Moore Defense Claims Emotional Trauma

Emotional trauma stemming from her failed relationship with an undercover FBI operative led former Compton City Councilwoman Patricia Moore to take more than $60,000 from a local businessman, her attorneys say.

In a document filed Friday, Moore’s lawyers asked a federal court to hire her psychologist to testify about her state of mind at the conclusion of a romantic affair with a government operative.

Rex Beaber, one of three attorneys defending Moore against 25 counts of extortion and federal tax evasion, said emotional fallout from the relationship “played a profound role” as Moore accepted cash from representatives of a waste-to-energy plant while serving on the City Council in 1991 and 1992.

When the operative, who called himself Stan Bailey, ended the affair, Moore fell into a temporarily weakened mental state that affected her decision-making, Beaber said.

“To the world of entrapment, this is the parallel of temporary insanity,” he said.

The lead prosecutor in the case, U.S. Atty. John Potter, said he would not comment on Moore’s defense until he receives a statement from her psychologist. But he will ask a government psychologist to examine Moore if Judge Consuelo Marshall allows the defense’s testimony, he said.

Moore, who declined to comment on the case, has said that she loaned money to, had a romantic relationship with and considered marrying Bailey. She also says that the cash she received later from Bailey’s supposed business associates seemed to her a repayment of the money he owed her, rather than an assurance of her vote to support building the plant in Compton.

Last year, Moore, 47, withdrew a guilty plea she made in 1994 to a single count of extorting $9,100. She contends that her early confession was coerced and that she is the victim of a government conspiracy to discredit black politicians, one that earlier this month led to a 27-month prison sentence for former Rep. Walter Tucker III on similar charges.

But Moore’s claim that an undercover operative had sexual relations with her could play best with a sympathetic jury, said USC law professor Martin Levine, who is also a psychoanalyst.

Such personal involvement by Bailey is “certainly not preferred practice and a jury might very well regard it as dirty business,” Levine said.

Although Levine called “quite farfetched” the defense’s theory that Moore suffered from a temporary lack of good ethical judgment, he said that her own therapist--Encino psychologist Allan Gerson--could offer convincing insight into her intentions when she accepted the alleged bribes.