D.A. Won’t Charge Sybert Over Signs

Despite an admission of wrongdoing and videotaped proof, the district attorney’s office announced Tuesday that it would not charge state Assembly candidate Rich Sybert with vandalism for trashing his rival’s campaign signs.

Prosecutors decided not to pursue misdemeanor charges against Sybert for defacing candidate Tony Strickland’s placards because they concluded they did not have enough evidence, according to Jeff Bennett, the district attorney’s chief deputy in charge of investigations.

“No one is saying this conduct is acceptable,” Bennett said. “However, criminal charges are only filed when we can prove something beyond a reasonable doubt. And in this case, we did not think we could have convinced a jury. Clearly, this is really an issue for voters to decide.”

Bennett said some of the signs torn down by Sybert in Thousand Oaks last week had been posted illegally, without the permission of property owners or in clear violation of a city ordinance on political propaganda.

But he declined to elaborate on whether other signs Sybert destroyed had been illegally placed. He also declined to say whether that made it legal to tear them down without permission, and he refused to comment on how that affected signs that had been destroyed in Camarillo by Sybert.

In a terse news release, the district attorney’s office simply stated it “views this matter essentially as a political controversy which is best resolved by the voters through the political process, not the criminal justice system.” Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, a Republican, could not be reached for comment, and his office referred all calls to Bennett.

Strickland and Sybert are among the five GOP candidates seeking the Republican nomination June 2 to replace Assemblyman Nao Takasugi (R-Oxnard) in the 37th District, which includes Oxnard, Camarillo and Thousand Oaks. Takasugi, who endorsed Sybert, cannot run again due to term limits.

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The other Republican candidates are John P. Lane, a fraud investigator; Jere Robings, a taxpayer advocate, and Toni Young, a Port Hueneme councilwoman. Elementary school teacher Rosalind McGrath is the only Democrat in the race while scientist Michael Farris is representing the Reform Party.

Sybert is a Harvard-educated attorney and Oxnard toy company executive who twice ran unsuccessfully for Congress this decade. He did not return phone calls seeking comment.

But Sybert’s campaign manager, Joe Piechowski, expressed relief with the district attorney’s decision Tuesday, saying his boss is eager to move on.

“Obviously, we’re very pleased,” Piechowski said. “We can now get back to talking about the issues in this campaign.”

Strickland’s campaign manager, Joe Giardiello, downplayed the decision not to prosecute, saying the videotape shot by Strickland’s supporters and the media attention it has generated spoke for itself.

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“The D.A. has decided that this is a political controversy best decided by the voters, and you know what? We agree with that,” Giardiello said. “We think the court of public opinion will yield quite a different verdict for Mr. Sybert.”

When initially confronted with accusations he had torn down Strickland’s signs about 3 a.m. early last week, Sybert, 46, ridiculed the charges.

“I checked with my wife,” he said, “and she’s pretty sure the guy sleeping next to her Monday night was me.”

But the next day, after Strickland, 28, released a videotape of Sybert in the act, Sybert quickly changed his stance. He admitted he had lied and said he was “embarrassed and ashamed” by what he had done.

Some rival candidates Tuesday regarded the district attorney’s decision not to charge Sybert with a mixture of puzzlement and anger.

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“Vandalism is vandalism,” said candidate John P. Lane, a former Los Angeles Police Department sergeant. “It’s a misdemeanor, and it’s prosecutable.

“They were given hard evidence, and politics or no politics, a crime is a crime,” he added. “Does that mean that if somebody were shot, but over politics, it wouldn’t matter?”

But Robert Gallaway, Ventura County’s Democratic Party chairman, expressed support for Bradbury’s decision, saying prosecutors have scant resources.

“I would have done the same thing, but I would have released a statement saying it’s an issue of prosecutorial discretion,” Gallaway said. “But I can assure you Rich Sybert will treat it as an indication he did nothing wrong.

“My attitude is, just keep it in the papers,” he quipped. “That’s all that matters.”

The district attorney’s decision is not the end of Sybert’s troubles.

Thousand Oaks City Atty. Mark Sellers said Tuesday he is considering seeking a fine against Sybert, the former head of Gov. Pete Wilson’s Office of Planning and Research, for violating the city’s sign ordinance.

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“I’m very concerned about the self-help approach to correcting what one sees as an illegal sign,” Sellers said. “We all know that emotions run high during elections, and the self-help approach can lead to breaches of the peace, physical violence and injuries no one wants to see occur in this city.”

Meanwhile, Sybert is losing some of the political endorsements he had secured before the sign-trashing incidents were made public. On Tuesday, Moorpark Mayor Pat Hunter announced he had withdrawn his support for Sybert “in light of the events that have occurred.”

And the local chapter of the conservative California Republican Assembly, the state’s largest and oldest grass-roots GOP organization, voted to censure Sybert this week, saying he should quit the race.

“This man is an embarrassment to the Republican Party,” said Russ Hopkins, the county’s highest-ranking CRA official. “We are appalled by his conduct, and lying about it made it even harder to stomach.”

Piechowski, however, was quick to point out that the California Republican Assembly had already endorsed Strickland, and that most of those who had endorsed his candidate were apparently standing by him.

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Perhaps the most important endorsement--Takasugi’s--remained solid for Sybert after a conversation between the two men over the weekend, Takasugi said.

Takasugi--who had lent his name to a tough-on-crime mailer by Sybert, which reached residences just as the videotape flap broke last week--said he believes Sybert was still the best person to succeed him.

“I had a pretty long and frank discussion about it with him,” Takasugi said Tuesday. “I’m going to stand by Sybert. I don’t condone what he has done, but I think he has learned a very important lesson.”

Times staff writers Chris Chi and Kate Folmar contributed to this story.