Jurors Convict Former Torrance Prosecutor of Brokering Drug Deal

A former Torrance deputy district attorney has been convicted of brokering a major cocaine deal earlier this year.

Federal jurors convicted Derrick T. Walker, 31, of aiding and abetting a narcotics deal and conspiring to sell drugs. The conviction came last week after jurors heard secretly taped conversations in which Walker helped a government informant find a buyer for 10 kilos of cocaine.

Attorneys for Walker insisted throughout the trial that he participated in the $160,000 deal only after weeks of badgering by undercover agents and informants.

“The plain and simple truth is that Derrick Walker was entrapped into this by the government,” said Robert McNeill Jr., one of two defense attorneys for Walker. “I really feel that Mr. Walker will have a good chance of reversing this unjust conviction on appeal.”

Walker faces 12 to 20 years in federal prison when he is sentenced Nov. 20, Assistant U.S. Atty. Marc Greenberg said.

A graduate of Brandeis University and Hastings School of Law in San Francisco, Walker worked nearly a year as a prosecutor in the Torrance district attorney’s office before he was discharged in July, 1988.

According to testimony during the trial, Walker lost his prosecutor’s job in Torrance because of conflicts with police officers and because he maintained close business and personal ties with a convicted murderer and drug dealer.

Attorneys in the case said the Drug Enforcement Agency became suspicious of Walker in 1989 after a drug dealer convicted in a 43-kilo cocaine sale told agents that Walker had acted as broker between the buyer and seller.

Last January, an informant wearing a hidden tape recorder asked Walker for help in finding a buyer for cocaine. Walker rebuffed the attempt.

Government agents tried again in March, sending in a different informant--a former employee of Walker’s--to ask for help in another deal.

McNeill said the tapes recorded Walker repeatedly turning down the offers, until the informant said he feared that he would be killed if he did not sell the cocaine and repay his debts.

Greenberg, however, said the tapes indicated that Walker was intimately familiar with the cocaine trade and was only cautious about whether he might be caught brokering the deal.

After several attempts at completing the deal fell through, the informant met with a buyer to whom he had been referred by Walker in the parking lot of a Glendale K mart store. Government agents arrested the buyer in the lot. Walker, who was not present when the deal was completed, was arrested a few miles away.

Greenberg said Walker’s actions “were particularly heinous” because of his position in life.

“He had so much going for him,” Greenberg said. “He was a lawyer. He had an education. He was a former prosecutor. . . . This isn’t someone who didn’t have a choice in life. This is someone who had the opportunity to do good who chose to do evil.”

Walker is also scheduled to go to trial next month on another criminal indictment stemming from a separate 1989 drug deal, Greenberg said.