NEWPORT BEACH : DNA Test-Substitute Charge Is Denied

Taking the stand for the first time Tuesday, lawyer William Yacobozzi Jr. denied charges that he tried to dodge a paternity suit by sending a substitute to take a DNA test.

Prosecutors allege that Yacobozzi, 50, a 16-year veteran criminal lawyer, tried to evade a 1988 paternity suit filed by Coleen Walters, who alleged that Yacobozzi fathered her son, now 6. The paternity case itself has since been settled, but details were not disclosed.

Yacobozzi is charged with one count of falsifying evidence, one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice and five counts of perjury. If convicted, he could face up to four years in prison and lose his license to practice law.

Prosecutors Tuesday asked Yacobozzi about a photograph taken by a hospital technician showing another man, who identified himself as Yacobozzi, about to take the test to examine the deoxyribonucleic acid in his blood.

Yacobozzi testified that he had never seen or spoken to the man and that he had personally taken the DNA test.

“My first reaction (on seeing the photograph was) I was furious, furious that someone had a photograph that was not of me,” he said.

During a civil trial over the paternity suit, Yacobozzi had first been ordered to take a blood test at the Parentage Testing Center at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. That test concluded that there is a strong likelihood that Yacobozzi is the child’s father.

Yacobozzi, who is married and has a family, testified Tuesday that he never had a sexual relationship with Walters and that he was enraged when he received the blood test results.

“I did not like the way the test was taken,” he said. “I did not like the results. I screamed at” the doctor who analyzed the blood.

Yacobozzi subsequently requested, and was granted, a DNA test to determine whether he is the father. The results of the March 5, 1990, test showed that he is not the child’s biological father.

Prosecutors, however, contend that Yacobozzi tried to dodge the paternity suit by giving another man his driver’s license as identification and sending him to take the DNA test.

In his cross-examination Tuesday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Wallace J. Wade asked Yacobozzi whether he had been “concerned” when the paternity suit had been filed, since it posed a threat to him politically and economically.

“I wasn’t concerned, I was upset,” answered Yacobozzi, who ran for Congress in a 1988 Republican primary.

The money “may have been a minor reason . . . (and) I was possibly concerned” for political reasons as well, he said.

His trial is scheduled to resume today in Municipal Court in Newport Beach.