a highly profitable venture smuggling gold jewelry into the United States for an Italian-based firm.