Rising Stars in D.A.’s Office Face the Perils of Success

David Conn’s 18th-floor office at the Criminal Courts Building came complete with one of the few perks a prosecutor can afford, a swell view of the busy city below.

And if anything testifies to the new place Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti has assigned for Conn in the pecking order, it’s the view from the courthouse in Norwalk, where Conn is being transferred.

There, Conn will be able to take in a pancake house, a movie theater and a parking garage. Quite a comedown for the deputy district attorney who successfully prosecuted the Menendez brothers for murder and is widely considered one of Los Angeles’ most able prosecutors.

The transfer, effective Monday, is a move Conn neither solicited nor wants. It has generated intense ire in an office already beset with the considerable ill will generated by last year’s elections. And it raises a fundamental question about the intersection of politics and justice in Los Angeles:

In an office dogged by criticism that it can’t win the cases that capture the spotlight, why is it that those deputies who are proven winners in high-profile cases don’t always go on to do more headline-generating cases--and regularly end up toiling in relative obscurity in the suburbs?

Is it because, as top management at the D.A.’s office frequently asserts, the branches are just as deserving of top-flight talent as the courthouse downtown? Or is it that rising stars who gain public prominence are perceived as political threats who must be exiled?

“There’s nothing wrong with sending people to branch offices,” said John K. Van de Kamp, a former Los Angeles County district attorney and ex-state attorney general.

But, he noted, “it is curious that there’s been a rash of these things.”

“The question,” he added, “is whether these are punitive transfers.”

In recent years, the winners of some of the office’s biggest cases have enjoyed a brief moment in the limelight and then been handed a map to the suburbs--particularly if they expressed political ambition.

For instance, Sterling “Ernie” Norris, who successfully prosecuted “Freeway Killer” William Bonin in 1982 for murder, has not been assigned to the highest-profile cases since. After challenging Garcetti in the 1992 elections, he was reassigned to Pasadena.

P. Philip Halpin, who in 1989 prosecuted Richard Ramirez of the “Night Stalker” serial murders, is based in the San Fernando branch, where he decides what charges to bring in cases filed there.

Dinko Bozanich and Lea Purwin D’Agostino successfully prosecuted the so-called “Alphabet Bomber,” Muharem Kurbegovic, of planting a bomb in 1974 at Los Angeles International Airport that killed three people and injured 36 others.

Bozanich, one of the state’s leading experts on the insanity defense, is now in Norwalk.

D’Agostino, who often notes that she also was the first female prosecutor in Los Angeles to put a murderer on Death Row (but who unsuccessfully prosecuted the so-called “Twilight Zone” case in the 1980s), is in Van Nuys--and has been since shortly after she ran unsuccessfully for district attorney in the 1988 elections.

Now it’s Conn’s turn.

This week, as he stuffed plaques and family pictures into boxes, Conn reflected on those before him who had been ordered to pack up, and said: “Nothing changes.”

Indeed, Garcetti himself was once exiled from the 18th-floor corridors of power. In 1988, when Garcetti was then-Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner’s second-in-command, Reiner demoted Garcetti without explanation and ultimately dispatched him to Torrance.

Some current and former prosecutors insist a case can be made that the suburbs aren’t really so bad.

“We do have cases throughout the county that are just as important [as those downtown],” Bozanich said. For instance, when photographer Charles Rathbun was tried and convicted last year of murdering model Linda Sobek, it was in the Torrance courthouse.

Robert Philibosian, who served as district attorney in 1983 and 1984, added: “One could take the view that everybody has their day in the sun but that everybody also has to be a good soldier and go where they’re assigned--and, once they’re there, hopefully transfer their talents to the people in the branch offices, which assuredly are not ‘the sticks’ to the people served by those branches. They are entitled to top-notch prosecutors.”

But, responded Norris and others, the Sobek case is the exception, not the rule. And the career path for prime talent at the D.A.’s office usually means working downtown--because that’s where many of the most complex and high-profile cases are handled.

Conn, for instance, had been based downtown for more than 15 years. He successfully prosecuted serial killer Bill Bradford. He won convictions in the so-called “Cotton Club” case stemming from the killing of entertainment impresario Roy Radin. Last March, in the Menendez brothers retrial, he won murder convictions--muting criticism that the office couldn’t win when the world was watching.

The first Menendez case had ended in 1994 in a mistrial. It was the latest entry in a string of failures over a decade in cases that had fascinated the public and the press: McMartin. King. Denny.

With the Simpson case yet to come.

“The taxpayer, the whole system of justice is being shortchanged” by transfers of experienced deputies to the suburbs, Norris said.

“You want your best people, your most experienced trial lawyers in the toughest cases,” he said. “But that [notion] is being short-circuited. The best people are being kept away from any high-profile case because . . . that would run risk of gaining publicity for that deputy and posing a challenge to Garcetti.”

Garcetti did not return calls seeking comment. But he has said many times that assignments to big cases are made with the idea of optimizing the chances of success with a jury. He has dismissed the implication that a win in a big case might create a political rival.

Garcetti’s critics, however, find that implausible, citing history--both Garcetti’s and the office’s.

Since 1972, when Vincent Bugliosi came off the successful prosecution of the Manson Family to almost defeat Dist. Atty. Joe Busch, “those in power began to hear footsteps from [others] in the office,” said retired California Supreme Court Justice Armand Arabian, a onetime Los Angeles deputy district attorney and Superior Court judge who has remained a close observer of the office.

Van de Kamp, who served as D.A. from 1975 to early 1983, largely escaped such challenges. But in 1984, a cadre of deputies backed then-City Atty. Reiner when he challenged and defeated Philibosian.

In 1988, D’Agostino challenged Reiner. She lost. Two months later she was sent to Van Nuys and said, “If you’re going to run against the boss, you’ve got to be prepared for the consequences.”

In 1992, Garcetti challenged Reiner--and won. Garcetti was supported by a significant faction within the office.

Last year, Garcetti was challenged in the primary by five others. Three were deputy district attorneys, including John Lynch, who heads the Norwalk branch and forced Garcetti into a runoff election in November. Garcetti narrowly defeated Lynch.

Last March, meanwhile, after the guilty verdicts in the Menendez case, Conn allowed in an interview that he “wouldn’t mind” one day being Los Angeles County district attorney. A few weeks after that, he was passed over for promotion and removed as acting head of the major crimes unit.

At the time, Garcetti said Conn had not demonstrated skills that would put him on a management track. Conn said he was humiliated and went on to support Lynch.

“It goes without saying that to the victor belongs the spoils,” said Arabian, who backed Lynch in the election. “When a leader is challenged from within, if you only gore him, you can expect he will be angry if he survives. That, in effect, is what we’re watching with this current regime.”

Adding to the sense of outrage felt keenly by Conn’s supporters is that the verdict in the second Menendez trial was delivered just days before last year’s primary election. “Dave saved Gil’s bacon,” is the way Conn’s backers routinely put it.

In addition, the move to Norwalk comes just a few weeks after the transfers of two other senior prosecutors who also were outspoken in their political support of Lynch--transfers that both men alleged were retaliatory.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley was sent from the San Fernando branch to head the welfare fraud unit. And Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter Bozanich was ordered to take over a regional Juvenile Court office in Downey. Neither post has traditionally been considered a stop for a climber on the career ladder.

Garcetti’s chief deputy, Sandra Buttitta, has said that the transfers of Cooley and Peter Bozanich were not retaliatory.

And Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, reiterated that Conn’s transfer is a “routine assignment.” She declined further comment, noting that Conn has filed a Civil Service grievance that is still pending.

The office employs more than 1,000 deputy district attorneys and, in fact, trial deputies and managers alike are often rotated from job to job. Sources said top management believed that sending Conn to Norwalk might actually appease him because it’s closer to his home in Orange County--a perk that might replace his room with a view.

Conn, however, said: “It’s no compensation to work closer to home if your career is not going to be furthered by your assignment.”

Lynch concurred: “I don’t think we have [in Norwalk] the kinds of cases David has been trying recently--nothing remotely approaching the visibility of Menendez or Bradford or Cotton Club.”