D.A.’s Office Asks Coroner to Seal Autopsy Results in 4 Police Shooting Cases

In a highly unusual move, the district attorney’s office has asked coroner’s officials to withhold autopsy results on four controversial officer-involved shootings, including those of a man killed Monday at Willowbrook Park and of a Montebello teen-ager shot after a car chase in Artesia.

Coroner’s spokesman Scott Carrier said the requests were made Thursday and Friday because of ongoing investigations into the the deaths of Steve Clemons, David Angel Ortiz, Keith Hamilton and Darryl Stephens. Clemons, Ortiz and Hamilton were shot by sheriff’s deputies; Stephens was shot by West Covina police.

The decision to temporarily withhold the autopsy results drew criticism from an attorney who represents the family of one victim, who said the district attorney was trying to mute a recent wave of bad publicity for law enforcement.

“I think they’re doing this because there’s just too much heat on law enforcement agencies right now,” said Miguel Garcia, a lawyer who is representing the family of David Angel Ortiz. Ortiz, 15, was allegedly shot in the back by a sheriff’s deputy after a high-speed car chase Aug. 28.

Sheriff’s investigators have said Deputy Jose Belmares fired because he believed Ortiz was reaching for a gun in his waistband, but witnesses said the unarmed youth was shot as he tried to run away.

Assistant Dist. Atty. R. Dan Murphy, who made the request of the coroner’s office, said “the sole reason was that we are still talking to a number of witnesses and we don’t want their recollections to be clouded, shaped or tainted in any way.”

Murphy said he was prompted to call the coroner’s office after he heard that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, in the course of ordering a public hearing into the sheriff’s operations, had asked for autopsy reports on the shootings earlier in the week.

He and other prosecutors said it would be several weeks before the autopsy results would be made public, but stressed that they would eventually be unsealed.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Roger Gunson, whose special investigations division handles officer-involved shootings, acknowledged that the request to seal the autopsies was unusual but was warranted because they are so controversial.

Gunson said the publicity surrounding the shootings has made it difficult for investigators to sort fact from fiction and to get a clear picture of what happened from witnesses. He noted that a number of witnesses have come forward “making reports about what happened that we know to be fabrications.”

But another prosecutor, who once headed the same division, said it is not unusual to find people in highly publicized cases who come forward with false information.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti said that when he ran the office from 1978 to 1983, he never sealed an autopsy report simply because of bogus witnesses.

“I was in the job for five years (under former Dist. Atty. John Van de Kamp,) and I’ve never heard of it being done before,” Garcetti said.

“We always had people who came to us after the fact, who said they knew something about the case, and it turned out to be bogus,” Garcetti added. “It’s a legitimate concern, but . . . we obviously had some controversial shootings--including Eulia Love and the police chokehold deaths--and we never did that.”

Steven Yagman, a Los Angeles lawyer who specializes in police abuse cases, also criticized the request.

“I think it’s shocking,” said Yagman, who is not involved in any of the four cases. “In an officer-involved shooting, it’s important for everything to be open and above-board so there will not only be no corruption, but no appearance of corruption.

“The district attorney is supposed to serve the public, not cover up information the public has the right to know,” Yagman continued.

The four cases have fueled a wave of criticism against local law enforcement, which has been under fire since the Rodney G. King beating in March.

In recent weeks, sheriff’s deputies have been involved in four controversial fatalities, beginning Aug. 3, when a deputy shot and killed Arturo Jimenez, 19, during a struggle at the Ramona Gardens housing project in East Los Angeles.

The Jimenez case was not among those sealed by the coroner’s office. But four subsequent cases were.

Ten days later, a deputy shot and killed Hamilton, a 33-year-old former mental patient, after he allegedly reached for a knife during a struggle in Ladera Heights. A neighbor who disputed the deputies’ account of the incident contended that the officers placed a metallic object on or near Hamilton’s body after he was shot.

That incident was followed by the shooting of Ortiz, and the Labor Day incident at Willowbrook Park in which 28-year-old Clemons was shot. Sheriff’s investigators said Clemons had pointed a gun at the deputy who shot him, but bystanders said Clemons was unarmed and fleeing with a beer in his hand.

Stephens was shot Monday when a West Covina SWAT team went to his apartment to serve a search warrant. Police claimed that as they entered, he was reaching under his mattress and they opened fire because they mistakenly believed he had retrieved a weapon. No gun was found in the bedding and his family has disputed the police account.