Evidence of Jury Tampering in Hedgecock Case Disclosed : Courts: Transcripts that could have been used in appeal by ex-San Diego mayor stayed secret for five years.

By the time former Mayor Roger Hedgecock’s second political corruption trial went to the jury, the bailiff assigned to watch over jurors during their deliberations let it be known that he had already made up his mind.

Hedgecock, the bailiff said, was guilty.

Bailiff Al Burroughs then plied jurors with liquor. He reminded jurors that it was expensive to keep them secluded, so costly that they were expected to “do a good job.” And against all rules, he partied with the jurors and told them stories suggesting that other juries had let minor issues keep them from a verdict.

Burroughs admitted all this and more in an interview with state prosecutors shortly after the 1985 trial ended. His comments stayed secret for five years. Then Hedgecock and his lawyers finally got the transcripts.

The transcripts, which were never made public, lend substance to the defense claim on appeal that there had been jury tampering and led to a plea bargain that quickly settled the case. That plea bargain cleared Hedgecock’s record and left him free to run for mayor again, something he says he might do. Had the felony conviction stood, it would have barred him from public office.

“If I do run again, all these old bones (allegations) will be drug around the yard by my opponents,” Hedgecock, now a San Diego radio and television talk show host, said in an interview. “People ought to know that these statements (in the transcripts) represent a complete repudiation of the final, coerced judgment of the jury.”

The material, obtained by The Times, also illuminates why Hedgecock won such a favorable deal in one of this city’s most riveting cases.

The conviction forced Hedgecock from office. It could have led to a year in jail. Yet state prosecutors, who held evidence that backed Hedgecock’s claim of tampering, did not share it with the defense or prosecutors for five years, until forced to do so by the state Supreme Court.

Hedgecock said the materials “tend to show what I was saying all along, beginning seven years ago, that this was not a fair trial and the truth did not come out.”

The transcripts fill hundreds of pages with interviews state prosecutors conducted with Burroughs and all 12 jurors days after Hedgecock was convicted.

The case ended Dec. 31, 1990, after six years of litigation and two trials.

Hedgecock was convicted Oct. 9, 1985, on felony conspiracy and perjury charges stemming from illegal contributions to his 1983 mayoral campaign from the now-defunct La Jolla investment firm J. David & Co. The first trial, eight months before, had ended with the jury deadlocked 11 to 1 for conviction.

In September, 1990, the California Supreme Court threw out the 12 perjury convictions and set aside the remaining conspiracy charge pending a hearing on Hedgecock’s request for a new trial, based on jury tampering allegations.

The hearing never happened. The defense obtained the transcripts in October, 1990, and the next month the deal was struck. The deal also called for a judge to reduce the felony to a misdemeanor and dismiss the case, which is what happened.

What is curious is why it took so long to wrap up.

Within days of the 1985 guilty verdict, two of the 12 jurors alleged in sworn statements that Burroughs provided liquor, told stories, guided jurors’ deliberations and pressured them to reach a quick verdict.

Under court rules, anything a bailiff says or does that could influence a verdict is “serious misconduct” and grounds for reversal.

A bailiff is a court official charged with maintaining order in the courtroom, seeing to the needs of jurors and making sure that jury deliberations follow the judge’s orders. When a jury is sequestered, the bailiff is the jury’s only link to the outside.

The bailiff is supposed to limit conversations with jurors to the bare essentials. But the jurors’ affidavits complained that Burroughs broke the rules. The affidavits provided the basis of Hedgecock’s claim on appeal of jury tampering.

On Nov. 1, 1985, Burroughs filed his own affidavit, denying wrongdoing. That same day, he sat down with state prosecutors for a 97-minute interview, according to the transcripts.

In the interview, Burroughs said: “I, in my mind, made up the second or third day that, that he was guilty, and I looked at those girls so long to come around to that.”

“Those girls” is a reference to three women who ended up being the holdout jurors. The juror interviews reveal that the panel was split early on, often 6 to 6, on many of the counts.

Burroughs’ comment is particularly telling because it shows he somehow knew who the holdouts were, which he should not have known.

In the 1985 interview, Burroughs did not elaborate on what he meant.

He declined last week to comment on the transcript. “If you have the transcript, you don’t need to ask me anything,” Burroughs, still a bailiff, said by phone.

One of the two jurors who complained of tampering suggested that Burroughs pressured the jury. The juror said Burroughs had told him it was expensive to sequester a jury, that the panel did not have to be treated so nicely and that it should reach a speedy verdict.

In his affidavit, Burroughs denied that he said any such thing to that juror. But in the 1985 interview, Burroughs admitted telling a different juror it was expensive to sequester a jury.

It cost so much that the citizens of San Diego “would expect you guys to, ah, do a good job, an admirable job, or words to that effect,” Burroughs said he told the other juror. He also said that doing a “good job” as a juror could have been interpreted as reaching a verdict--although the law clearly allows hung juries.

The transcripts make clear that whether spinning stories or socializing, Burroughs enjoyed a sense of camaraderie with jurors, who--like him--were isolated in the hotel.

At a birthday party one night, he recalled in the interview, he and a man on the panel were talking while looking at one woman juror who was “well endowed up top.” Burroughs told the man: “Now that’s a real set of chee chees, and I said, ‘You ought to be going after that.’ ”

At that party, the night before the verdicts, Burroughs shared his private stash of alcohol--vodka and Kahlua--with three jurors, he said in the interview with state prosecutors. The next day, verdict day, one of the jurors vomited, apparently because of the alcohol, according to documents.

Jurors are allowed to drink off-duty, but drinking so much as to be incapacitated on duty is misconduct, the Supreme Court said in its ruling.

Burroughs said nothing in his affidavit about alcohol.

Hedgecock’s defense lawyers suspected early on that the interviews were full of potentially useful information not contained in any affidavit. Immediately after learning of the interviews, the defense claimed a right to read the transcripts.

It is a rule of law and a point of legal ethics that prosecutors must turn over to the defense evidence that might exonerate a person being tried for a crime. That includes anything that might deprive the defendant of a fair trial.

Robert Foster, the deputy attorney general in San Diego who handled the appeal, said last week that when state prosecutors did unearth tidbits deemed relevant--for instance, that one juror had a felony conviction--defense lawyers were promptly notified.

The transcripts were different, he said, because:

* The interviews were part of an investigation into a separate issue: whether the alleged jury tampering itself amounted to a separate crime. No charges were brought, and state prosecutors were concerned about jurors’ privacy, so the material was never available in open court files, he said.

* After the defense asked for the transcripts, state prosecutors instead presented them to the judge in both Hedgecock trials, William L. Todd Jr. Court records indicate that the transcripts Todd received were from interviews with the two jurors who had absolutely refused to speak to defense lawyers. He was not given the Burroughs transcript or any other juror interview.

Todd, now an appeals court judge in San Diego, reviewed the two transcripts, then announced in December, 1985, that there was “nothing in the documents” useful to the defense. Todd said last week he remembers nothing about the transcripts.

In 1988, an appeals court in San Diego ruled that Todd--who had announced from the bench that he believed Hedgecock was guilty--was wrong to block release of the documents.

Instead of releasing the transcripts then, however, state prosecutors kept them locked away during an appeal to the state Supreme Court. That meant the transcripts stayed secret for two more years.