Volunteer Lawyers to Aid LAPD Probe : Riots: The staff named to the Webster panel includes several former U.S. prosecutors and highly regarded attorneys.

A core group of 22 volunteer lawyers was named Friday to assist former FBI Director William H. Webster in his investigation of the LAPD’s response to the Los Angeles riots.

The group includes six former federal prosecutors, several business litigators from the city’s largest law firms, a deputy district attorney and the lawyer who defended one of two men charged in the Hillside Strangler killings.

It also includes a former staff member of the Kerner Commission, which investigated causes of riots in the 1960s, and a board member of a group that provides legal services to the poor.

“The common denominator in the group as a whole is that they are very talented and that they have deep experience in complex litigation,” said Richard J. Stone, the volunteer lawyer who will head the Webster investigation staff. “I’m particularly pleased by the balance in experience, perspective and the absence of a particular bias of the group we’ve been able to recruit.”

Stone, who served in the Jimmy Carter Adminsitration as a Department of Defense deputy assistant general counsel, heads the litigation section of the Los Angeles office of Webster’s law firm, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCoy.

In a recent profile in the trade magazine American Lawyer, he was described as “an organizational guru and master of detail who has managed troops of lawyers in massive bet-the-company cases more like a general or a CEO than an attorney.” The magazine said he has a reputation as one of the best managers of complex business litigation in the state.

Webster was asked to conduct the probe as a special adviser to the Police Commission. Assisting him as deputy special adviser is Hubert Williams, president of the Washington-based Police Foundation think tank and a former police chief of Newark, N.J. They have said they expect the inquiry to take a few months.

Also announced Friday was formation of a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization, chaired by Bank of America President Robert H. Smith, to raise the $300,000 to $500,000 the investigation is expected to cost. In addition, the Mitsui Fudosan real estate firm is donating downtown office space. And the core group of lawyers and at least 80 other attorneys assisting them are expected to donate $10 million to $12 million of their time.

The core group includes at least five blacks, three Latinos and one Korean-American. Eight of the lawyers are women.

In the core group, besides Stone, are:

* Terry W. Bird and Vincent J. Marella, former federal prosecutors who launched a West Los Angeles firm specializing in business litigation and white-collar criminal defense work. Bird is the only member of the core group who worked on the recent Christopher Commission investigation into police use of excessive force.

* Two partners in the city’s largest law firm, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher--Paul G. Bower, a business litigator who served on the staff of the Kerner Commission, and James P. Clark, a litigator on the board of directors of Bet Tzedek Legal Services.

* John H. Brinsley, a former president of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn.

* Gerald L. Chaleff, a criminal defense attorney, who represented Angelo Buono in the Hillside Strangler case.

* Audrey B. Collins, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney.

* Jan Lawrence Handzlik, a former federal prosecutor who more recently defended convicted political corrupter W. Patrick Moriarty.

* Ana I. Segura, a Los Angeles Police and Fire Pension Department Commissioner

* Sally Suchil, assistant general counsel for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and president of the Women’s Lawyers’ Assn. of Los Angeles.

Also named were Wayne S. Braveman, Kenneth R. Heitz, Theodore Warren Jackson, Diann H. Kim, Marylin J. Milner, Brian O’Neill, Charles Pereyra-Suarez, Linda S. Peterson, Cornell J. Price, Karen Randall and Barbara A. Reeves.

These lawyers are expected to be aided by at least six high-ranking police officers from other police departments, as well as a number of retired officers, including some from the LAPD.