Lawyer Faces Murder Trial in Staging of Car Accident

Personal-injury lawyer Gary P. Miller was nowhere near the Golden State Freeway in Sun Valley where accident stager Jose Luis Lopez Perez died on June 17, 1992, as the car he was driving was crushed under a big rig.

And it is unlikely that Miller, who worked through an intermediary, ever met Perez.

But the 53-year-old Encino lawyer is about to go on trial for the murder of Perez in a test case that could extend the criminal responsibility of accomplices for each other’s actions.

Under current California law, a crime partner who does nothing to provoke a killing normally cannot be charged with the murder of an accomplice.

But as Miller and three co-defendants prepare to go on trial in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, Deputy Dist. Attys. Leonard Shaffer and Max Huntsman are invoking a gumbo of legal theories in alleging that the lawyer, as the ring’s mastermind, is criminally responsible for Perez’s death.

Miller, the prosecutors say, set in motion the chain of events that led to the fatal accident. And the practice of staging big-rig accidents is so inherently dangerous, they say, that it automatically implies malice, the mental state a jury must find to convict in a second-degree murder case.

Miller also is accused of paying a “capper” to bring him accident cases involving big rigs, which often bring in high settlements.

As a result, Shaffer said, Miller “created the marketplace” and, because prosecutors hope to prove he knew that the capper staged accidents, he is legally responsible for Perez’s death, Shaffer said.

“My position here is, the way to really slow this [fraud] down is to cause the professionals to know they can’t get away with it,” said Shaffer. “They can’t insulate themselves from the responsibility of the actions of their co-conspirators. They have to accept the burdens along with the benefits. If they make money off of this, they can live the consequences as well.”

Miller’s lawyer, Harland Braun, said that nothing in California law supports a murder charge against his client. He will ask Superior Court Judge Harvey Schneider today to toss out the murder charge when lawyers haggle over jury instructions.

Braun argues that Perez accidentally killed himself while staging the collision. He said there was no way his client could have foreseen the death, and that no legal precedents exist to guide a murder prosecution he described as “a real stretch.”

“It’s a weird one,” he added.

Braun said that if the judge upholds the prosecutors’ theory, it would create a glitch in the law under which crime partners can be charged with murder in the deaths of accomplices in less serious cases, such as insurance fraud, but not in more serious felonies, such as bank robbery.

“California case law is unclear for this case, so it provides a little wiggle room,” UCLA law professor Peter Arenella said. “Insurance fraud is the crime the lawyer directly aided and abetted. Would death be a reasonably foreseeable outcome? I think reasonable courts can disagree.”

What prosecutors in this case are trying to do is nothing new, Shaffer insists. Instead, he considers it “a natural extension” of the legal principles of accomplice liability and implied malice.

Miller, who has been placed on inactive status by the California State Bar, has pleaded not guilty to murder as well as other charges surrounding the alleged fraud scheme.

The prosecutors allege that Miller used capper Filemon Santiago, even though he knew Santiago was staging accidents. Miller was linked to the case by financial records and business cards found in Santiago’s home.

Two others, Rubidia Lopez and Isiais Martinez, also will be on trial for murder and fraud-related charges.

They allegedly participated in “swoop and squats,” in which the driver of one vehicle pulls in front of the so-called “squat” car, forcing the second driver to slam on the brakes in front of a big rig. But, in trying to avoid Perez’s car, the truck driver flipped his rig onto the vehicle, crushing Perez.

“What we have said is that swoop and squats, slamming on the brakes and stopping short of a big rig is dangerous and was deliberately performed by the people in the vehicle,” Shaffer said. “It was done with conscious disregard for human life.”

He continued: “We also know that people who engage in a conspiracy to commit a crime are responsible for the acts of the other conspirators, if those acts are in furtherance of the basic conspiracy.”

Miller knew about the insurance fraud, and encouraged the freeway accidents because they paid so well, Shaffer alleged.

“I think the court is going to look at the situation here, expanding personal responsibility,” Shaffer said. “You can’t insulate yourself if you’re a doctor or a lawyer. Without the attorney buying, there would be no staged collisions.”