Only 1 in 3 Killings in L.A. County Led to Any Punishment

Getting away with murder is not the exception in Los Angeles County. It is the rule.

Only half of all homicide investigations lead to arrests and charges, even though the criminal justice system devotes its best people and significant resources to catching killers.

Only a third end with anyone convicted of murder or manslaughter.

The main reason is as clear as it is tragic: There are just too many killings.

In a county with almost 2,000 willful homicides annually, the criminal justice system is so overwhelmed that breakdowns are commonplace from crime scene to courthouse.

Those are among the key findings of a 20-month Times study of how homicides are investigated and prosecuted in the nation’s most populous county.

The study covered all 9,442 willful homicides reported by public agencies from 1990 through 1994 and tracked those cases through the criminal justice system until mid-1996.

What emerged is a portrait of a system that, from start to finish, is often ineffective:

* Slayings have become increasingly difficult to solve because more of them involve strangers killing strangers on the streets.

* With too many cases and too little time, detectives are not always able to follow all credible leads. And with too few detectives, more and more homicides go unpunished.

* As a result of inadequate investigations, many murder charges are dismissed.

* Faced with weak cases, prosecutors offer suspected killers plea bargains that, in extreme cases, allow suspects to go free that very day. And, in other cases, the weaknesses are not weeded out until trial.

The study found that someone was arrested and charged with murder or manslaughter only 47% of the time--a significant decline from past decades.

Only 16% of the slayings ended with murder convictions, and another 14% in convictions for the lesser charge of manslaughter. These numbers do not include the 2% of cases resolved in Juvenile Court.

LAPD Chief Willie L. Williams and Sheriff Sherman Block declined to comment, instead referring questions to aides who said that police cannot do the job the public expects with the resources they have.

Daryl F. Gates, who preceded Williams, said the ability to find and punish killers has been declining for many years and is “atrocious.”

“The system has just broken down,” said Gates, who was LAPD chief from 1978 to 1992.

“We are just not willing to do what is necessary to treat [homicides] as . . . the most important investigations we have, and the most important prosecutions, the most important court cases. . . . I think our lack of respect for human life is pretty apparent.”

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti and his top assistants declined to be interviewed for this series.

His predecessor, Ira Reiner, said overwhelmed police have been conducting “thinner investigations” for years, leading the district attorney’s office to file weaker cases.

“It is a ripple effect,” said Reiner, who served as the county’s top prosecutor from 1985 through 1993. “People are not consciously applying lower standards. But when you’re on overload and you hit that sort of critical mass, the cases start moving by you like they’re on a conveyor belt.”

Los Angeles County is not the only major metropolitan area struggling to solve murder cases, said David Kennedy, a senior researcher in criminal justice at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Clearance rates in most urban areas have dropped significantly as killings have increasingly moved out of homes and onto the streets, becoming harder to solve.

But records show that Los Angeles County’s decline is especially precipitous. Twenty-five years ago, four out of five murder cases were solved by police agencies; now, about half are.

In those 25 years, the number of homicides has tripled, but officials say the number of detectives has not kept pace.

Detectives must work hard to achieve justice under difficult circumstances, and many do exemplary jobs. Routinely called out in the middle of the night to investigate crimes in neighborhoods that are hostile to law enforcement, they often work days at a time with little or no sleep, trying to get at the truth.

“Every homicide [detective] I’ve ever known in my entire life, the thing he wants to do most of all is put that killer in jail,” said LAPD Deputy Chief John D. White.

Workloads in the most violent areas are now so extreme that some homicide detectives have no realistic hopes of doing their jobs properly--of thoroughly checking all credible leads.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s South Bureau had so many unsolved murders that the FBI came in last year to help. Veteran Det. Paul Mize told federal agents: “You’ll be appalled” at some of the leads that were “never acted upon.”

Mize calculated that some detectives have only a week to spend in the field investigating a homicide before being hit with the next case. “They have to focus on what they think is going to pay,” he said.

How overwhelmed is the system?

The signs that it is foundering are everywhere, in ways large and small.

In at least 95 cases, records show, the district attorney’s office charged suspects with murdering people who remained very much alive.

Those mistakes typically resulted from clerical errors. But some were not cleared up for months--not until people who were supposedly dead showed up in court to testify against their “killers.”

One murder case fell apart when a veteran detective could not remember whether the eyewitness had identified the man on trial or someone else.

“That is the way that it is in Los Angeles, unfortunately,” Superior Court Judge Charles Horan told the jurors as he explained why the case collapsed. “To use the word busy is to vastly underestimate what happens.”

Harried police have arrested innocent people for murder because their names, birth dates or physical appearances matched those of fugitives. Such arrests have become so commonplace that judges hand out wallet-sized judicial clearance forms known as “wrong-man certificates.”

The second time a man was wrongly arrested for the same slaying, the judge counseled him that he should not have left his “wrong-man certificate” at home. Another judge added insult to injury by making a man pay $100 for legal costs after he was mistakenly arrested for murder.

Hundreds of fugitives who have been charged with murder remain at large. Police are just too busy to spend much time looking for many of them.

In Michael Terry’s case, police logs indicate that officers made only three tries at finding him in nine years.

Terry was charged with murder in 1981. In 1983, officers knocked on the door of his last known address but no one was home. No one was home when they knocked again three years later. And in 1989, a sister answered the door but said she did not know where Terry was.

The fugitive finally was captured in 1993 when he pulled a knife on another sister who turned him in to police. But the case against him had not aged well. Charges were dismissed after prosecutors concluded that there was no way to prove he had committed the crime after 12 years had passed.

Murders Move to the Streets

A seismic shift in the location of homicides has heaped new burdens on a system already on overload.

In the 1970s, according to a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, half the slayings in Los Angeles were committed inside homes. Many practically solved themselves because they were crimes of passion involving family or friends. Only a quarter took place on the streets, often stemming from criminal activity or disputes among strangers.

The pattern is now reversed. Only a quarter of homicides happen in the home, while half occur on the streets, where physical evidence tends to be scant. A surge in drug and gang-related killings has driven the change.

“A lot of [murders] we see are not traditional detective mysteries, with a dead body in the bedroom [and] fingerprints, trace evidence and hair fibers,” said Compton Police Chief Hourie Taylor. “You’ve got a dead body on the street where somebody drove by and shot. And you have a [bullet] casing.”

Solving street killings is hardest in communities where residents are too frightened or too mistrustful to talk to police.

Detectives can be reduced to leaving their business cards in doorways, hoping that some civic-minded soul will at least make an anonymous call.

The system tries to protect witnesses who do come forward, in some cases by giving them anonymity and physically moving them to safety. But such efforts have largely failed to break down the sense that witnesses are safer keeping their mouths shut. Often, no one will step forward even when a crowd witnesses a slaying.

Witnesses who do agree to talk often are unreliable. And when a case gets to court, they frequently disavow their statements.

The problem is most acute in gang killings, which accounted for about four in 10 of the county’s homicides. A district attorney’s manual tells novice prosecutors to expect at least one witness to recant in every gang case.

State prison inmate Randy Kinard, the key witness to a machine-gun drive-by gang killing, took the witness stand in 1993 but refused to repeat the identification he had provided police.

“Let the record reflect that I’m saying the only one that have seen the person is me, and I’m not coming forward,” he declared. “So the best thing the courts can do for me is send me back to Pelican Bay where I come from.” The case was dismissed.

Too Many Murders, Too Little Time

The study demonstrated problems at every step of the criminal justice process. The strain of too many murders and too few resources ripples through the system, from investigations through prosecutions.

In the busiest LAPD divisions, the Sheriff’s Department and cities such as Compton, it is not unusual for detectives to handle 14 or more homicide cases a year. Some detectives handle more than 20, which officials say is twice as many as is reasonable to do a thorough job.

Under heavy pressure to clear their cases and move on to the next tragedy, detectives sometimes ask the district attorney to file charges before they have even interviewed all witnesses.

“Usually their line is, ‘If somebody got killed in Dodger Stadium, would I have to interview 50,000 people?’ ” said Deputy Dist. Atty. John Lynch, who lost the November election for district attorney.

About 500 times per year, the district attorney’s office rejects a police agency’s request to file murder charges. These cases belong disproportionately to the LAPD. The department handles half of the homicide investigations in the county, but it accounts for two-thirds of the cases rejected for prosecution.

Prosecutors and detectives blame each other for preventing more cases from being filed.

Prosecutors contend that there is insufficient evidence, shoddy police work or some other flaw that would make winning a conviction in these cases improbable.

Police contend that prosecutors often are reluctant to file difficult cases because they are too interested in preserving high conviction rates.

The big stakes can lead to harsh words. “You get threats, people yelling at you,” said P. Philip Halpin, who successfully prosecuted the Night Stalker serial killings and now decides which cases to file in the district attorney’s San Fernando office. “There are times when anybody in their right mind would say, ‘Hell, all I have to do is sign this piece of paper and this detective is out of my life.’ ”

Under such pressure, or because of poor judgment, prosecutors file weak cases at times. Some are filed based on police promises to do more investigation later.

The handling of homicides is an important indicator of the performance of police and prosecutors. The study found by some measures that both exaggerate their effectiveness.

In more than 300 cases, police agencies reported that they had cleared a case even though it had been rejected for prosecution. No matter that the suspect was still walking the streets; the police decided that that was as far as they could go, and the case was closed.

Garcetti boasts that his office gets convictions in 93% of all types of cases that it handles, and that nine in 10 murder suspects who are tried by juries are convicted.

But both statistics, while true, are incomplete and overstate the office’s effectiveness. Most cases end not in trials but in plea bargains. And often defendants are convicted of lesser offenses than the original charges.

While 37% of people charged with murder were convicted of murder, The Times found, another 33% were convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter and 8% were convicted of non-homicide charges, such as robbery. The rest ended in dismissal or acquittal.

A district attorney’s spokeswoman said officials would have no comment because they could not verify The Times figures without conducting their own study of the newspaper’s data.

Cases That Fall Apart

About 150 times a year, a prosecutor or a judge dismisses charges against a defendant. Roughly one in five cases in this overwhelmed system winds up this way.

Often cases are dismissed when a key witness cannot be located.

Adelso Cruz, according to court records, terrorized his neighborhood by robbing and threatening elderly people. When he was charged with a double murder, detectives believed they could get him off the streets for good. But LAPD Det. Robert Felix was having trouble tracking down a teenage girl who was the key witness.

Felix went to the apartment complex where the girl sometimes lived with her mother. He arranged to have the manager page him if the girl showed up. But Felix did not respond when the manager attempted to reach him several times over a period of weeks.

The problem, Felix testified at a 1993 court hearing, was that “he paged me on weekends when I was off or inappropriate times when I couldn’t respond.”

Prosecutor George Castello said, “We are not going to take the position that Det. Felix did perfect work here because obviously he didn’t.” But, he added, Felix is a very busy man.

The judge was unsympathetic. He ruled that by not trying hard enough to locate the witness, the prosecution had forfeited its chance to try Cruz. The case was dismissed.

Felix declined comment, referring a reporter to his supervisor, Lt. Ross Moen, who said: “Bob Felix is an outstanding homicide detective. This one particular instance . . . is not an accurate reflection of his investigative ability.”

Credibility problems also prompt dismissals. In one instance, a prostitute was the key witness in three separate killings during three weeks in 1992.

Trouble arose when she claimed that an LAPD detective had told her to falsely say she had witnessed one of the slayings. She said he had promised to help her get off skid row in return, records show.

Suspicious that anyone would be in a position to witness three murders in three weeks, the district attorney’s office launched an investigation into whether the detective, who figured in all three cases, induced her to lie.

Prosecutors did not charge him with a crime, concluding that a jury would probably take his word over that of the prostitute, who was not only an admitted liar, but a crack cocaine addict and a paid police informant. The detective, who has since retired, did not respond to a written interview request.

The district attorney’s office dismissed charges in two of the cases that hinged on the prostitute’s testimony. In the third case, the alleged killer pleaded guilty.

Neither prosecutors nor judges relish dismissing cases against people who police believe are murderers.

At times, a dance develops over who should take responsibility.

As Municipal Judge Glenette Blackwell told a prosecutor whose capital murder case had fallen apart: “Don’t leave me hanging out to dry. . . . If you really doubt the case, then kick it. Ethically that is what you should do.”

The prosecutor did not want to move for a dismissal, so the judge gave him a piece of advice: Learn what more experienced lawyers know about the political realities of courthouse life.

“You protect your judges all the time,” she said.

Bargaining Weak Cases

Weak cases do not always get jettisoned. As prosecutors try to salvage cases with evidentiary problems, murder charges are plea-bargained down to lesser charges carrying lighter sentences. More than four in 10 murder defendants plead guilty in Los Angeles County, usually to manslaughter and other lesser charges.

The plea bargaining sometimes starts when a case teeters on collapse.

The case against Anthony Hill was “a piece of crap” to begin with, the prosecutor wrote.

But it took a turn for the worse when detectives could not find their only copy of the “murder book”--their full documentation of the investigation--which had to be shared with defense attorneys prior to the trial.

Dropping their quest for a life sentence, prosecutors offered Hill a six-year term for the 1993 robbery-murder of a cable television salesman in South Los Angeles.

The suspect jumped at the chance.

His own attorney walked away shocked. “As a citizen, I was completely offended that this guy got six years,” said Deputy Public Defender Brent Tufeld.

In a seeming role reversal, LAPD Det. Maurice Landrum was reportedly happy with the deal. “Landrum ecstatic,” the prosecutor wrote in the public portion of the case file. “He stated, ‘Oh good, because I still can’t find the murder book.’ ” Landrum did not respond to a letter seeking comment.

Some plea agreements can leave the families of victims horrified.

In a 1992 Los Angeles drug slaying, McKinley Booker was hogtied, beaten with a board and had his throat slit. But the prosecution case crumbled. One witness recanted; the other was blind.

At the preliminary hearing, the investigating officer’s credibility came into question. He testified that he had found blood on the hands of a suspect--an assertion that was not in the police report and contradicted what a defense attorney said the officer had told her.

Soon the case ended in a plea-bargained three-year sentence.

At the sentencing, the victim’s sister, Diane Booker, spoke up. “It appears that there is no justice within the system,” she said. “It deeply, deeply bothers me that people who can kill someone can be given a lighter sentence than someone who may do a lesser charge.”

Weak Cases That Go to Trial

When defendants opt for a trial, the vast majority are convicted and sentenced to prison. But cases with glaring weaknesses can and do go forward.

After a 1993 carjacking left a retired postal employee dead, the LAPD broadcast a bulletin for two suspects. It was based on descriptions provided by two residents and two passing patrol officers who saw portions of the crime.

The broadcast said the killers were a Latino man and a black man. But a short time later, officers arrested a Latino youth who told them that he and another Latino--not a black--committed the slaying.

Jose Maria Sanchez, a roofer with no criminal record, was arrested and charged.

Sanchez’s attorney, Michael Russo, wondered what had happened to the black man.

“They want to change the facts to fit my client,” he said in an interview on the eve of trial. “Is this ‘Through the Looking Glass’ or what?”

At Sanchez’s trial, the neighborhood residents, both African Americans, said they had mistakenly told police that the assailant was black. They testified that Sanchez was the man they had described as black.

Only one of the patrolmen testified. He offered an alternative explanation. Despite the police reports of two attackers, he said there really had been three--two Latinos and a black man.

After jurors found Sanchez not guilty, Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor Hunter told them that they had done the right thing. “It was a weak case,” Hunter said. “We don’t want maybes.”

That did not satisfy jury forewoman Phyllis Ortman, who did not understand how a case based on so little could get to trial.

“We kept waiting for something,” said Ortman, who had served on five previous juries. “But there was nothing there.”

Not only did prosecutors fail to prove the case, she said, but 10 jurors believed that Sanchez was the wrong man.

“I don’t know if we should be disgusted with the prosecutor or with the judge who let it get this far.”

Times staff writers Rich Connell, John Johnson, Victor Merina and Dan Weikel contributed to this article.

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How the Study Was Performed

Over the last 20 months, The Times has conducted a computer-assisted study of homicides in Los Angeles County from 1990 through 1994.

The study, covering 9,442 slayings, traced the handling of cases through each step of the criminal justice system. Excluded from the study were accidental, vehicular and justifiable homicides.

The study examined whether race, media attention and the class of victims and defendants had any bearing on outcomes. It also studied the role of police agencies and courthouses.

The analysis was conducted on databases created from a variety of sources.

Data about victims, including race, largely was obtained from the county coroner’s office and the state health department.

Many crime details, such as the type of slaying, were secured through the state Department of Justice.

No agency keeps a comprehensive database that tracks the details of all homicide prosecutions. So the newspaper created its own master list of defendants, reconciling computerized lists from the Superior Court, the Municipal Courts and the district attorney.

Then a team of researchers, supervised by staff writers Ted Rohrlich and Fredric N. Tulsky, collected and coded information from more than 5,000 court files.

The study also examined which homicides received Times coverage during the five-year period. For comparison, it looked at homicide coverage by eight suburban newspapers during a two-month period.

Databases were constructed and merged by Richard O’Reilly, director of computer analysis, and Sandra Poindexter, a data analyst.

Professor Richard A. Berk, director of the UCLA Statistical Consulting Center and an expert on criminal justice, analyzed the data. Graduate student Cathie Lee trained court researchers and assisted Berk.

Dwight Morris of the Campaign Study Group in Virginia served as a consultant on the project.

Editorial researcher Nona Yates and former librarian Mary Edwards, who supervised the media study, contributed to the project.

Court data was collected by freelance researchers Christina Verdin, Gary Tharp, Colleen Lacey, John Weems, Jon Garcia, Roger Teft, Christina Chang, John Gonzales, Louisa Toot, Chris Bates, Nicole Doll and Ty Brown.

Interns Erin Texeira, Antonio Olivo, Margaret Ramirez, Ealena Callender, Paul Johnson, Lorenza Munoz, Jose Cardenas, Emi Endo and Kenneth Chang helped obtain data from police divisions concerning case outcomes.

Unsolved Murders

Los Angeles County homicides and clearances from 1970 to 1994.

Most Killers Go Unpunished

The Times studied 9,442 homicides in Los Angeles County from 1990 through 1994 and tracked them through mid-1996. Just over half the cases were solved. In two-thirds of the prosecuted cases, someone was convicted of murder or manslaughter. A tiny fraction got a death sentence.

HOMICIDES: 9,442

46% of the cases were not solved

54% of the cases were solved

SOLVED

7% of the cases were “cleared other”* or juvenile arrests or unavailable

47% of homicides resulted in arrests and prosecution

PROSECUTED

7% prosecution pending

6% charges dismissed

2% found not guilty

32% convicted or pleaded guilty

CONVICTED OF ANY CHARGE

2% were convicted of non-homicide charge (such as attempted murder)

14% manslaughter

16% 1st- or 2nd-degree murder

CONVICTED OF MURDER

In 7% of all murders, a defendant was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison

In 5%, 25 years to life

In 3.5%, life in prison without parole

In 49 murders, about 0.5% of the total, death sentence resulted

*Suspect dead or somehow unavailable

Note: All percentages are based on the total number of homicides

Source: L.A. Times Homicide Study

Cases Solved

Since 1970, the number of homicides in Los Angeles County has nearly tripled, peaking in 1992. The number of solved cases has not kept pace with the homicides, resulting in lower clearance rates. While the homicide rate in Los Angeles County is lower than in some other major counties, the proportion of slayings that get solved also is low by comparison.

1990 murder rate*

Los Angeles: 20.8

New York City: 30.7

Wayne Co. (Detroit): 30.6

Philadelphia Co.: 31.7

Harris Co. (Houston): 23.7

*Homicides per 100,000 population

Sources: Los Angeles County data: Los Angeles Times Homicide Study (1990-94) and California Department of Justice (1970-85). Other county data: FBI, Harris County (Texas) Sheriff’s Office and Pennsylvania State Police.

Researched by NONA YATES / Los Angeles Times

About This Series

Today: A System Overwhelmed

With almost 2,000 homicides a year in Los Angeles County, the criminal justice system is overwhelmed. Charges are filed in only one in two cases, and someone is convicted in one in three.

Monday: Police Battle Odds

Homicide detectives face mounting obstacles, including scant physical evidence and deteriorating support services. From crime scenes to crime labs, they struggle with limited resources.

Tuesday: The Role of Race

Justice is not always even-handed: Harshest punishments go to killers of whites and Asians, and in publicized cases. Police agency and courthouse make a difference, too.

Wednesday: Wrongly Accused

Innocent people are wrongly arrested and charged with murder. Some are jailed for weeks and months, often because of shoddy police work.

Thursday: Toughest Cases of All

Gangster killers roam the streets because intimidation and witness killings make gang slayings toughest to solve. Terrorism forces adjustments, from station houses to courthouses.

Friday: A Question of Truth

When cases are haunted by allegations of police misconduct, questions often linger about whether the actions were intentional or were innocent mistakes.

Saturday: A Week of Tragedy

In a typical week, 32 people were slain in the county. Who were they? How and why were they killed? Where and when were the killings? And what has happened since?