Judge Clears Moore to Return to Her Trial

Looking frail and confined to a wheelchair, former Compton City Councilwoman Patricia Moore returned to federal court Tuesday to resume her extortion trial after spending two weeks in a hospital psychiatric ward.

Acting on the opinions of two court-appointed psychiatrists, U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall lifted her earlier ruling that Moore, suffering from severe depression, was unfit to continue standing trial.

At a closed-door hearing Aug. 15, the judge had declared Moore mentally incompetent and ordered her placed under government custody at White Memorial Hospital, where she underwent psychiatric treatment until her release Tuesday.

Dressed in drab blue hospital garb with her wrists and legs cuffed, Moore entered the courtroom in a wheelchair pushed by U.S. marshals who drove her from the hospital in a government van.

Later, wearing a blue jacket over a flowered print dress, Moore could be seen smiling occasionally in hushed conversations at the defense table with her attorneys, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr. and Cheryl C. Turner.

Mesereau said Moore still takes anti-depressant medication and will continue psychiatric therapy while staying with her family during the trial. The 47-year-old defendant also suffers from nausea and vertigo, he said, requiring her to use a wheelchair.

Although Moore was declared ready to resume her place in court, proceedings were delayed for a day because two jurors did not show up.

This morning, the prosecution will pick up where it left off Aug. 1 after four days of trial testimony.

On that day, prosecutors played several hours of surreptitiously recorded audio- and videotapes purporting to show Moore soliciting and accepting bribes from a businessman who was secretly cooperating with the FBI.

Moore, who served on the Compton City Council from 1989 through 1993, is charged with extorting money from two companies in exchange for her votes.

The government contends that she took $50,100 from Compton Energy Systems, which wanted to build a $250-million waste-to-energy conversion plant in Compton, and about $12,000 from Compton Entertainment, which sought permission to establish a card casino in the city.

All 20 payments from Compton Energy Systems were secretly recorded. More tapes are to be played today.

Moore contends that she was illegally entrapped by the FBI in a plot to undermine outspoken African American elected officials like herself. She says she was set up by an FBI operative who romanced and later deserted her, but not before sexually abusing her.

In other developments Tuesday:

* The judge excused one of the original 12 jurors in the case because of a back ailment. The juror was replaced by one of four alternates, giving the panel its first African American juror. The panel now consists of eight whites, two Asian Americans, one Latino and one black.

* The judge said she will decide whether to order an evidentiary hearing into charges by Mesereau that a government witness, Compton school board member Basil Kimbrew, tried to dissuade defense witnesses from testifying. Assistant U.S. Atty. John M. Potter objected to such a hearing, saying the defense has no witnesses to support its claim.

* The newly seated member of the jury and a second juror were questioned outside the presence of other panelists after they reported inadvertently hearing accounts of Moore’s psychiatric problems. Both were allowed to stay on the jury after telling the judge that what they heard would not affect their objectivity.