D.A. Bonuses Controversy Heats Up

Dismayed that the three lead prosecutors in the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial were awarded $43,000 in bonuses, a senior county prosecutor has formally requested that they give the money back.

In a letter dated Feb. 14, Deputy Dist. Atty. Dinko Bozanich asserted that the bonuses were “unauthorized, unlawful and illegal.” As public employees, he wrote, prosecutors are paid only a “fixed and certain” salary.

Bozanich, who has been a county prosecutor for 28 years, also wrote that his three colleagues have an ethical obligation to return the money.

“Integrity and honor demand nothing less,” he wrote in the letter, addressed not only to the trio of prosecutors but to Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti and a variety of county officials.

The letter marks the latest turn in a controversy that has been simmering inside the district attorney’s office since it was learned in November, a month after Simpson was acquitted, that Garcetti had awarded the bonuses to lead prosecutors William Hodgman, Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden.

Hodgman was awarded a bonus of $17,760, Clark $14,330 and Darden $10,750.

Other prosecutors complained that they also have worked hard but had not received similar special compensation from the cash-strapped county government.

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, said the issue of the bonuses had been submitted for review “some time ago” to the county counsel’s office, which “determined that our actions were proper.”

Bozanich, now based in Norwalk, demurred. In his letter, stressing that he was writing solely as an aggrieved taxpayer, he wrote: “Compensation for service in the office of a public prosecutor, from the elected head to the newest deputy, can only be for the salary publicly on record.”

Garcetti, he wrote in the letter, asked Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed on April 21, 1995, to approve the bonus pay. She granted that request May 12, Bozanich wrote.

Yet, Bozanich noted, the added pay was not publicly known until November. “The secrecy and other circumstances surrounding these bonuses do not inspire optimism that Civil Service rules were ever considered,” he wrote.

In the letter, Bozanich asked for a reply by March 8 from county officials and from the trio of prosecutors. If by then the money is not repaid, he said in an interview Tuesday, he said he will file a lawsuit.