Lies Led to More Lies, Yacobozzi Prosecutor Says : Trial: Defendant’s lawyer denies in closing arguments that an impostor took DNA test in 1988 paternity case.

Attorney William Yacobozzi Jr. sent a stand-in to a DNA blood test to beat a paternity suit, and when caught in the act he “became desperate” and spun more lies to cover his tracks, a prosecuting attorney charged during closing arguments Monday in Superior Court.

That lying continued during the trial, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Wallace Wade, when the defendant perjured himself and fabricated evidence.

Yacobozzi’s lawyer, however, told jurors that his client--who has practiced law for 15 years--is too experienced and knowledgeable to have done something as “ridiculous” as sending an impersonator to take his place at the DNA test.

“He would have to be stupid” not to have foreseen the legal consequences, said attorney Grover Porter.

Yacobozzi, 50, of Newport Beach, has been charged with five counts of perjury and one each of falsifying evidence and conspiracy to obstruct justice. If convicted of the felonies, he would face up to four years in prison and the loss of his license to practice law.

The charges stem from a 1988 paternity suit filed by Coleen Walters, who claimed Yacobozzi was the father of her son, now 6.

In that case, which was settled out of court, Yacobozzi took an initial blood-typing test in Long Beach that concluded there was a 99.3% likelihood that he had fathered the child.

Shortly after, Yacobozzi was granted permission to take a DNA test, which precisely determines parentage. The results of the March 5, 1990, test showed that he could not have been the child’s father.

During the test, the subject was photographed and fingerprinted. Walters’ attorney sparked the criminal complaint when she saw the test results and complained that the attached picture was not of Yacobozzi.

Both sides agree that the picture and fingerprints in the file are not of Yacobozzi, but disagree on how they got there.

Prosecutors allege that the defendant gave a stand-in his driver’s license and sent him to take the DNA test.

In his summation to the jury, Wade at one point sat in the witness seat and, looking at the defendant contemptuously, accused Yacobozzi of lying even on the witness stand in explaining why he did not take another DNA test.

Yacobozzi testified last week that his daughter’s life was threatened shortly after he asked to take the second DNA test as a way to disprove the criminal allegations. The threat came in the form of a greeting card that was mailed anonymously to him, he testified.

Wade, however, holding up the greeting card, characterized it as a fake created by a “desperate man . . . (whose) desperation overrode his reasoning.”

In his equally emotional argument, Porter insisted that Yacobozzi is the man who took the DNA test. In addition, he said his client had taken the initial blood test and so knew that foolproof identification procedures would be required for the the DNA test.

Placement of the impostor’s pictures and fingerprints in his client’s file was beyond Yacobozzi’s control, Porter told jurors.