Judge Bars Testimony by Daughter of Robber Killed by Police : The law: Trial marks third attempt to win compensatory damages for the girl. She was not yet born when officers shot her father after a Sunland holdup.

Young Johanna Trevino never knew her father and only recently learned that he was killed by police six days before she was born in February, 1990.

But on Tuesday, as a long-awaited trial began to determine whether the city of Los Angeles owes Johanna anything for her loss, the nearly 5-year-old girl was not allowed to testify. The judge said her testimony would contribute little relevant information.

“The bad use of children for money, I always think, is unseemly,” U.S. District Court Judge J. Spencer Letts told the girl’s lawyer, Stephen Yagman, in barring his attempt to place Johanna on the witness stand. “I don’t think you can make more money for this young lady by putting her on the stand.”

It is the third time in two years that Yagman has gone to trial seeking compensatory damages for Johanna, a round-faced child who appeared in court Tuesday with her grandmother, wore a red bow in her curly brown hair, and doodled on legal paper as the lawyers argued over her case.

Two earlier efforts--one in 1993 and one last fall--ended in mistrials.

The new trial comes as a federal grand jury considers the Feb. 12, 1990, shooting of Johanna’s father and two other robbers as they fled a restaurant holdup in Sunland. They were shot by members of the Los Angeles Police Department’s elite Special Investigations Section.

The grand jury has been reviewing the deadly confrontation for possible civil rights violations by the SIS officers, according to police and legal sources. At least seven of the nine police officers who opened fire have received official notice that they are targets of the probe, and dozens more officers have been subpoenaed to testify.

The statute of limitations for civil rights charges is five years, meaning any criminal action against police must be taken by Sunday.

Although police have always claimed that they fired in self-defense when the robbers pointed weapons at them, the shootings were found to be wrongful three years ago by a federal court jury. That jury found the officers should pay compensatory damages of $1 each, but awarded $44,042 in punitive damages to the slain men’s survivors.

Jurors also took the unusual step of asking that the money be paid by the defendants themselves rather than by the city, to teach the police a lesson. The Los Angeles City Council decided to pay all damages on behalf of the officers, and Letts dismissed Yagman’s legal challenge to that action last week.

What remains of the suit is Johanna’s claim for compensatory damages for her father’s death. She was not a plaintiff in the original case because she had not been born when the shootings occurred.

“The loss of her right to have a father is and will be great to her and she’s entitled to compensation for that loss,” Yagman said during brief opening arguments.

But Assistant City Atty. Don Vincent told the jury that the girl’s father, Javier Trevino, had been killed while “involved in illegal activity” and had had no legitimate source of income.

Jurors were told that an earlier jury had already determined that the death of Johanna’s father, which occurred during the course of a robbery, was wrongful. They were also told that all they are being asked to determine is damages.

Letts called it unusual for a jury to be asked to determine damages without a detailed review of the conduct that caused the injury.

Only two witnesses testified: Johanna’s paternal grandmother, Philadelphia Cruz, and a child psychiatrist, Dr. Justin David Call

Cruz, who used a Spanish interpreter, broke down and wept as she recalled that she could not be present for Johanna’s birth because she was busy making preparations for her son’s funeral. He was 21 when he died, she said.

She also testified that her son, who lived with her and Johanna’s mother, had been looking forward to the birth of his first child. “He had bought quite a few things--clothes, toys, a crib,” she said through the interpreter.

Johanna and her mother, Norma Ramirez, lived with Cruz in Los Angeles for the first two years of her life. Now the girl lives with her mother and stepfather in Vera Cruz, Mexico.

Call, who has spoken with Johanna twice at court, said the circumstances of her father’s death would probably hit her most strongly during adolescence “as she struggles for her identity” and that she and her family would benefit from psychiatric help as she sorts through her feelings.

The girl’s mother has told her that her father was killed by police, but not why, Call said.

“She knows she misses her father very much, she wishes he was available and she says he is in heaven,” said Call. “She also has no notion of why the police killed him.”