Lawyer Convicted of Bribery in Client’s Defense

An 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 in San Fernando.

Leonard R. Milstein could go to state prison and be disbarred for the crime, regarded as one of the worst breaches of attorney ethics. His client, who pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter in the Antelope Valley killings, is already out of prison.

In 1989, Milstein won the man’s acquittal on a capital murder charge, a relatively rare occurrence. But earlier this week a jury in that same San Fernando Superior Court convicted Milstein of six felonies as a result of the defense tactics he used during that trial.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Foltz, who prosecuted Milstein, said he hopes the conviction will send a message to other lawyers: “If you lie, cheat or steal, you might end up in the joint right next to your client.”

Milstein’s monthlong trial--the culmination of a case that had meandered through the court system for the past four years and at one point was dismissed--featured prosecution testimony from convicts and admitted perjurers. Milstein’s lawyer argued that Milstein had been manipulated by his client. Nonetheless, the jury deliberated just a day before convicting Milstein.

Milstein, 51, who had a been a prosecutor before going into private practice, was acquitted of two other counts, soliciting a crime and suborning perjury, or inducing someone to lie on the witness stand.

Milstein will probably be suspended by the State Bar in the near future pending a hearing, a spokeswoman for the bar said.

Milstein, whose law practice was located in Woodland Hills during the murder trial, remains free on his own recognizance. He did not return phone calls to his law office, which is now in San Luis Obispo.

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 only two years less than that received by Milstein’s client in the murder case, Brad Millward. He was paroled last year.

Originally, Millward 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, who were killed in the Antelope Valley on July 5, 1987.

However, Milstein’s defense of Millward 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 charge.

During the murder trial, Milstein worked to direct suspicion away from his client and toward a key prosecution witness, who testified that he saw Millward holding a gun to a man’s head..

Prosecutor Foltz said Milstein promised to represent County Jail inmate Albert Gutierrez if Gutierrez 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 as proof he had worked on the car.

Gutierrez confessed to authorities when Milstein stopped showing up for Gutierrez’s court cases. And a second jail inmate 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.