State Seeks Reversal of Gionis Ruling : Courts: Attorney general challenges successful appeal that alleged a violation of confidentiality and prosecutorial misconduct.

The state attorney general will ask the California Supreme Court to throw out an appeals court decision that reversed the convictions of Thomas A. Gionis, a wealthy doctor found guilty in 1992 of orchestrating an assault on the daughter of actor John Wayne during a bitter child custody fight.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Rhonda Cartwright-Ladendorf said Tuesday she will challenge a Feb. 18 decision by the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana to overturn Gionis’ four felony convictions that resulted in a five-year prison term.

Gionis, an orthopedic surgeon and the estranged husband of Aissa Wayne, had been found guilty of hiring two henchmen to attack Wayne and her boyfriend, Roger Luby, outside Luby’s Newport Beach estate on Oct. 3, 1988.

In the assault, Wayne’s limbs were bound and she was thrown face first onto a garage floor, cutting her head. Luby was pistol-whipped, then his attackers slashed his Achilles’ tendons.

A panel of three justices unanimously held that Orange County Superior Court Judge Theodore E. Millard improperly allowed incriminating testimony from a family law attorney who had once represented Gionis, in violation of the attorney-client privilege. All discussions between lawyer and client are supposed to remain confidential.

They also concluded that the case should be reversed because of improper final arguments by the prosecutor, former Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeoffrey L. Robinson. The opinion cited Robinson for his “vitriolic rebuttal and personal attacks” on Gionis’ flamboyant attorney, Bruce Cutler, who is known for his defense of New York mobster John Gotti.

“Basically, the decision is legally incorrect,” said Cartwright-Ladendorf, who handles appeals for the criminal division of the attorney general’s office. “I think the attorney should have been allowed to testify, and Mr. Robinson’s statements do not constitute misconduct at all.”

Cartwright-Ladendorf declined to elaborate further because she has not fully prepared her arguments. She has until March 28 to file her appeal with the Supreme Court.

On the witness stand, lawyer John Lueck, whom Gionis had tried to hire and who represented him for one court appearance, testified that Gionis had made some threatening remarks about Wayne in his presence about 1 1/2 years before the attack.

Robinson’s final arguments quoted Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Danish proverbs to repeatedly make the point before the jury that it is an attorney’s “duty to lie, conceal, distort and slander everybody.”

Attorney William Kopeny, who is now representing Gionis, said Tuesday that it is common for the losing party at the appeals court level to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling. But he added, “It is very rare for the court to take the case, particularly when the court of appeals decision is not published. I am very hopeful the Supreme Court will not intervene.”

Assistant Dist. Atty. John D. Conley, who supervises felony prosecutions, said “a joint decision” was made by the district attorney’s office and state attorney general to challenge the 4th District Court of Appeal’s ruling.

When the decision was announced, Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi called the justices “Monday morning quarterbacks” and defended his office against the appeals court, which questioned whether Robinson’s “habits may expose a need for additional training of trial deputies.”