Man Who Took Gun to Court Won’t Be Prosecuted

After a five-week standoff with the U.S. attorney’s office, a Los Angeles judge Monday reluctantly bowed to prosecutors’ insistence that they had no case and dismissed charges against a 63-year-old man who carried a loaded .357 magnum into a Downtown federal courthouse.

“While I don’t agree (with the government’s position), I think the court has gone far enough,” said U.S. District Judge David W. Williams. “The case is dismissed.”

Williams’ action paved the way for Vladimir Flint to be released from the Metropolitan Detention Center where he has been held since his arrest Oct. 4. Oswaldo Parada, a federal public defender who represents Flint, said he expects him to be released today.

The judge had refused since mid-December to dismiss the case, saying federal prosecutors did not take seriously enough the act of bringing a gun into a courthouse.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Alicia Amador said her office took the issue very seriously. But prosecutors maintained that Flint, a Lennox resident, had inadvertently brought the gun into the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building and thus lacked the criminal intent required in the statute under which he was charged.

Williams was so outraged that he asked U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to bring in a special prosecutor from Washington to handle the case, but Reno did not grant the request.

On Friday, Amador filed a motion reiterating the government’s position that the case should be dismissed. The motion noted that the deadline for starting the trial under the federal Speedy Trial Law would expire Monday.

Williams, 83, earlier had acknowledged that although he could refuse to dismiss the case, he could not force the U.S. attorney’s office to bring it to trial.

Flint was arrested after a federal marshal seized the gun he was carrying in a briefcase as he passed through a metal detector at the Roybal building. In mid-October he was ordered held without bail as a flight risk, and a date was set for his trial.

However, on Dec. 13, one day before the trial was to begin, Amador told Williams that the charge should be dismissed because after investigation, she and her superiors had concluded that Flint had not knowingly entered the courthouse with a firearm.

Amador said Flint’s neighbor, who had brought him to the courthouse that day, told her that Flint usually slept with a gun because of fear of crime. The neighbor said Flint forgot to leave the gun at home, apparently because he had been rushing to get to court where he had a bankruptcy case pending.

Williams branded Amador’s explanation “baloney.” At a subsequent hearing, Williams again refused to dismiss the case, contending that the U.S. attorney’s office had bungled the investigation. Terree A. Bowers, who was then U.S. attorney, supported Amador’s decision to drop the case, as did his successor, Nora M. Manella, who took over Jan. 3.

Manella said that shortly after she became U.S. attorney she told Williams that the government would not bring the case to trial. In an interview, Manella said she was going to re-examine the issue of security at the two Downtown federal courthouses.

After Monday’s hearing, Amador said she was pleased that the case was concluded.

“We took some heat for what we did, and I think that’s unfortunate,” she said. “We did everything in the interest of justice. We’re not in the business of prosecuting innocent people, regardless of whether a jury would convict them.”