Judge Again Pressed to Pull D.A. From Bryant Case : Justice: Defense lawyers say attorney general should take over prosecution of murder trial because of allegations of witness tampering.

Prosecutors in the Bryant Family murder case “are guilty of felony witness tampering” and other crimes and ethical violations, defense lawyers alleged Wednesday, again demanding that the district attorney’s office be removed from the trial.

The defense accused the prosecutors of conspiring to conceal for two years the alleged witness tampering, including evidence that one of the prosecutors also worried that such an offense may have been committed.

Prosecutors waited to release the potentially embarrassing information to defense lawyers until after a Superior Court judge last month rejected a defense request to transfer the prosecution from the district attorney’s office to the state attorney general’s office, according to defense lawyers.

The district attorney’s office withheld comment on the case. It involves charges that five members of a notorious San Fernando Valley crime family gunned down four people in Lake View Terrace in 1988, including two men police described as rival drug dealers.

In motions filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court over the past week, defense lawyers said that witness tampering and withholding evidence from them and from the judge were crimes and ethical violations that made it impossible for the district attorney’s office to stay on the case.

“The defendants do not know the full extent of the wrongs that have been perpetrated by the district attorney’s office,” said defense lawyer Dennis E. Mulcahy, who represents defendant Andrew Thomas Settle.

“And they probably never will, because the fox is guarding the henhouse.”

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, said Wednesday that no one from her office was permitted to say anything about the case out of court, and that a hearing on the matter had been set for Tuesday before Superior Court Judge J. D. Smith.

The defense lawyers contend that the former lead prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Maurizi, and Detective James Vojtecky of the Los Angeles Police Department badgered witness Rosa Hernandez two years ago so she would change her description of the crime scene, “putting words” in her mouth to bolster their case.

They also contend that another prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Eduards Abele, witnessed the interview and became so concerned that he tried to discuss the issue at length with his superiors, but was rebuffed.

Abele had no comment Wednesday. But in his handwritten notes from the interview, contained in the court documents submitted by the defense attorneys, Abele said he wanted to document his concerns in a detailed memo, but “I was discouraged from doing that” by his superiors.

He also repeated his concerns in an interview with a top investigator for the district attorney’s office last month, the documents said.

“The conduct of other members of the office, the superiors consulted by Abele within the office . . . amounted to a cover-up of Maurizi’s and Vojtecky’s criminal and unethical misconduct,” Mulcahy said in his motion to recuse--take the case away from--the district attorney’s office, filed Dec. 31.

Defense lawyers representing alleged ringleader Stanley Bryant, 34, also filed a recusal motion. One of them, Louise Gulartie, said she was particularly concerned that prosecutors withheld the information regarding the witness interview, and Abele’s concerns, until after Smith sided with the district attorney’s office in allowing them to remain as prosecutors.

“If a defense lawyer did that, we’d be thrown in jail and facing obstruction of justice charges,” Gulartie said. “For them to be sitting on what amounts to dynamite and saying, ‘Gee, judge, make your ruling on whether we have a conflict of interest without us telling you this’ is just wrong.

“I think that is an outrage, especially when it goes to the heart of the issue the judge was trying to make a decision on--whether a conflict of interest existed which would justify recusal of the D.A.’s office from the case.”

Vojtecky could not be reached for comment, and Judge Smith had no comment.

Defense lawyers said prosecutors could not have accidentally withheld information regarding the alleged witness tampering until after the judge made his decision because they gave the defense a “sanitized” version of Abele’s notes about a week beforehand.

“They took out the damaging portions and made a deliberate decision to hide the stuff we could have used for defense purposes,” Gulartie said.

Defense lawyers had originally asked to dismiss the district attorney’s office from the prosecution after Maurizi claimed that the office and the Police Department had been infiltrated by the Bryant family. Smith determined there was no infiltration. But before the judge’s ruling Dec. 17 he asked prosecutors if they had left out any information that could influence his decision. They said no.