Rancher, 10 Others Face New Slave Indictment : Somis: Federal attorneys returned the flower growers’ case to the grand jury last month and gained a rare third set of charges. All again pleaded not guilty.

A Somis flower rancher pleaded not guilty Monday to a broad, new federal indictment that charges him with enslaving at least 60 Mexican laborers during the 1980s and cheating them out of $3 million in wages.

Edwin M. Ives is named in all 51 counts of the expanded indictment, which charges the 54-year-old rancher and 10 other people with slavery, extortion, witness tampering and racketeering.

The defendants, including Ives’ wife, Dolly, pleaded not guilty at a U.S. District Court hearing in Los Angeles.

The new indictment is the third by federal prosecutors in a case first filed in May, 1990, with just 15 counts. It grew to 46 counts in January with a second indictment, and was cut to 43 counts by federal Judge Consuelo B. Marshall in June.

The U.S. attorney’s office returned the case to the grand jury last month and gained a rare third indictment.

And defense attorneys charged Monday that government sloppiness is eroding Ives’ chance for a fair trial by eating away the fortune that he made selling flowers wholesale from ranches in Somis and Moorpark.

“We’re attacking their utter slovenliness and their inability to get a good indictment,” said Stephen B. Sadowsky, one of a team of lawyers retained by Ives. “It reflects . . . they’re not caring how much money defendants have to pay for their defense.”

Ives, through the Griffith-Ives Co., has spent between $500,000 and $700,000 to defend himself, his wife and five other co-defendants, Sadowsky said. Other defendants have their own attorneys.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Carol L. Gillam agreed that it is extremely rare to take a case to a grand jury three times for filing. But she said her indictment has drawn unexpected rulings from Judge Marshall.

“I’ve spent untold hours trying to draft that indictment to make it as bulletproof as possible,” she said. “It has gone through a lot of levels. It was reviewed in Washington. But Judge Marshall came up with a couple of things no (other judge) had commented on in previous decisions. So we did it again.”

Gillam said she is as frustrated as Sadowsky that the case has not gone forward. “It will now be my third Christmas with this case,” she said. Federal labor investigators began their review of Ives’ operation in December, 1989.

Monday’s pleadings follow a series of setbacks for federal prosecutors, who allege that Ives and his co-defendants conspired to enslave laborers recruited from rural Mexican villages and forced them to work for about $1 an hour.

Since last fall, three judges have denied government motions to take witness testimony in Mexico City before trial, to freeze Ives’ assets before trial and to jail him for allegedly conspiring to threaten and bribe witnesses.

Trial had been scheduled for next month, but Marshall set a new date of Feb. 4, 1992.