D.A. Aide Named to War Tribunal

After surviving the so-called trial of the century, a veteran Los Angeles County prosecutor who specializes in domestic violence will soon be tackling international violence.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Scott Gordon, 40, one of the many prosecutors in the O.J. Simpson trial, has been selected to a prestigious team of lawyers prosecuting war criminals accused of human rights violations in Bosnia. Known officially as the United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the group will be based at The Hague in the Netherlands.

“I am off-the-chart, thrilled and honored by it,” Gordon said Friday, as he spent his last minutes in the downtown Criminal Courts Building. “It will be extremely interesting.”

The 11-year veteran of the district attorney’s office was one of three American prosecutors chosen to serve two-month stints on the tribunal. They will help review hundreds of cases ranging from ethnic cleansing to political terrorism. Gordon and the others were chosen from hundreds of candidates by the American Bar Assn.

A Southern California native and former Santa Monica police officer, Gordon graduated from Southwestern University School of Law and is a part-time law professor there. He is a special assistant in district attorney’s Bureau of Special Operations.

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Though he did not achieve the visibility of colleagues such as Marcia Clark or Christopher Darden, Gordon was tapped to be a member of the Simpson prosecution team because of his expertise in handling sexual assault and domestic violence cases.

Gordon said he expects that experience will serve him well. A number of the cases he will help review involve what he called “political sexual assault,” or rape and sexual abuse committed against women in official, high-level positions. “They became targets of political opportunity,” he said.

Upon finishing his temporary assignment, Gordon will return to the district attorney’s office. “From a lawyer’s and life’s perspective,” he said, “it will be fascinating.”