D.A. Hands Probe of Prosecutor to State

The district attorney’s office has referred to the state attorney general’s office a “potential criminal aspect” of its investigation of Deputy Dist. Atty. Lawrence M. Longo, sources said Tuesday.

The referral, made last Wednesday, stems from a personnel investigation by the district attorney’s office into financial ties that developed between Longo’s family and Marion “Suge” Knight, the founder of Death Row Records, while Longo monitored Knight’s probation for a 1992 assault.

Longo’s daughter, Gina, was signed in January to a deal with Death Row, the nation’s top rap label. In addition, Knight lived this summer in the Longo family home in the exclusive Malibu Colony on the beach.

Few details of the “potential criminal aspect” were available Tuesday. But one source familiar with the investigation emphasized that the focus was on Longo, who has been a prosecutor for 26 years, not others.

Two sources said the district attorney’s office had been investigating Longo’s role in a handful of other cases. The source declined to elaborate.

The matter was referred to the attorney general’s office, another source said, because “a district attorney’s office cannot effectively perform an investigation of one of its own [deputies] if there are potential criminal charges.”

Several sources said that the “potential criminal aspect” does not relate to Knight’s chief defense attorney, Encino lawyer David Kenner. The Malibu home had been rented--for $19,000 per month--to Kenner, who let Knight live there. Kenner also negotiated the record deal with Longo’s son, Frank, who is an attorney.

“I have been informed that the matter that’s been referred to the [attorney general] is unrelated to me,” Kenner said Tuesday. He declined further comment.

Carol Pollack, who heads the attorney general’s criminal division in Los Angeles, did not return a phone call seeking comment. A spokesman for the office, Steve Telliano, declined to comment. Steven A. Sowders, who is heading the district attorney’s investigation, could not be reached for comment.

Longo declined Tuesday to comment, noting that higher-ups in the district attorney’s office have ordered him not to discuss his family’s business relationships with Knight until the investigation is completed.

But Longo’s attorney, Donald Wager, said he had been informed last week of the district attorney’s request to the attorney’s general’s office.

“This is a waste of time,” Wager said Tuesday. “There was no crime. The district attorney’s office seems to be fascinated by things that appear to be criminal, which everyone who knows Mr. Longo knows are not the least bit criminal.”

Wager said officials with the attorney general’s office told him they were going to conduct their own investigation and could not give him a time frame as to when it would be completed.

Longo was taken off the Knight case Sept. 17, when the district attorney’s office received a tip that Knight was living in the Malibu house. Longo has since been placed on administrative leave with pay.

Knight, 31, has been on probation since Feb. 9, 1995, for a 1992 assault on two aspiring rappers in a Hollywood studio.

In a plea bargain recommended in court by Longo and Kenner, Knight entered no-contest pleas to two counts of assault. Judge John W. Ouderkirk suspended a nine-year prison term and imposed five years’ probation.

Ouderkirk sent Knight to County Jail on Oct. 22 pending a probation violation hearing. Knight has been there since.

On Oct. 28, Ouderkirk strongly suggested from the bench that the state attorney general’s office take over Knight’s probation case from the district attorney’s office because of a possible conflict of interest.

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The district attorney’s office resisted that call. In court, Deputy Dist. Atty. William Hodgman said he had reviewed the case and found no conflict of interest at the time of the plea bargain. Because Longo had been removed from the case, he emphasized, there was no reason to disqualify the entire district attorney’s office.

Hodgman also said then that the district attorney’s investigation of Longo was a personnel matter only.

Ouderkirk took himself off the case Oct. 30. Before giving it up, Ouderkirk observed that disclosures of financial relationships between Longo and Knight raised the “specter of criminal charges.”

Possible charges, he said, included obstruction of justice, bribery and extortion.

Judge J. Stephen Czuleger, who took over Knight’s case from Ouderkirk, was notified Wednesday by the district attorney’s office of the attorney general’s involvement, sources said.

Knight’s probation violation hearing began last week with Hodgman seeking to have the probation revoked and the nine-year term imposed.

The next hearing in the case is set for Monday.