Grandson of Garcetti Donor Freed

Reigniting a volatile campaign issue that has dogged Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, the grandson of one of his campaign contributors has been set free after serving almost a year in custody in a case that could have brought life behind bars.

Brian John McMorrow, 33, a two-time convicted robber who pleaded no contest last November to a sole count of attempted vandalism, was paroled July 1, according to the state Department of Corrections.

McMorrow originally had been charged with attempted arson--a crime that, under the state’s three-strikes law, could have sent him to prison for life. He got a 16-month sentence, however, after prosecutors agreed in a plea bargain to disregard one of his prior convictions.

While the case was pending, McMorrow’s grandfather called Garcetti to inquire about it. According to county records, Westside businessman B.J. McMorrow donated about $13,000 to Garcetti’s 1992 campaign. He donated another $1,000 after his grandson’s plea bargain.

Garcetti repeatedly has said he was not involved in any way in deciding the outcome of the case.

The district attorney has also said many times that he did not pressure his deputies to strike a plea bargain, and an internal D.A.’s memo obtained recently by The Times supports that account.

Written March 1 by Robert Schirn, the deputy who approved the plea bargain, and sent to Bill Hodgman, who oversees the prosecution of all cases in the downtown courts, it declares: “At no time did any member of the district attorney’s administration instruct or suggest . . . the manner in which the case should be resolved.”

The younger McMorrow, meanwhile, did not win an early release from state custody. He spent about 4 1/2 months in County Jail before being sentenced, and was freed after seven more months in prison because--with credits for good behavior--he had served his time, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gloria Isaac said Monday.

Nevertheless, McMorrow’s release from North Kern State Prison in Delano is sure to sharpen debate over a case that emerged during the primary campaign as a politically charged issue in the race for district attorney.

“There’s an appearance that this case was handled differently because of the phone call [from the elder McMorrow to Garcetti],” said Deputy Dist. Atty. John Lynch, who finished second to Garcetti in the March 26 primary and forced a November runoff with the first-term incumbent.

Lynch, who heads the district attorney’s Norwalk office, said Monday that such an appearance is “wrong,” adding, “That’s not what we do.”

Garcetti said that “Lynch is playing politics with this case at the expense of the reputations of the experienced deputies who were in charge of it.”

The elder McMorrow could not be reached Monday for comment.

The younger McMorrow was convicted in March 1983, when he was 19, of two counts of robbery.

On June 14, 1995, he was recorded on videotape pouring gasoline on a pickup truck and a sports car, court records indicate.

He was charged with attempted arson. Afterward, his grandfather called Garcetti to inquire about the case, and Garcetti took the call.

Ultimately, Garcetti said, he told the elder McMorrow there was nothing he could do.

Garcetti has since said many times that he it is not unusual to get such calls. He receives them, he said, from contributors as well as from clergymen and others.

With each call, he said, he asks a staffer to check whether the facts warrant the charges and the possible punishment. In every case, he said, the charges have proved to be filed appropriately and a return call has been placed to say just that.

Schirn and his assistant, Deputy Dist. Atty. James Falco, agreed to a plea bargain after reasoning that the case would be difficult to prove to a jury and that McMorrow’s record had been clean since the robbery convictions in 1983.

After McMorrow entered the no contest plea last Nov. 22 to the sole count of attempted vandalism, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Connor immediately imposed the 16-month sentence.

McMorrow was transferred Dec. 7 from County Jail to state prison.

According to statistics provided by the district attorney’s office, 44% of the 3,280 third-strike cases that it had filed and that already were through the system as of May 31) ended in a plea bargain initiated by prosecutors.

The 2-year-old three-strikes law mandates a sentence of 25 years to life for a third felony conviction. It also doubles the usual sentence for a second strike.

In plea bargaining a third-strike case, prosecutors agree to disregard one or both previous strikes, making the current case a second or first strike.