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Meanwhile, in Another Courthouse . . .

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Lea Purwin D’Agostino spent last Thursday in her office. It is a small office without windows, buried deep within the second floor of the satellite county courthouse in Van Nuys. A deputy district attorney, D’Agostino was editing transcripts from a recent murder case. It would not ring many bells. It was not that kind of case.

Late in the afternoon, D’Agostino walked down the hall. Several of her colleagues were crowded inside a conference room, watching the Simpson hearing on television. She ducked inside the door. Another prosecutor told her what she’d missed: A store owner had testified that in May he’d sold Simpson a knife.

“Wow,” D’Agostino said. “I didn’t know about that.”

And why would she? O.J. Simpson is not her case. She already had her turn as a player in one of the trials of the century, which seem to occur in Los Angeles about every year. She prosecuted the so-called “Twilight Zone” case. She lost. Seven years later, she has yet to try another high-profile case. This is how the system works.

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“In 17 years as a prosecutor,” D’Agostino said, “I won every case, but one.”

*

The “Twilight Zone” trial, once so riveting, once so all-important, by now is remembered only in incomplete pieces. A Vietnam movie. The actor Vic Morrow. Two little children. A helicopter crash. D’Agostino, though, can recall every detail, every inconsistency in defense testimony, every moment of legal theater both inside and outside the courtroom. She can recite the names of Hollywood people who came to show support for director John Landis. She can remember the kisses and embraces between jurors and defendants after the acquittals were announced. “A love fest,” she snarled, still unable, seven years later, to contain her disgust.

“The day of the ‘Twilight Zone’ verdicts,” she said evenly, “was the worst day of my life.” It changed everything. Before the defeat, D’Agostino said, she rushed to work each day. Before the defeat, she “was a rising star. My career in this office, which had been wonderful, rising, did a complete 180.”

Did someone say outright: Lea, you are finished? “No,” she said, picking words carefully, “one doesn’t have to say it. You know. . . . One no longer gets major cases to handle.” She paused. “One gets transferred out. It’s not a pleasant experience.” She paused again. “You don’t get any plum assignments thereafter. Lose one case, that’s it.” Paused. “This district attorney’s office has not been known for standing behind deputies who have lost major cases.”

She could form a club. After “Twilight” came McMartin, Rodney King, Menendez, among others. For every one of these high-profile defeats, there is an L.A. County deputy district attorney whose career prospects no longer look quite so bright. They are scattered to suburban outposts. Whatever they learned about big cases--and doesn’t defeat usually teach more than victory?--is wasted knowledge. No one solicits their opinions. They walk hallways filled with backbiting colleagues. They are, in one prosecutor’s word, “tainted.” They are, in another’s analysis, “scarred.” They are, in D’Agostino’s own phrase, “chopped liver.”

But, she added, “don’t make it sound like I am bitter.”

*

The Los Angeles legal community is thick with theories about why the district attorney’s office no longer can win the big ones. Outgunned prosecutors. Overzealous filings. Star-struck juries. Political interference. Incompetence. In the end, though, what does it matter? High-profile cases such as “Twilight Zone” and Simpson are but salacious side dishes. Fascinating exceptions. Most cases don’t attract cameras. Most defendants can’t afford F. Lee Bailey. And most defendants lose. It’s not even close.

The prosecutors notch their convictions and move on. There always is plenty of criminal work in this county. Even D’Agostino’s desk is piled with paper. She toils in Van Nuys as a “calendar deputy.” It is not quite as boring as it sounds. She negotiates pleas, files pretrial motions, completes paperwork--”the bread and butter,” she said, gamely enough. Sometimes, though, she is allowed to take prosecutions all the way through trial, and she eagerly described three active cases.

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All involved domestic violence. A husband who ambushed his wife. A 4-year-old beaten to the brink of death. A mother who told investigators she has been assaulted by her husband “14,000 times.” Routine horror. Bread and butter. But no football stars, right?

“No,” D’Agostino said, “and no movie stars either. No celebrities. And when we convict, it might be a line in the paper. And it might not.” She doesn’t get the Court TV cases anymore. She had her turn at center stage. It was seven years ago. She lost.

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