LAPD Opens Its Own Inquiry Into Alleged Framing of 2 Inmates

Amid allegations that its officers may have framed two innocent men in the murder of a sheriff’s deputy, the Los Angeles Police Department on Monday launched its own review of new evidence that has prompted the district attorney to ask that the men be freed after 17 years in prison.

“We want to see what it is that has convinced them that they are no longer going to support the case,” said LAPD Cmdr. Robert Gil. “We just want to make sure that it is being looked at from all sides.”

The LAPD’s probe came as attorneys for Clarence Chance and Benny Powell filed court briefs Monday seeking the release of the two, who have been serving life sentences since their conviction in 1975. The briefs describe what defense lawyer Barry Tarlow called “a shocking pattern of police intimidation and systematic use of perjured testimony.”

The Times reported Monday that, in a highly unusual move, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office plans to join in the defense request, saying that the case was so “infected” by shoddy police work--including the withholding of information that could have cleared Powell and Chance--that the guilty verdicts cannot stand.

“A great injustice has been visited upon these people,” Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner told reporters Monday.

Among the officers named in the court papers is Lt. William Hall, who now heads the department’s officer-involved shooting unit, which investigates all incidents in which a police officer shoots someone. Hall has not returned phone calls seeking comment.

The legal briefs outline how, through four years of painstaking work, a New Jersey investigator uncovered evidence that the defense lawyers say proves the innocence of Chance and Powell. While prosecutors will not go so far as to say the men are innocent, they say there is now so much doubt of their guilt that they do not intend to retry the case.

Chance and Powell were convicted of the murder of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy David Andrews, who was gunned down in a gas station restroom on Dec. 12, 1973. In 1987, after sending dozens of letters to elected officials and the courts, Chance wrote investigator James McCloskey, the founder of New Jersey-based Centurion Ministries, which works on behalf of what McCloskey calls “the convicted innocent.”

McCloskey tracked down witnesses who say that LAPD detectives, including Hall, pressured them into lying. Moreover, new evidence turned up by McCloskey and the district attorney’s office shows that the LAPD withheld information from prosecutors that a jailhouse informant who testified against the pair may also have been lying, and had implicated others in the crime.

The LAPD’s Gil said the department will not respond to the allegations until its review is complete. He declined to say whether top police officials will ask the district attorney’s office to change its decision about the release of Powell and Chance and whether they should be retried. But, he said: “There’s probably a myriad of alternative courses here.”

Defense attorney Tarlow said that, in light of the new evidence, authorities have no choice but to release the two men. “This is the weakest case that I have ever seen in which someone was convicted,” he said.