Dallies Suspect May Be Free, but Police Can’t Let Case Go

Let’s state the obvious: the Orange County district attorney’s office wouldn’t drop a cop-killer case if it thought it had a ghost of a chance of winning. It holds court in a conservative county where juries almost always give it what it wants.

So when prosecutors decide to drop long-standing charges against the man accused of killing Garden Grove Officer Howard Dallies Jr. in 1993, you figure they simply had no case.

Why, then, can’t the Garden Grove Police Department accept that? Why can’t it admit the evidence just isn’t there to convict John J.C. Stephens for gunning down Dallies? Not many cases get torpedoed as quickly as this one did last week during an abbreviated preliminary hearing. The department wound up with a shiner for appearing to go over the top in getting witnesses to talk.

The easy answer is to say the department got too close to the case, that it lost objectivity because one of its comrades was killed.

Two years ago, a police lieutenant said, “This shooting ripped the heart out of this department. We were reeling. A phantom gunman kills an officer, and we had no idea why, how it happened, or who did it. We had to find the answers, or this would keep eating at the soul of this department.”

The straight-from-the-

heart honesty of that remark suggests that, when it came to solving the Dallies murder, it was going to be no holds barred.

But even then the department knew the case against Stephens never approached slam-dunk status. It wanted him--wanted him badly--but knew that the damning evidence had to come from witnesses whose credibility was shaky. They had nothing else.

Still, for reasons that are all too human, the department persisted.

Even associate defender Stephen Biskar, who represented Stephens, concedes that.

He says the public accepts a “certain degree of hardness” when it comes to police interrogation of witnesses. But even allowing for the cops’ honest and pure motives, Biskar says, “When you’re so close to it, and it’s someone you really care for, you lose a little bit of professionalism and objectivity. . . . It’s not sinister or evil. It’s just the way things work.”

That may well be the legacy of the Dallies investigation, which stretched from March of 1993 until charges against Stephens were dropped this week.

When both the prosecutors and the defense tell you you don’t have a case, you probably have to listen.

However, I don’t think the history of this case is complete without saying this:

Police work is easy when people confess or leave the murder weapon with their fingerprints at the scene.

Other times, it’s not so easy. Sometimes, you do your best work when the trail is coldest. Oftentimes, your witnesses have to be worked and reworked.

That’s how Garden Grove Police Sgt. Mike Handfield, who headed a task force on the case, sees the Dallies investigation.

I raised all the negative scenarios with him, and he wasn’t defensive about any of them. The police don’t agree with the D.A.’s decision to dismiss charges but support it, Handfield says. In other words, it thinks the case could have gone to a jury but understands why it didn’t.

“It’s a very complex case,” Handfield says. “It takes a very complex understanding. It takes somebody to look at it, digest it and have discussions about it.” He then said as diplomatically as he could that the cops and district attorney’s office never found common ground on how to present the case or surmount the obvious obstacles.

Police never wanted to throw the case against a wall to see if it would stick, Handfield says. Witness credibility was an issue but says he thinks a jury could have been led through the maze and still convicted Stephens.

“We were committed to the case, to the facts that support that [Stephens] was our suspect and, even after the charges are dismissed, that he is still the prime suspect.”

Personal passion can help an investigation, he says, disputing the suggestion that police lost their objectivity in pressing the case against Stephens.

Such is the post-mortem of a case where murder and an array of human emotions intersected.

Police wanted closure and didn’t get it. They know the likelihood of ever trying Stephens for Dallies’ murder is slim. And now isn’t the time to ask whether they take solace from at least trying to find their comrade’s killer.

Much too soon, Handfield says.

“Seeing this guy walk out of jail yesterday and thinking he could be living next to you or I could be a scary thought.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

Readers may reach Parsons by calling

(714) 966-7821, by writing to him at

The Times Orange County Edition,

1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa,

CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.