City Seeks Removal of Judge From Police Cases, Claiming Bias

A federal court judge is so biased against police he should be barred from handling any lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department’s elite undercover squad, attorneys for top city officials alleged in court documents filed Friday.

The risky legal maneuver to remove U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts from hearing cases against the LAPD’s Special Investigations Section reflects the city’s growing concern that the judge is overly sympathetic to the plaintiffs’ arguments that the unit operates as a kind of “death squad” and should be disbanded.

As evidence of Letts’ alleged bias, attorneys for the City Council, Mayor Richard Riordan and other city leaders quoted recent rulings and conversations in which the judge said all police officers lie.

According to the 29-page motion, Letts recently told the mayor of Torrance that “police officers always lie. The officers who are good at lying get away with it, and the ones who aren’t get caught.”

Throughout the SIS cases, the judge has maintained that all police, even good cops, “adhere to a code of silence,” the attorneys contend.

Moreover, the attorneys allege that Letts is on a “personal crusade” to reform the LAPD.

“If a district judge had expressed the opinions about an ethnic or racial group that the judge has expressed about police officers, [he] surely would be disqualified,” the motion states.

“Police officers are no less entitled to an impartial court than are members of such groups as the Germans, tobacco company executives and Internal Revenue Service agents,” the motion said, referring to cases in which other judges were removed because of blanket statements about groups.

The sharply worded document is a high-stakes gamble that could backfire if the request to remove Letts is denied, according to several legal experts. Such motions, they added, rarely succeed.

“It’s risky,” said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor now on the staff of Loyola Law School. “If you lose, you antagonize the judge even more. You do this either when you think you have enough evidence that you’re going to be successful or you think you have nothing to lose. It might be the latter in this case. . . . They’ve been pummeled by this judge. The judge is not going to be flattered by this motion.”

UCLA law professor Peter Arenella said the quotes cited in the brief “do raise the appearance of partiality, and such an appearance might be sufficient reason for recusal even if the judge is not actually biased.”

Letts is handling several lawsuits stemming from two SIS shootings: Two cases stem from a June 1995 holdup in Newbury Park in which one robber was killed and another, a convicted murderer--now the lead plaintiff--was seriously wounded. Five cases stem from a February 1997 armed robbery at a Northridge bar and a car chase that left three of four occupants of the getaway car dead and one bystander wounded.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Stephen Yagman, who filed the lawsuits, said he does not believe that the examples cited by the city’s attorneys amounted to judicial bias.

“All cops do lie and they all do subscribe to a code of silence,” he said. “It’s kind of odd that they don’t know that about their own clients.”

Furthermore, Yagman said the defendants sought to disqualify Letts two years ago and were unsuccessful.

“This motion is more of an attempt to get published their views about the judge than it is an attempt to get the judge disqualified,” he said.

Yagman also called the motion a “ploy to delay” the trial.

For months, city officials have privately complained that Letts is openly hostile to their side and has been unduly influenced by Yagman.

“During settlement conferences, Judge Letts sounds more like the plaintiffs’ attorney than an impartial federal judge,” said one City Hall source familiar with the case.

Attorney Skip Miller, who is representing the city officials, said the motion was filed “reluctantly, only after thorough discussion and consideration with the clients and city leaders.”

“This is something I would have preferred not to have had to do, but it was absolutely necessary to preserve fundamental fairness,” Miller said.

According to the motion, Letts has relied on the 1991 blue-ribbon Christopher Commission report to conclude that all officers are dishonest. That report, while finding that a code of silence existed, did not intend to besmirch the integrity of every officer in police work, the motion states.

In addition to accusing Letts of being biased, Miller alleges in the motion that the judge has “displayed an unusual interest” in the cases, attempting to preside over all SIS cases.