Verdict on Conn: Tough, Savvy Rising Star

Around the district attorney’s office, they’re calling it: “Menendez II: The Wrath of Conn.”

Now that Deputy Dist. Atty. David P. Conn has won a big one--first-degree murder convictions against Erik and Lyle Menendez--he has grabbed the spotlight in an office where winning major cases has proved elusive.

As he prepares to seek the death penalty for the Menendez brothers in the penalty phase of the case, interviews with colleagues and opponents reveal that the wrath of Conn is indeed something one would not wish to incur.

Conn has a taste for combat inside the courtroom and out.

On the day he turned 17, Conn joined the Marines and wound up in Vietnam, but was disappointed when he didn’t see any action.

As an assistant district attorney, his ambition, devotion to the job, attention to detail and winning record propelled him into his current position as acting head deputy of the major crimes unit. He is smooth, dresses impeccably and bears more than a passing resemblance to comic book hero Clark Kent, someone he admired as a child.

Earlier this week, before lawyers in the Menendez case were silenced by a gag order, Conn acknowledged with a sly smile that he “wouldn’t mind” being Los Angeles County district attorney one day. That doesn’t surprise Conn’s mentor, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, who is seeking his second four-year term Tuesday. But Garcetti said he isn’t threatened by Conn’s skills and rising star.

“Dave Conn is your prototypical Hollywood-style district attorney. If I ever thought of someone who would be my worst opponent, David Conn would be that person. He has all the qualities people look for in a district attorney. This is a man who has really defined excellence through his professional performance,” Garcetti said.

But loyalty, Conn says, keeps him from running against Garcetti, whom he considers a professional friend. Besides, he adds, he still loves trying cases.

“Menendez wasn’t my last big trial,” Conn said.

“It’s my first.”

Colleagues praise Conn’s intelligence, book knowledge of the law and farsightedness.

“He’s a thinking man’s lawyer,” Garcetti said. “He’s always thinking way ahead. He sees the whole landscape. He can stay many steps ahead of his opponents.”

To strangers, especially opposing defense attorneys, Conn often seems arrogant and inscrutable. “I don’t come to court to make friends,” he has said, more than once.

“I like him because he keeps his distance,” prominent defense attorney Harland W. Braun said. “He’s very straightforward. He’s not a hail fellow well met.”

By his own admission, Conn, who joined the district attorney’s staff in 1978, is not impressed by a high-powered defense team and an artfully woven tale of molestation, torture and abuse.

That was evident in the Menendez retrial, where his constant and harsh attacks on the abuse defense are credited by many experts with convincing jurors to convict the brothers of first-degree murder.

Beyond that, he also persuaded them to find the special circumstances that carry the death penalty--including murder by lying in wait.

The brothers admitted killing their parents during their first trial, but claimed that the Aug. 20, 1989, shootings were prompted by fear after years of sexual abuse.

Prosecutors in the first trial, which ended with jurors unable to decide between murder and lesser manslaughter verdicts, were caught by surprise when the abuse defense was presented, and they never seriously attacked it.

But two years before the retrial, Conn already had mapped out his strategy to dismantle the defense.

Though some of his colleagues thought the retrial appeared almost as unwinnable as the Vietnam War, Conn volunteered to head the prosecution.

Even before his appointment was official, Conn was interviewing witnesses, including Kitty Menendez’s brother, Brian Anderson, to gain a better understanding of the family.

“I recognized in this case, they’d put the victims on trial,” Conn said in the interview earlier this week. “My key strategy was to see to it that the next trial came to be the trial of Lyle and Erik Menendez, and not the trial of Jose and Kitty Menendez.”

As a result, Conn spent several weeks presenting larger-than-life crime scene photos and testimony about the parents’ shotgun wounds, attempting to give jurors a strong impression that Jose and Kitty Menendez were victims, not monsters.

Conn’s first high-profile case came in 1985, when he sent actor Dan Haggerty, better known as television’s Grizzly Adams, to jail for 90 days for selling cocaine. Next, he sent Bill Bradford, a serial killer with a habit of mutilating his victims, to death row after Conn argued that if he ever got out, Bradford would kill again.

“He’s absolutely right,” Bradford told the jury, acting as his own lawyer. “Think about all the others you don’t know about.”

As an organized crime prosecutor, Conn handled the Cotton Club case, a yearlong trial that exposed the seamy underbelly of Los Angeles’ entertainment industry. He won multiple convictions and life sentences in the murder of entertainment impresario Roy Radin.

Four months into the Menendez case, Conn spent two weeks on the O.J. Simpson case, presenting evidence to the grand jury.

His first Menendez victory was a ruling that a single jury would hear the case, rather than the two panels that heard the first trial. Then he refused to stipulate, as previous prosecutors had, that the laws that apply to battered women apply in the case of the Menendez brothers.

Finally, he launched what he calls his “30, 60, 90 plan,” to cut out 90% of the testimony of the brothers’ friends, teachers and coaches; 60% of the testimony by mental health experts, and 30% of the brothers’ testimony.

“The whole thing was mapped out in my mind, and then in my legal motions,” Conn said.

Some legal analysts say Conn was undaunted by facing formidable defense attorney Leslie Abramson, who had convinced half the jurors in the first trial that the brothers were not murderers.

“He probably was a perfect choice to go up against Leslie,” defense attorney Braun said. “He was more resistant to Leslie. He was the perfect guy for it.”

Added co-prosecutor Carol J. Najera before the gag order was imposed: “What people don’t realize about David is [that] he can turn around after seeming aloof and make the wittiest comment. You’d think he wasn’t even listening. The defense underestimated him. They thought he was daydreaming. The defense completely underestimated us as an aloof academic type and a perky kid.”

Beyond the strategizing, Conn inserts into his cases his own sense of right and wrong. He asked Erik Menendez during cross-examination why he didn’t run away or join the Army if his father was molesting him.

He stood up for Jose Menendez and Kitty Menendez, shifting the responsibility from the parents to their killers.

“Blame the victim. Isn’t that what the defense is all about?” Conn asked the jury, launching into his closing argument. “It [the defense] began accusing the victims of physical abuse and sexual abuse. And it finally ended with blaming them for their own deaths. It’s inevitable from the type of defense that was chosen in this case. It’s an abuse excuse, a carefully contrived one, an elaborate one, one filled with details.”

Conn’s sense of duty and his inner toughness seem to come from his humble beginnings. He grew up in a tenement in the South Bronx, N.Y., the oldest son of a factory worker and a homemaker. He was, he said, “the apple of my parents’ eye” and they were convinced he could do anything.

Catholic high school bored him. So he dropped out of school and joined the Marines at 17 to escape the South Bronx. He was stationed in Vietnam, where he fixed radar equipment but never had to carry a gun.

“Our job was to simply go into the bunkers when the missiles came in and wait for it to be over,” he said.

The GI Bill put him through Hunter College and Columbia Law School.

He hopped a plane, walked into the Los Angles district attorney’s office, and was hired immediately.

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Profile: David Patrick Conn

A career prosecutor, he won first-degree murder convictions against Erik and Lyle Menendez and now is preparing for the trial’s next phase, which will determine whether the brothers should be executed or spend the rest of their lives in prison.

* Age: 45

* Residence: San Juan Capistrano

* Education: Dropped out of high school to join the Marines. Hunter College, 1974; Columbia Law School, 1977.

* Career highlights: Joined the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office in 1978. First high-profile trial was the 1985 cocaine-dealing prosecution of actor Dan Haggerty, better known as TV’s Grizzly Adams. In 1990 and 1991, he prosecuted the Cotton Club case, winning several convictions in the murder of movie impresario Roy Radin. Named acting head of the major crimes unit in 1993. Volunteered for retrial of Menendez brothers in 1994. Briefly worked on the O.J. Simpson case at the grand jury stage.

* Family: Wife, Rosemary, is a psychologist. They have two daughters, ages 6 and 14.

* Quote: “I don’t come to court to make friends.”