Appeals Panel Denies Libel Suit Against D.A.

A state appeals court Tuesday tossed out a libel suit accusing Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury of defaming a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who killed a Ventura County rancher in a fruitless 1992 drug raid.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled that Bradbury’s 1st Amendment rights to free speech allowed him to criticize Deputy Gary Spencer for organizing the raid on the Trails End Ranch in southeastern Ventura County, during which Spencer shot Donald Scott to death.

Bradbury was on vacation Tuesday and could not be reached for comment, but Assistant Dist. Atty. Kevin J. McGee called the ruling “a victory for us.”

“It’s also a victory for other district attorneys around the state who’ve been faced with the possibility of being sued in a meritless lawsuit for giving their honest opinions in cases like this,” McGee said.

Kevin DeNoce, a former county prosecutor named in Spencer’s suit because he helped research Bradbury’s highly critical report on the raid, said, “This was a great day for the 1st and 4th amendments.”

The ruling against Spencer “demonstrates that one branch of law enforcement has the right to comment upon and, if need be, criticize another branch of law enforcement,” DeNoce said. “And I think it will help ensure that search warrants are obtained and executed in compliance with the 4th Amendment.”

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David Lawrence, attorney for Spencer, insisted that the Bradbury report damaged Spencer’s reputation to the point where Los Angeles County prosecutors were refusing to take his cases to court.

Bradbury, in comments to reporters, had maintained that Spencer “lost his moral compass” in pursuing a search of the ranch. “This search warrant became Donald Scott’s death warrant,” Bradbury said in his report.

Lawrence said he has not decided whether to appeal the ruling, which orders Spencer to pay the as-yet uncalculated legal fees for Bradbury’s office.

The Oct. 2, 1992, dawn raid on the 200-acre Trail’s End Ranch went bad when agents burst into Scott’s house and he emerged from his bedroom to confront them--bleary, drunk and armed. The officers say they ordered him to put down the gun that he was pointing into the air.

Deputies say Scott pointed the gun at them, forcing them to fire. Scott--the 61-year-old heir to a Europe-based chemicals fortune--was fatally wounded. Officers found no drugs in the search.

Bradbury investigated the case and issued a widely publicized, 64-page report in March 1993 that called the shooting justifiable self-defense. But the report also accused Spencer of obtaining a bogus search warrant on the $5-million coastal ranch partly because he wanted to seize the 200 acres for the government.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block’s office later issued a report that cleared Spencer of any wrongdoing and asked the attorney general’s office to investigate whether Bradbury’s report distorted the truth.

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Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren cleared the deputies of wrongdoing and chastised Bradbury for “inappropriate and gratuitous” comments about the case. Yet Lungren rejected Block’s request for a formal investigation of Bradbury’s conduct.

Then Spencer sued Bradbury and his staff, alleging that the report defamed him.

The complex case bounced through state courts in Los Angeles, Bakersfield and Ventura, en route to Tuesday’s decision by the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Ventura.

Spencer’s attorneys argued that the 1st Amendment was meant to allow people to criticize the government, not the other way around, and that Bradbury’s comments damaged Spencer’s credibility.

But the court ruled Tuesday, “The text of the First Amendment does not draw any distinction as to who is the speaker.”

Spencer failed to show that there was any malice intended by the Bradbury report, says the opinion written by Justice Kenneth Yegan.

And, Yegan wrote, Bradbury’s office showed in court pleadings “that the report and media statements related to an official investigation were made in a public forum and involved an issue of public interest.”