Lawyers Seek to Reopen Cases Over Wiretapping : Courts: Hundreds of defendants were not told government was listening. Attorneys say evidence was improperly gained.

Hundreds of criminal convictions dating back a decade should be reviewed and possibly retried because defendants were never told that the evidence against them came from illegal wiretaps, a group of criminal defense attorneys said this week in a strongly worded court affidavit.

The Los Angeles County public defender and about 50 other lawyers accused the district attorney’s office of covering up illegal wiretapping operations in violation of the law and a Los Angeles Superior Court order.

That order, issued in November by supervising criminal courts Judge Larry Fidler, required prosecutors to notify defendants who have been charged or convicted of crimes as a result of the secret wiretaps.

In most cases, the defendants charged were not the original targets of the wiretaps, but were caught by chance. The court papers also charge that prosecutors and police have been overly broad in their snooping.

By tapping cellular phone companies and public pay phones, they listened in on private conversations of thousands of people who were not the targets of criminal investigations.

Assistant Public Defender Bob Kalunian said Thursday that his office is “very concerned about the impact on pending cases and hundreds of closed cases,” as well as “the extent of the invasion of privacy of innocent individuals.”

The district attorney’s office declined to comment. Previously, prosecutors have defended the so-called handoff practice, in which information gathered during electronic surveillance of a suspect is used to build a case against other people implicated in unrelated crimes. Prosecutors also have insisted that the wiretaps were used sparingly.

The defenders dispute that and say the district attorney is not being candid.

“The [district attorney’s] misrepresentations to this court may be alleged as grossly negligent but appears more likely to have been knowingly and intentionally made,” the court papers charge. “The court can no longer trust the People to fulfill their obligations under the wiretap law.”

Under the so-called handoff technique, first adopted by the LAPD in 1985 with the district attorney’s approval, narcotics officers conducting electronic surveillance of a target passed information about other suspected crimes on to other law enforcement officials to avoid disclosing the existence of the wiretaps. Law enforcement officials referred to such insulating tactics as “building the wall.”

In many cases, the documents say, police and prosecutors obtained search and arrest warrants by claiming that confidential informants were the source of information when, in fact, the leads were uncovered by wiretaps.

Defendants never learned of those wiretaps and had no opportunity to challenge their legality in court.

When it came to light last year, the practice outraged defense attorneys, who say that it skirts state and federal wiretapping guidelines and violates defense discovery rights, as well a defendant’s fundamental right to confront his or her accusers. The Los Angeles Police Department and the county Sheriff’s Department participated in handoffs, court records show.

To support the allegation that prosecutors have deliberately ignored Fidler’s disclosure order and underreported the scope of the wiretaps, the public defender’s office filed thousands of pages of surveillance logs, internal reports and other documentation obtained from a variety of sources.

A review of some of those documents, obtained Thursday, indicates that as many as 425 defendants--far more than the 58 defendants Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti has acknowledged publicly--may have been convicted by tainted evidence.

Deputy Public Defender Kathy Quant wrote in the court papers that a nine-month investigation by her office indicates that about 300 clients have standing to challenge the wiretaps. An additional 125 suspected cases are still being investigated.

Other documentation remains under court seal.

The defense attorneys are seeking hearings at which they can challenge and suppress any incriminating evidence gained through wiretaps that targeted people other than their clients. They also are asking for bail if new trials are granted to clients who are jailed or imprisoned as a result of illegal wiretap evidence.

The district attorney’s office will have no comment until it has the opportunity to review the defense lawyers’ documentation, spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said Thursday.

The defense attorneys say that the prosecutors have misled the judge and can no longer be trusted. As an example, the lengthy affidavit cites one occasion during which a single wiretap was reported, but about 250 phones were actually monitored.

Garcetti, several of his top deputies, former Police Chief Willie L. Williams, the LAPD, the city and the county also were named last month in a class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court alleging a longtime pattern of illegal eavesdropping.

One of the plaintiffs in the federal case is Jack Whitaker, a criminal defense lawyer who says his phone conversations were intercepted and recorded while he defended a first-degree murder case. He and other plaintiffs are seeking $10 million in damages for civil rights violations. They also seek an injunction ending the wiretapping practice.

The city is asking to be dismissed as a defendant, Deputy City Atty. Cecil Marr said. A hearing is scheduled for Oct. 18.

Two days later, prosecutors and defense attorneys are scheduled to appear before Fidler in Superior Court for a hearing to determine whether law enforcement officials are in compliance with his order.

In one case, the recordings were so voluminous that a forklift was needed to retrieve them, the lawyers said in the court papers.