OXNARD : Identification Hearing Set for N.Y. Suspect

A former police officer arrested last week in Oxnard in a 13-year-old New York bombing case asked a Ventura County judge Tuesday to force authorities to prove he is the right man before his extradition hearing.

Joseph Hamilton Harper, 45, a former Woodbury, N.Y., police officer, asked for the identification hearing in Ventura County Municipal Court. Judge Bruce A. Clark granted the request and set the hearing for Nov. 9.

Identification hearings are commonly used by defendants to delay extradition while their attorneys decide whether to fight the proceedings, said Deputy Public Defender Howard Asher.

In the identification hearing, authorities will have to prove before the court that Harper is the person named in the New York fugitive arrest warrant.

Harper has allegedly been living under an assumed name in Oxnard for the past year. He pleaded guilty in 1979 to using dynamite in four separate incidents over a 10-day period to blow up railroad tracks, a sewage treatment plant and an electric company transformer in New York. No one was injured in the incidents, but the explosions caused about $200,000 in damage.

Before sentencing, however, he fled New York and has since been charged with jumping bail and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.