Robbins Testimony Lacked Credibility, Jury Members Say : Trial: Former senator now inmate played role in political corruption convictions, but some say the case would have been won without him.

In his starring role as witness for the prosecution in the trial of lobbyist Clayton R. Jackson and former state Sen. Paul Carpenter, Alan Robbins took his share of abuse.

Defense attorneys called the former Democratic state senator from Van Nuys nearly every name in the book, a colleague labeled him a joke and Robbins himself said that, while in prison waiting to testify, he suffered “almost every imaginable kind” of harassment from inmates who pegged him as a snitch.

But in perhaps a final indignity, jurors who Wednesday agreed with Robbins that Jackson and Carpenter were corrupt said the former high-powered San Fernando Valley senator had failed to impress them as a credible witness.

“I didn’t believe anything he said,” juror Ken Richins, a 47-year-old computer engineer from Gridley, reflected after the verdict. “The government would have gotten a conviction without Alan Robbins.”

Juror Mike Tuman, a millwright from Gridley, said it was the evidence--not the government’s star witness--that led the panel to decide Jackson and Carpenter’s guilt in an hour and a half.

“I didn’t think Alan Robbins was that credible at all,” Tuman said.

And juror Robert Bartosh, an employee of the Campbell’s Soup Co. in Sacramento, said many panelists felt that Robbins’ lies and the defendants’ lies merely canceled each other out.

“I didn’t believe anything Robbins would say. He’d say anything that he thought would help him,” Bartosh said. “My personal opinion is he wasn’t highly credible and that he and the other two (Jackson and Carpenter) would have lied to save themselves.”

It didn’t seem to matter that Robbins--who had a lot riding on his performance, most notably a reduced prison sentence--was on his best behavior for the courtroom, smiling, politely answering questions and exuding humility.

Jurors were well prepped for his courtroom entrance even before Robbins took the stand for several days to offer a primer on how he, Jackson and Carpenter had turned influence peddling and money laundering into a lucrative fine art.

“Alan Robbins has done some pretty terrible things over his lifetime and you’ll hear about them,” U.S. Atty. John Vincent conceded about his first witness in opening arguments. Indeed, defense attorneys went on to describe Robbins as “the devil,” “a known liar, perjurer and extortionist” and seemingly everything in between.

In June, 1992, Robbins began serving a federal prison term after pleading guilty to racketeering and income-tax evasion and admitting in court that he used his office to extort cash and campaign contributions from a range of victims.

But the self-made millionaire, onetime Los Angeles mayoral candidate and former 18-year state senator cut his five-year sentence by more than half in agreeing to help federal prosecutors nail more violators in the continuing probe into political corruption.

Even with the guilty verdicts this week, Robbins--who was described in the words of juror Richins as “a scumbag”--is not yet out of the woods.

He still faces enough legal obstacles to stop a bullet: ongoing civil suits, the attempted revocation of his real estate license, a 15-count accusation of wrongdoing from the California Fair Political Practices Commission and sentencing in a Los Angeles banking fraud case.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Jeffrey Isaacs said sentencing for the Los Angeles case had been postponed until the Sacramento trial concluded. “All the parties are now anxious to get on with it,” Isaacs said, noting that U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi will likely mete out punishment within the next two months.

According to Robbins’ deal with the government, his prison time for the bank fraud case--in which he pleaded guilty to providing false information to obtain bank loans--will run concurrent with his political corruption sentence. That means Robbins will get credit for some time already served, and he could be released as early as next March.

Robbins may also end up as a witness in March’s scheduled political corruption trial of Assemblyman Pat Nolan (R-Glendale) and state Sen. Frank Hill (R-Whittier), who face charges of extorting campaign contributions from undercover FBI agents posing as businessmen seeking passage of a bill. “If they want him to testify, he will,” Mike Lipman, Robbins’ attorney, said Thursday.

As to jurors’ observations that Robbins did not make a believable presentation, Lipman said, “I thought he was a credible witness, the government thought he was a credible witness, and the jurors--no matter what they say--must have thought he was credible. I don’t know how they could have convicted Clay Jackson without Alan Robbins.”

Former top lobbyist Jackson, 50, was found guilty on all 10 counts he faced, including racketeering, mail fraud, conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering. Carpenter, 65, was found guilty of the 11 counts of mail fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering that he faced.

Much of the prosecution’s case hinged on audiotapes on which Robbins secretly recorded his conversations with Jackson, and jurors did say the tapes were critical to their guilty verdicts.

During a recent visit at the Sacramento County Jail, Robbins, dressed in a white jail T-shirt and prison-issue work pants, refused to discuss the Jackson-Carpenter trial or his stint as a convicted felon, saying he would do nothing to jeopardize the government’s case. Having shaved his full beard to a thin mustache for the trial, Robbins was growing it back. He appeared thin, tired and frail as he said he would save his remarks on the lessons of politics until a later date.

His attorney said he is encouraging Robbins, now back in Lompoc’s federal prison camp, to write a book about his experience, an insider’s account of how state government really works.

“If anyone can write a truly honest look at government, it’s Alan. He’s a very smart man,” Lipman said.

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Times staff writers Mark Gladstone and Carl Ingram contributed to this article.