Defense Attorney’s Decision Touches a Nerve

Chuck Samonsky doesn’t look forward to playing back his voice mail messages these days.

“Disgusting!” callers hiss. “Unethical!”

They ask how he can live with himself. They demand his immediate disbarment. A few have threatened his life. A woman said she was praying that one of his family members be killed. Of more than 50 furious callers, only one has left a valid return number.

Samonsky, a well-known criminal defense lawyer, has emerged as the villain of the day. The letters’ pages quiver with condemnation; for many, Samonsky has become a persuasive symbol of all that is wrong with the justice system--the arrogant, selfish, clever, hyper-technical attorney who twists the law to his own purpose and the public be damned.

But before he is hanged, Chuck Samonsky deserves a fair hearing.

We don’t yet know the full story of 14-year-old Kali Manley’s brutal end, or whether Samonsky’s client in fact killed her, or all the details that Samonsky knew when he tried to strike a now-infamous deal with the district attorney.

We know only that Kali is dead, and a community plunged into grief has focused its white-hot anger on a lawyer who contends he was just trying to do his job.

Here are a few of the sad facts, as they have emerged publicly:

An Oak View girl named Kali Manley disappeared after last being seen with David Alvarez, 22, a man with a short temper and a long record. Several hundred volunteers scoured the hills around Ojai looking for her.

In jail on an unrelated charge, Alvarez was questioned about Kali. He told his attorney, Samonsky, that he wanted to lead police to Kali’s body. But Samonsky urged him not to. Maybe the district attorney will agree not to file any potential death-penalty charge in exchange for your help, he told his client.

That wasn’t to be. After on-and-off discussions that stretched over three days, Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury wouldn’t bargain. Accompanied by Samonsky, Alvarez eventually took officers to a roadside drainpipe in the back country. Kali’s body was stuffed inside.

Charges against Alvarez are expected soon.

Awhile back, I saw a bumper sticker on a car no doubt driven by a lawyer. It said: “Have you hugged your criminal defense attorney today?”

It was an apt joke. Defense attorneys expect no hugs. In many quarters, they are seen as worse than the criminals they defend--scum with post-graduate degrees. That is why it’s hardly surprising that a community heavy with anguish should lash out at the lawyer whose quest to save his client’s skin only prolonged its pain.

Of course, Samonsky could have allowed Alvarez to help the officers immediately. By doing so, he would have eased the Manleys’ agony, ended the community’s uncertainty and called off the frustrating search.

But for better or worse, he wouldn’t have been much of a lawyer.

“He acted completely ethically and properly,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, a specialist in legal ethics at the USC law school. “A lawyer has a duty to zealously represent his client within the bounds of the law. This was quite clearly in his client’s interest.”

Veteran defense attorney James Farley agreed. “I probably would have done exactly the same thing,” he said.

And yet.

The Manley family agonized. The searchers tramped through the brush. Parents feared for their children’s safety.

Samonsky, meanwhile, went through his own dark night of the soul. While the Ojai Valley hoped Kali was still alive, he knew she was dead and he knew how--though not where--her body could be found. Conferring with lawyers he respected, he was told the same thing over and over: Don’t let your client do it. Don’t expose him to that kind of risk.

“You have to understand that my obligation is to my client,” he told me. “I have to protect them against all possible scenarios.”

For three nights Samonsky didn’t sleep. He would run the problem relentlessly through his mind: “Can I allow an unsophisticated 22-year-old to make that kind of decision and walk himself into a buzz saw? What if the worst turned out? Assume he wasn’t responsible for the crime but was charged for it and convicted and sent to death row: What do I tell the family then? ‘Sorry?’ ”

Bradbury received Samonsky’s offer a week ago Tuesday and was immediately discouraging. Still, according to Samonsky, the district attorney needed to consult his top prosecutors--who had already scattered for the holidays. He gave his final decision--a resounding no--on Thursday night.

“If it hadn’t been Christmas, it would have taken hours instead of days,” Samonsky said.

On Christmas Day, Samonsky spent hours more grappling with the question. He made sure his client understood the risks of leading police to the body. The next morning, he arranged the fateful trip to the back country.

Did Samonsky really expect Bradbury--who is not known as an enthusiastic bargainer--to deal away the death penalty in the high-profile slaying of a young girl just down the highway from Bradbury’s ranch? After all, Samonsky had for nine years worked as a prosecutor in Bradbury’s office and knew him well.

Samonsky said he had “legitimate hope” that Bradbury would go for the deal. He would not elaborate but said he respects Bradbury’s decision.

What bothers him more are those hate-filled messages on his machine. A former prosecutor, he is accustomed to threats; he got his share after putting hard-core bikers behind bars, and two decades later, he is still kept up to date on when those jailhouse doors will spring open.

But he can’t understand people vilifying a defense attorney for behaving like one.

“My God, what are you going to do--allow the Star Chamber back?” he asked. “I’m doing nothing more than what I’m sworn to do and bound to do.”

Staff writer Steve Chawkins’ e-mail address is steve.chawkins@latimes.com