Lawyer’s Award Bears Witness to His Tenacity : Justice: Crusade for protection for those testifying in court brings him a top legal honor and gratitude from slain teen-ager’s mother.

Tenacity pays off. The two engraved plaques presented this week to Los Angeles lawyer Raymond P. Boucher bear witness to that.

One is from Lula Wallace, thanking Boucher for spending 10 years on a lawsuit stemming from the 1983 slaying of her daughter as the teen-ager prepared to testify in a murder case.

The other is from a national public interest law group that has named Boucher its lawyer of the year for winning the case--and prompting changes in police procedures that could help save witnesses’ lives.

The award from Trial Lawyers for Public Justice came Tuesday in ceremonies in Chicago. Wallace’s came in a gaily wrapped birthday present that was unwrapped Thursday in Boucher’s West Los Angeles office.

“I just couldn’t wait to open the box,” said Boucher, who turns 37 on Sunday.

But Boucher has plenty of patience when it comes to law cases. His precedent-setting case, Wallace vs. the City of Los Angeles, proves that.

He took it on in 1983 after several other attorneys shrugged off Wallace’s claim that her daughter died because a Los Angeles police detective failed to warn her that her life was in danger because she was a murder witness.

Nineteen-year-old Demetria Wallace was killed by a shotgun blast as she sat on a bench waiting for a bus five days before she was scheduled to testify against a man accused of fatally shooting a taxi driver.

She had been a high school honors student who was studying criminology at Los Angeles City College. She was leaving a dental office where her boyfriend worked when cabdriver Kimbrough Foley was shot in an adjoining alley.

Wallace reported the shooting to police and agreed to testify after authorities charged Grant Christon, 22, with the murder. But soon after her name appeared as a witness on police reports that were provided to Christon’s lawyer, police said, Wallace received a death threat.

In her lawsuit, Lula Wallace alleged that Police Detective Donald Richards told her daughter not to worry about the threat. The young woman was in no danger, she said Richard had related, because Christon was behind bars and there were many other witnesses prepared to testify against him.

In reality, Demetria Wallace was the only witness in the murder case. “The one person standing between Grant Christon living and dying was Demetria,” Boucher said Thursday. “That made her a sitting duck.”

Without Demetria Wallace’s testimony, the case fell apart. A short time after her murder, charges against Christon were dismissed.

Police eventually arrested Christon’s twin brother, Kent Christon, on suspicion of killing Wallace. But that case also collapsed when no witnesses to her slaying stepped forward.

Boucher spent five years preparing the Wallace lawsuit before it went to trial in 1989. But after a week in court, Superior Court Judge Leon Savage took the case out of the jury’s hands and ruled in the city’s favor.

“I was in tears,” Boucher recalled. Lula Wallace put her arms around him and thanked him for trying.

He took the case to the state Court of Appeal in late 1992 and argued that the death of Demetria Wallace showed the value of fearless witnesses--and the debt society pays when there are fearful ones.

In a ruling issued early last year, the appellate court agreed.

The city tried without success to get the state Supreme Court to overturn that ruling. Last March, as Boucher prepared to go back to the lower court to again press Lula Wallace’s suit, the city agreed to settle for $730,000.

The precedent set by the case is important, said Arthur Bryant, executive director of Washington-based Trial Lawyers for Public Justice.

“We felt it was an excellent example of a lawyer dedicating an extraordinary amount of time to a case advancing the public interest,” Bryant said Thursday. “Far too often, cases with big dollars are the ones that get attention. But this case makes a big difference to society as a whole.”

Los Angeles police have already reacted to the Wallace case. Last year they issued a bulletin advising officers to properly warn witnesses of potential threats to their safety. Soon, Lt. John Dunkin said Thursday, the department will publish a “special order” for officers, expanding on the issue of warning witnesses.

Lula Wallace--whose plaque will soon be placed on Boucher’s office wall, right next to the trial lawyers’ plaque--was thrilled by the national award.

“There were times I sort of gave up, but Ray wouldn’t,” she said Thursday. “It’s a matter of justice. People shouldn’t be afraid to get involved.”