Lawyer Told Witnesses to Testify Falsely : Courts: Jury convicts Leonard Milstein of six felonies resulting from 1989 murder trial. He now faces up to six years in prison.

A former Woodland Hills attorney has been convicted of bribery, perjury and obstruction of justice for using false testimony from jailhouse witnesses to win a partial acquittal for his client in a 1989 double murder trial.

The convicted lawyer, Leonard R. Milstein, could go to state prison and be disbarred.

Although the Milstein case wended its way from the San Fernando courthouse to state Supreme Court since 1991 and at one point was dismissed, it ultimately resulted in a victory for Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Foltz.

Foltz said Wednesday he hoped the conviction would send a message to other lawyers: “If you lie, cheat or steal, you might end up in the joint right next to your client.”

It was in San Fernando Superior Court that Milstein found stunning professional victory and crushing personal defeat. In 1989, he won a client’s acquittal on a capital murder charge, a relatively rare occurrence. But late Tuesday, a jury convicted Milstein of six felonies as a result of his defense tactics during that trial.

His own monthlong trial featured prosecution testimony from convicts and admitted perjurers. The defense attorney argued that Milstein had been manipulated by his client. Nonetheless, a jury of seven women and five men deliberated just a day before convicting Milstein, a 51-year-old former prosecutor.

Milstein was acquitted of two other counts, soliciting a crime and suborning perjury, or inducing someone to lie on the witness stand.

The State Bar has been aware of the allegations against Milstein since 1991, said spokeswoman Tracy Genesen. Now that a conviction has occurred, the bar will investigate.

“We’ve been tracking the case,” Genesen said, adding that once the State Bar receives certified copies of Milstein’s conviction, he probably will receive an automatic suspension pending a hearing.

Milstein, who remains free on his own recognizance, did not return phone calls to his law office, which is now in San Luis Obispo. His lawyer, Michael M. Crain, could not be reached.

Milstein faces a maximum sentence of six years in prison when he appears June 11 before Superior Court Judge William R. MacLaughlin. The potential prison term is two years shorter than that received by Milstein’s client, who was paroled last year.

The client, Brad Millward, once faced the death penalty for the drug-related, execution-style murders of two men--Bruce Gruber, 28, of Yucca Valley, and Albert Dulyea, 37, of Norwalk--in the Antelope Valley on July 5, 1987. But Milstein’s defense was so successful that a jury acquitted his client of murdering Dulyea--even though police found Dulyea’s body in Millward’s garage. Jurors deadlocked on the second murder count involving Gruber, and Millward later received the eight-year sentence after pleading guilty to a reduced manslaughter charge.

During the murder trial, Milstein worked to direct suspicion away from his client and toward a key prosecution witness, who testified he saw Millward holding a gun to a man’s head while driving with his family along Avenue P east of Palmdale.

Foltz said Milstein promised to represent County Jail inmate Albert Gutierrez, if the inmate would lie on the witness stand for Millward. In return, Gutierrez testified--falsely--that he found ammunition in the trunk of the prosecution witness’s car, and presented phony invoices to “prove” he’d worked on the car.

Gutierrez confessed to authorities when Milstein stopped showing up for his court cases. And a second County Jail inmate also told authorities that Millward and Milstein offered him $3,500 to testify at Millward’s trial.

The second inmate, Charles Haas, eventually refused to testify. He was shot to death three weeks after he was paroled.

Foltz said the history of the Milstein case demonstrates “how the system can fail--badly.”

After a grand jury indicted Milstein in May, 1991, the case languished in a Downtown courtroom for more than three years while Milstein and his lawyer launched numerous appeals. Meanwhile, Milstein moved from Woodland Hills to San Luis Obispo, switching his practice from criminal law to bankruptcy law.

Appeals of Milstein’s indictment twice found their way to the state Supreme Court and were denied.

Many of his legal briefs disputed matters long settled by the law. For example, Milstein, who is white, challenged the ethnic makeup of the grand jury that indicted him. In another appeal, he claimed his constitutional rights were violated because the attorney-client privilege with Millward precluded him from defending himself against the charges.

Three judges who handled the case during its early stages were transferred. Finally, a fourth judge dismissed the indictment in November for evidentiary reasons.

Foltz refiled the charges in San Fernando Superior Court in February. Milstein was arraigned in March and went to trial in early May.

“I’ve lived with this case in its various stages along some of the rockiest roads I’ve been on,” Foltz said.