Fast-Track Prosecutor Derailed in Ventura Co. : Law enforcement: Carol Nelson was a rising star until her findings about a fatal drug raid disagreed with her boss’s. The D.A.’s office says she was transferred because she was needed elsewhere.

For 14 years, Carol Nelson rose steadily through the ranks of the Ventura County district attorney’s office. Then last February, 4 1/2 months into her investigation of the shooting death of a Malibu millionaire, Nelson’s climb ended.

A front-line homicide prosecutor, Nelson, 49, was pulled from the case, moved to a smaller office and assigned to the types of low-profile cases she first worked in 1981.

Her report clearing Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies of wrongdoing in the death of rancher Donald P. Scott was shelved. Six weeks later, Nelson’s boss, Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, released his own strikingly different findings.

The sheriff-led drug raid of Scott’s isolated ranch was not legally justified, Bradbury concluded, and was prompted in large part by authorities’ desire to seize the $5-million property. Although a pistol-wielding Scott was shot in self-defense, drug agents should not have been on the ranch in the first place, Bradbury said.

Because no drugs were ever found, Bradbury’s conclusions have been cited nationwide by critics of federal asset forfeiture laws, who argue that the laws encourage police to conduct questionable drug raids.

Lost in the glare of publicity was Nelson, whose findings were never released and who was ordered not to talk about the case.

But over the last two weeks, Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block has cited Nelson’s treatment to buttress his argument that Bradbury intentionally distorted the truth of the Scott case to grab national publicity.

“I see this as the smoking gun in his entire report,” Block said in an interview. “It appears to point most clearly to an attempt to manipulate the outcome of that report to reach a predetermined conclusion.”

To several prosecutors in Bradbury’s 86-lawyer office, the message in the Nelson reassignment was different, but equally clear. They said that Bradbury has treated other deputies in much the same way during his 15 years as Ventura County’s top prosecutor.

“This is business as usual,” one prosecutor said. “Any deviation from the party line results in extreme disfavor and that is expressed through demotion or isolation.”

Bradbury declined to comment last week on Block’s assertions and Nelson’s reassignment. But Kevin McGee, a top Bradbury aide, said Block’s comments are untrue.

“Far from being a smoking gun,” McGee said, “that assertion is just an attempt to blow smoke into the public’s eye and divert attention from the real issues in the Scott case.”

McGee said he could not comment on Nelson’s reassignment because it is a confidential personnel matter. Nor would he comment on charges that other prosecutors also have been reassigned after disagreements with Bradbury.

In an earlier interview, however, Bradbury said he reassigned Nelson to rape and child molestation cases because “her trial skills were badly needed” in the sex crimes unit.

He said he turned the Scott case over to two deputies who specialize in research and analysis rather than homicide “since this case involved several unique legal issues.” Nelson’s work did not focus in detail on issues surrounding the legitimacy of the search, Bradbury said.

“Deputy Nelson’s initial work . . . primarily focused on the shooting itself, and her views were incorporated into our conclusions,” Bradbury said.

Sources said the Nelson report found that there was no evidence of conspiracy among government officials to seize Scott’s ranch, that lead sheriff’s Deputy Gary Spencer had probable cause to believe marijuana was being grown on the ranch and that the Scott search warrant was valid despite errors and omissions in Spencer’s supporting affidavit.

Nelson revised her report three times before she was reassigned, according to her deposition in a civil lawsuit filed by Scott’s heirs. Transcripts of her testimony show that she grew increasingly out of favor with Bradbury, although she never talked with him directly about the case.

In clipped and fragmented testimony, Nelson said she was worried that her involvement in the Scott case might cause her to be fired. And she testified that after a conversation with McGee on Feb. 18 “it was clear . . . I would suffer some consequence. On the 19th, I found out what it was.”

She made it clear in her testimony that she considered her new job a demotion, although she lost neither pay nor her status as a senior deputy.

Some of her colleagues insisted that the reassignment is a public loss, since Nelson did pioneering work in a 1989 murder case by using DNA evidence to link a suspect to the crime.

Nelson also was chosen to try the largest political corruption case in Bradbury’s tenure--the successful 1991 fraud prosecution of former Ventura County Community College Trustee James T. (Tom) Ely.

Some of her colleagues consider Nelson one of the top three or four trial prosecutors in Bradbury’s office. And several prosecutors said she should not have been punished for refusing to alter a report she believed to be true.

“For all I know Mike may be justified in what he did,” said a prosecutor who requested anonymity. “But it’s hard for me to believe that what Carol did was not up to her usual stand of excellence. She’s just a superior attorney.”

Attorney Dennis Gonzales, who is representing Los Angeles County in a Scott lawsuit, said two of Bradbury’s prosecutors and one former prosecutor were so outraged by Nelson’s reassignment that they called him to complain.

“They said Carol had done nothing wrong, but because she was standing up to Bradbury she was transferred,” Gonzales said. “Carol was told . . . that you will come to certain conclusions. And when she refused that’s when she was transferred to a much less prestigious job.”