Racism Issue Looms Large in Moore Trial

From the police beating of Rodney G. King to a Korean grocer’s killing of a black teenager to the Los Angeles riots, Compton City Councilwoman Patricia Moore found her way into the national spotlight of one racially charged episode after another.

Through it all, her message was the same: “There is no justice for African Americans in this country.”

Today, the 47-year-old Moore begins her own confrontation with American justice as she goes on trial in federal court on 25 counts of extortion and tax fraud.

Behind the outspoken crusader for social justice, prosecutors say, was a corrupt politician who used her official position to exact bribes from two companies with projects pending before the Compton City Council.

Moore was snared in the same probe of official corruption in Compton that brought down former Rep. Walter R. Tucker III (D-Compton) last year.

Convicted of extorting $30,000 in payoffs while he was Compton’s mayor in 1991 and 1992, Tucker recently began serving a 27-month term at the Lompoc federal prison.

In their case against Moore, prosecutors say they have amassed incriminating audio- and videotapes that show her soliciting and receiving payoffs about 20 times.

Prosecutors also intend to introduce as evidence a detailed confession Moore gave to FBI agents as well as her testimony to a federal grand jury, all obtained before she reneged on a plea agreement with the government.

Moore’s current attorneys say that her confession was coerced and that she was illegally entrapped by FBI operatives, who played on her emotional vulnerability and on her desire to improve the lot of blacks in Compton.

The race issue looms large in this trial, which will be taken up with jury selection this week and is expected to last at least two months.

In pretrial skirmishes, Moore charged that the FBI’s four-year investigation in Compton was racially inspired, part of a nationwide campaign to take down outspoken black elected officials.

At one point, her lawyers threatened to call Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, New York’s fiery Rev. Al Sharpton and beating victim Rodney G. King, among others, as defense witnesses, but they have since dropped those names from their witness list.

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Angered by the accusation of racism, the government fired back, contending that Moore approached the FBI on her own in 1983 and again in 1989, charging that corruption was rampant in Compton’s predominantly black city government and offering to serve as a confidential informant.

“In fact, it was the defendant who accused virtually every leading black politician in Compton of official corruption,” government lawyers declared in a pretrial brief.

They say Moore’s offer of assistance was rejected because she was running for office at the time and it was feared that her gesture was politically motivated.

Ultimately, the defense lost the argument when it tried to have the case thrown out on grounds that Moore was the target of “selective prosecution.”

U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall ruled that Moore’s lawyers failed to meet the burden of proof mandated by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision. In that ruling, the high court declared that to support a claim of selective prosecution, defendants must show “similarly situated whites” are getting away with the same crime.

“If there had been evidence to that effect, the court would have no hesitance in sanctioning the government,” Marshall said.

But defense lawyers continue to insist that racism permeated the FBI investigation.

They say Moore was set up by the FBI through a black undercover operative, an ex-convict named Stan Bailey, who became her lover, promised marriage and then absconded with her money.

The last time she saw him, she says, was the night he invited her to his apartment for dinner, slipped a knockout drug into her drink, then raped her and left her bound to a bedpost.

Acknowledging that Bailey was an undercover operative, the government says it never authorized him to develop a sexual relationship with Moore and that she never received any bribe payments from, through or in the presence of the mysterious government agent.

Interestingly, the prosecution does not plan to call Bailey as a witness, but the defense is eager to interrogate him about his role in the case. Bailey is expected to testify that he never sexually assaulted Moore.

He was brought into the investigation to assist another undercover operative, San Gabriel Valley businessman John Macardican, who is white and who is the star witness against Moore.

Macardican was recruited by the FBI in 1990 after he revived plans to build a $250-million garbage-to-energy conversion plant in Compton. In the mid-1980s, the Compton City Council rejected a similar proposal by Macardican. He claims he was rebuffed because he refused to pay bribes.

In an office suite chosen by the FBI not far from City Hall and fitted with hidden video cameras and microphones, Macardican set up headquarters for his Compton Energy Systems. It was there, the government says, that he made many of the payments to Tucker and Moore with cash supplied by the FBI.

Macardican also wore a hidden recorder taped to his torso during meetings with an assortment of public officials. He was wired by the FBI nearly 500 times over a four-year period, he once estimated.

According to the government, Moore extorted $50,100 from Macardican’s company and $12,400 from Compton Entertainment Inc., which was seeking City Council permission to open a card casino.

Moore, along with many Compton clergymen, had been a vocal opponent of the casino project. Prosecutors say she extorted those payments to buy her abstention or absence when the issue came up for a vote. Unlike the alleged payoffs from Compton Energy Systems, however, these payments were not secretly recorded.

Moore was out of office when she learned through a newspaper leak in the spring of 1994 that she was under FBI investigation and might soon be indicted.

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After contacting the U.S. attorney’s office and hiring a lawyer, she negotiated a deal with the government. Despite the scope of her alleged crimes, she would be allowed to plead guilty to just one felony and one misdemeanor count in return for her cooperation with the FBI.

During a debriefing by FBI agents, Moore not only admitted extorting money from Compton Energy Systems and Compton Entertainment, according to government documents, but she also told of receiving monthly payoffs of $500 to $1,000 from Western Waste Industries, which had an exclusive contract to haul commercial waste in Compton.

For the next five months, Moore collaborated with the FBI, taping phone calls at her home and wearing a concealed tape recorder during meetings with various businessmen, including Kosti Shirvanian, founder and chairman of Western Waste. All of the targets were white businessmen, according to the FBI.

Prosecutors intend to use her admission about Western Waste, corroborated by the testimony of an unnamed Western Waste vice president, to show that she was predisposed to taking graft.

Moore also testified for the government before a federal grand jury.

In November 1994, Moore entered her guilty plea before Judge Marshall. Soon afterward, she said, word began circulating on the street that she had negotiated a deal with the government and would be testifying against Tucker. Death threats followed, she said.

With the help of a new lawyer, Moore went back to court and persuaded Marshall to allow her to withdraw her guilty plea. The judge consented, deciding that Moore’s previous lawyers had failed to fully investigate the possibility of taking the case to trial.

As a result, Moore was charged anew, this time on 25 counts of extortion and income tax fraud.