High-Publicity Cases Go Awry for D.A. : Justice system: Some observers blame faulty police investigations. Bradbury defends his record.

For the Ventura County district attorney’s office, it was an embarrassing admission: After holding a Ventura man for four months on a murder charge, prosecutors said they had the wrong man.

But the release of Antonio D. Morales on March 12 was only the latest in a string of high-profile setbacks for Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury’s office--a growing list of ill-fated prosecutions that some blame on faulty police investigations as well as on Bradbury’s own hard-line policy of taking difficult cases to trial.

Last month the largest money-laundering case in the county’s history--one that prosecutors had more than three years to put together--ended in a hung jury. A second trial for Otoniel Urrego, which it is estimated will cost the public tens of thousands of dollars, is scheduled for September.

In January, prosecutors dropped a rape charge against former Simi Valley Police Officer Paul A. Nolan--who had spent two weeks in jail--after acknowledging that the initial police investigation was inadequate.

In December, after holding Christopher Nagano of Thousand Oaks for nearly a month on arson charges stemming from a comic book store fire, prosecutors could not persuade the county grand jury to indict him, and the arson charges were dismissed. He pleaded guilty to unrelated gun charges.

In August, after a two-year investigation and a four-month trial billed as the biggest fraud case in the county’s history, the prosecution was able to win only one theft conviction against the alleged ringleader, Olen B. Phillips, out of an 81-count indictment.

In July, a former Simi Valley man, Luis R. Benavidez, was acquitted of a 1988 slaying even though the evidence included his tape-recorded confession.

And like a recurring nightmare, the case of Diane Mannes has haunted prosecutors for nearly four years. Although Mannes admittedly killed three teen-agers in a drunk-driving crash in 1989, a tactical gamble by prosecutors and several unforeseen court rulings--the last occurring on Feb. 19--apparently will prevent prosecutors from ever convicting her of homicide charges.

“It does seem that in the past few months there were several cases they were mistaken about,” Public Defender Kenneth I. Clayman said. “There certainly were some results the D.A. would not want.”

On the other hand, the district attorney’s office has had some high-profile successes during the same time period, such as its speedy resolution of the case of former Ventura High School football coach Harvey Kochel, who pleaded guilty and was sent to prison for having sex with a minor student.

Bradbury said he sees the past few months as a good period “because the justice system is working.” In the Morales case, he said, “the fact that we cleared him is a very positive thing.”

“If we were losing a lot of cases, I would say it’s time to reassess what we’re doing,” he said. “But that’s not the case. This office has a phenomenal track record.”

In Ventura County, he said, prosecutors take 8% of all cases to trial, compared to a statewide average of 3%. “We’re not afraid to try tough cases,” Bradbury said. “We have an excellent conviction rate.”

Some attorneys said the district attorney’s office is taking the heat for the shortcomings of other agencies--notably the California Highway Patrol, which investigated the Morales case, and the Simi Valley Police Department, which compiled evidence against Nolan.

In the Morales case, which involved a high-speed traffic collision that caused a teen-ager’s death, “the initial errors were all made by the CHP,” Assistant Public Defender Duane A. Dammeyer said. He said “the D.A. did the right thing” in dismissing the case when closer examination found flaws in the CHP’s identification of Morales as the driver.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald C. Glynn, who filed the case against Morales, said the case was not a setback for prosecutors, but “good work on our part” in uncovering the misidentification.

“Yeah, we didn’t get a conviction,” he said. “But the D.A.’s charter is to see that justice is done.”

Glynn, who shook hands with Morales and apologized when the case was dismissed, acknowledged that the mistaken arrest may make it harder to convict the other occupant of the truck, who has not been charged. However, he said, “if anybody comes away with a red face, it’s the CHP, not the D.A.’s office.”

Similarly, in the Nolan case, “the bungling was by the Simi Valley police, not the district attorney’s office,” said Deputy Public Defender Todd W. Howeth, who represented the accused officer. He praised prosecutors for listening to the defense’s evidence and dropping the case before a preliminary hearing, which Howeth described as “a fairly gutsy thing for the D.A. to do.”

A CHP spokeswoman said the agency’s officers followed its procedures, and Glynn said the officers who misidentified Morales “acted in good faith.” In the Nolan case, Simi Valley Police Chief Lindsey P. Miller also said his officers acted properly, although the lead investigator, Lt. Robert Klamser, has been suspended with pay for undisclosed reasons.

Public Defender Clayman said it was unfortunate that in both cases the flawed charges were filed by prosecutors before the cases were thoroughly investigated. When a case is filed prematurely, Clayman said, “accused persons, such as Morales and Nolan, go through a lot of misery before those dismissals occur.”

Prosecutors say they are often at the mercy of police agencies that are responsible for building the initial case against a suspect. In most cases, prosecutors do not get involved in a case until after the suspect is in custody.

“We usually have 48 hours to file a case once a guy is arrested,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin G. DeNoce said. “In 48 hours, we do whatever we can to make sure the guy is guilty. But we can’t do a heck of a lot in 48 hours, especially if the agency that brings it in screws up.”

He said prosecutors should not be faulted for their willingness to admit a mistake. “When prosecutors are criticized for doing that, it sends the wrong message. . . it causes the system not to want to question itself,” DeNoce said. “We ought to encourage that.”

Louis B. Samonsky, a Ventura County prosecutor from 1973 to 1982 and now a defense attorney, urged caution in judging the district attorney’s office on the basis of a few cases. In the Mannes case, for example, no one--including the trial judge who dismissed the charges after a mistrial--expected the action to result in acquittal, he said.

But Samonsky--who said he has been urged to challenge Bradbury in next year’s election and has not ruled out a campaign--faults the district attorney for creating “a big fanfare when these cases start out.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a tough prosecutor and taking tough stands,” Samonsky said. “It’s another thing to grandstand for political gain. . . . I think that’s what’s going on with some of these cases.”

For example, Samonsky said, his client Nagano was originally held on $1-million bail for a case that eventually was dismissed. Officer Nolan’s bail was $250,000. A fraud suspect represented by Samonsky was originally held on $1-million bail and ended up doing community service on a misdemeanor conviction.

“When you grandstand and then fall on your face, you don’t look very good,” Samonsky said.

In response, Bradbury said: “It’s the last refuge of scoundrels to suggest that we’re motivated politically. What makes these cases a big splash is media coverage, not the conduct of the district attorney. By the time we got the Nagano case, it was national news. We had nothing to do with that.”

Some attorneys said any setbacks in the district attorney’s office are the understandable result of Bradbury’s willingness to take on difficult cases.

Federal investigators looked into the Phillips case, for example, but filed no charges. In the Mannes case, it would have been much easier to seek a manslaughter verdict, but Bradbury--with the support of the victims’ families--insisted on pursuing second-degree murder charges. Federal officials looked into the Urrego case and decided it was so complex that a conviction was unlikely, Bradbury said.

A case like Urrego’s “has probably never been done before by a local jurisdiction, or even a federal prosecutor,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jim Grunert, who tried the case. Noting that no drugs were found and that Urrego was never placed anywhere near the $2.5 million in alleged drug money that police seized, “you have a very difficult case,” Grunert said. “You have to give credit to Mr. Bradbury for being very aggressive in his prosecution.”

Bradbury said complex cases like Urrego’s often end with deadlocked juries the first time around and have to be retried. “Obviously we’re disappointed, but I don’t view it as a setback,” he said. Convicting Phillips of only one charge in the fraud case also was “a disappointment but by no means a setback,” the district attorney said.

“We’re not afraid to try tough cases in Ventura County,” Bradbury said. “I think the public understands that. . . and doesn’t expect that every murderer is going to be convicted. But they do expect us to try to convict murderers of murder and not something else.”

But Samonsky said being too aggressive when charging criminal suspects can backfire when the prosecutor generally opposes plea bargains, as Bradbury does.

For example, Samonsky said, many homicide cases are almost certain to result in second-degree murder convictions, and the suspects in those cases are often willing to plead to that charge. But by refusing anything less than a guilty plea to first-degree murder, prosecutors force cases to trial and end up with the same second-degree conviction they could have obtained by a plea bargain, Samonsky said.

“If you’re not going to plea-bargain, you’d better take a careful look at the case before filing, rather than grandstand a tough position and go through a lengthy trial at taxpayer expense,” Samonsky said.

Bradbury called such criticism “nonsense.”

“We don’t over-charge or under-charge,” he said, adding that decisions on filing specific charges undergo three levels of review. “If all I was interested in was a high conviction rate and the popularity that goes with being able to tout that, I could do it very easily” by plea-bargaining, he said.

As a result of his policies, Bradbury said, Ventura County “enjoys a reputation for being a very, very tough law-and-order county with a relatively low crime rate.”

Some attorneys and officials said the troublesome cases in recent months have hurt morale among trial deputies in the district attorney’s office.

“I think they have a real bad morale problem over there,” said a county courts official who asked for anonymity. “Phillips . . . the Urrego case, the drunk-driving case where they had the wrong defendant . . . of course the whole agency feels that.”

But Bradbury said he has seen no sign of a morale problem among his staff.

“They’re very dedicated,” he said. After a disappointment like Mannes or Urrego, “you’re kind of down for a few days,” he said. “But then you gird up and do it again.”

Setbacks for the District Attorney

In recent months, Ventura County prosecutors have suffered a series of embarrassments, in and out of the courtroom, that have damaged morale and raised questions about the office’s ability to investigate and win big cases. Here are some examples: * Antonio Morales Morales, 21, of Ventura was indicted on a murder charge in the Nov. 20 crash that killed 16-year-old Victoria Gonzales of Bakersfield. A California Highway Patrol officer swore that Morales was the man driving the truck that caused the crash. After Morales spent almost four months in jail, prosecutors announced March 12 that he could not have been the driver. The other occupant of the truck has not been charged, and attorneys say the mix-up will make it difficult to obtain a conviction. * Diane Mannes The 38-year-old Camarillo woman killed three young men and injured two others in a 1989 crash. She was convicted of injuring the survivors, but jurors deadlocked on murder charges and prosecutors refused to let them consider manslaughter. After the hung jury, the trial judge dismissed the murder case, and federal courts, including the U. S. Supreme Court, have ruled that the dismissal was an acquittal. Last month, a county judge said Mannes cannot be retried on any homicide charge. * Otoniel Urrego The Colombian native was accused of directing a Simi Valley-based money-laundering ring from his home in Miami. The operation--billed as the biggest ever in Ventura County--was shut down in 1989 and Urrego, 64, was arrested nearly three years later. After a 3 1/2-year investigation and a monthlong trial, jurors deadlocked on conspiracy and drug-possession charges, with majorities favoring conviction. A retrial is expected to be costly because Urrego’s attorney has bowed out, and the public defender has taken over the case. * Paul A. Nolan In November, the Simi Valley police officer was charged with raping a crime victim in 1989 while off-duty. The charges were based on an investigation by the Simi Valley department. He spent 14 days in jail before posting bail. On Jan. 28, prosecutors dropped the charge, saying further investigation found that the woman had long been friends with Nolan and sent him Christmas cards--actions inconsistent with being a rape victim, they said. Nolan was fired in December for unrelated reasons. * Christopher Nagano Nagano, 19, was charged in November with the September torching of a Thousand Oaks comic book store. The case was first viewed as a hate crime and later as an arson for profit, investigators for the Sheriff’s Department said. On Dec. 17, the grand jury refused a request by prosecutors to indict Nagano, and the arson charge was dismissed. He has pleaded guilty to unrelated weapons charges. No further arrests have been made in connection with the arson. * Olen B. Phillips An 81-count indictment accused the onetime Thousand Oaks financier of masterminding the biggest fraud in county history. The indictment said 21 investors lost $3 million, but investigators said as many as 2,000 people may have lost money in Phillips’ land deals. After a four-month trial that cost taxpayers $475,000 in defense charges alone, Phillips was convicted of only one theft count, and he received a 60-day jail sentence. A co-defendant was convicted on five counts and was sentenced to 7 2/3 years in prison. * Luis R. Benavidez Benavidez, 39, was charged last year with the 1988 slaying of a Thousand Oaks man whose remains were discovered at a Simi Valley ranch where Benavidez had been foreman. Evidence included a tape recording in which Benavidez admitted shooting the victim twice in the head. After deliberating five days, jurors acquitted Benavidez. The defendant’s attorney--a drunk-driving specialist who was trying his first murder case--had argued that the confession was coerced.