Judge’s Stormy Trial on Drunk Driving Charge Nears Close : Courts: Years ago, defendant persuaded U.S. high court to broaden police rights to collect blood samples in such cases.

A Beverly Hills jury is about to decide the drunk driving case of Edward L. Davenport, a Los Angeles Municipal Court judge who once persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court that police are justified in taking blood samples from a drunk driving suspect against the suspect’s will.

That victory came in 1966, when Davenport, as chief prosecutor for the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, helped establish procedures for bringing charges against drunk driving suspects in the city.

Now he sits in an unaccustomed spot in the courtroom, the defense table, charged with drunk driving himself, and with refusing to take a test to determine his alcohol level.

If convicted, the refusal would mean a mandatory 48-hour jail term. But in two stormy days of testimony this week, Davenport angrily denied the charges.

It has been a lively trial for two weeks, peppered with bickering between defense and prosecution that the presiding judge, Elden S. Fox of the Beverly Hills Municipal Court, said was childish--the worst he has seen in his year and a half on the bench.

Police officers have testified that Davenport was abusive and profane when he was arrested. In response, a theme of the defense mounted by Davenport’s attorney, Jacob Adajian, is that his client doesn’t have to be drunk to act that way.

“Judge Davenport is a brusque, obnoxious man when he’s sober-- and when he drinks,” said defense witness Paul Caruso, an attorney who had been socializing with the defendant shortly before his arrest.

The trial stems from Davenport’s May 1, 1991, crash on his way home from a dinner at a Wilshire Boulevard restaurant, where he acknowledged having three drinks during a meeting of a social group called the Old Bailey, made up of veterans of the Los Angeles criminal bar.

According to the testimony of police and prosecution witnesses, Davenport slammed his wife’s 1971 Mercedes into the rear of Richard J. Greenstone’s 1981 Subaru, which was stopped at a stop sign at the corner of Beverly and Canon drives.

Greenstone and other witnesses said Davenport did not brake before the crash. Davenport said that the collision actually happened 70 feet short of the intersection, and that he did try to slow down.

Davenport, 64, testified that Beverly Hills police officers were mistaken or lying when they said that he failed to walk a straight line or recite the alphabet after the accident.

In fact, he said, he had no intention of submitting to those field sobriety tests, opting instead to provide a urine sample at the West Hollywood sheriff’s station. (The Beverly Hills police station was closed for construction.)

The arresting officer, Gary Livitski, said Davenport was staggering and glassy-eyed, had slurred speech and smelled of alcohol at the accident scene. He said the judge held onto the policeman as he tried and failed to walk a straight line.

Davenport, however, said that he only took a few steps to show Livitski that a pre-existing balance problem made it impossible for him to take the test.

A key to the case is what happened at the sheriff’s station. Davenport said he poured his urine sample into a toilet because he had not been given the required opportunity to empty his bladder 20 minutes earlier. The later sample is supposed to be used for testing because it provides a more accurate reading than urine that may have been in the bladder for hours.

The officers said they followed the letter of the law. Officer John C. Sabbe testified that Davenport was allowed to void his bladder 24 minutes before the sample was taken.

“I do things by the book, but I did things overboard (in this case) because he was a judge,” Sabbe said.

But Davenport insisted that he was given only one chance, and he dumped the contents from the jar when he realized that the officers intended to use it for evidence.

Seizing on police testimony, defense attorney Adajian brought in a forensic toxicologist who testified that chemical tests could have been run on the drop or two of residue left in the jar. That being so, Adajian argued, there were no grounds for the charge that the judge had refused to take the test.

Before he was named to the municipal bench in 1968, Davenport represented Los Angeles in a case that went to the Supreme Court, which found that a medically supervised blood test in a hospital setting was not a violation of a suspect’s constitutional protection from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Officer Sabbe testified that Davenport informed him of his expertise at the police station, telling him, “I wrote the (expletive) book on this,” as he emptied the jar into the toilet.

Attorney Caruso and other members of Davenport’s social group testified that the judge was sometimes gruff and forceful, and did not appear to be drunk at the restaurant.

“He seemed the way he always seems to me, and in my opinion he was not under the influence of alcohol,” said Richard Tyson, another lawyer.

Testifying for the prosecution on Thursday, however, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Tynan said it appeared that Davenport “had been drinking” at the restaurant and he said the defendant had directed a “series of gratuitous insults” toward attorney Caruso.

The start of the trial was delayed for several months by charges that Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner was prejudiced against the defendant. The two men did not get along when they both worked in the Los Angeles city attorney’s office 30 years ago, Davenport said.

Once the trial started, there were other disputes. At one point, Deputy Dist. Atty. Katherine Mader asked a witness about the defendant’s “drinking pattern.” Adajian objected, but his words came out as “drinking problem.” Mader replied, “Freudian slip?”

Adajian immediately demanded a mistrial, arguing that the jury might think that he believed his client to be a habitual drinker. Fox turned him down, warning both sides that any more showboating would lead to contempt charges.

The final witnesses are scheduled to testify this morning.