Cobb Suit Seeks Criminal Charges Against USC : Litigation: Inquiry stems from internal memo that discussed phony drug bust. School says memo was a joke.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has been asked to investigate whether criminal charges should be filed against USC and its athletic department in conjunction with a racial discrimination suit filed by Marvin Cobb, a onetime assistant athletic director.

The request, made by Cobb’s attorney this week after a similar petition to the California attorney general’s office, centers on an interoffice memo from Mike Gillespie, Trojan baseball coach, to Mike McGee, USC athletic director. The memo, which Gillespie and USC officials said was written in jest, discusses how a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy could set up Cobb for a phony drug arrest.

Cobb’s attorney, Samuel Reece, said: “In view of the recent admissions by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies that drugs have allegedly been planted by deputies on innocent persons in our community, the attorney general must take seriously USC’s written threat to destroy Mr. Cobb with such a phony drug bust.”

The attorney general’s office usually becomes involved after local authorities investigate the merit of the charges. That task goes to the district attorney’s Special Investigations Division, which examines complaints against public officials and law enforcement personnel.

Roger Gunson, head of special investigations, said Wednesday that a prosecutor will be assigned to determine whether a crime has been committed. Gunson could not estimate how long it will take.

Richard Hutchinson, a USC attorney, said it was inappropriate to comment about ongoing litigation but did not seem concerned with the request for an investigation. “Anyone can go to the police with a (criminal) complaint,” he said.

The memo has changed the focus of Cobb’s suit, filed last November after he contended that he was not promoted to a promised position because he complained about the athletic department’s lack of academic support for black athletes.

Three days after the suit was filed, Gillespie sent McGee a handwritten memo on Trojan baseball letterhead, stating that one of his volunteer coaches, sheriff’s deputy Robert Klein, could set up Cobb with a “phony drug bust.” A copy of the memo was acquired by Cobb.

Gillespie, who last February was formally reprimanded for writing the memo, said it was done in jest and that USC administrators understood its context.

Cobb, a former Trojan football and baseball player, was transferred last summer from the athletic department to the USC Health Sciences Center.