3 Convicted Rampart Police Officers to Request New Trial

Three Los Angeles police officers who were convicted last month of framing gang members will file a formal motion next week requesting a new trial, according to their lawyers.

The attorneys contend that their clients--Sgts. Edward Ortiz and Brian Liddy, and Officer Michael Buchanan--were convicted Nov. 15 because some jurors were confused and at least one engaged in misconduct.

The Los Angeles district attorney’s office plans to argue against the request for a new trial. A hearing is set for Dec. 21 before Superior Court Judge Jacqueline A. Connor, the same judge who presided over the trial.

The three officers were the first convicted in an ongoing investigation into corruption at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division. As a result, their case has attracted national attention, and last month’s guilty verdicts represented a bittersweet moment for LAPD officials who have vowed to root out misconduct but who were braced by the prospect of police officers serving time in prison.

Prosecutors contend that the officers made up a story that they were struck by a pickup truck in an alley in an effort to frame gang members for assaulting them. But shortly after the verdict was announced, the defense began to scrutinize the jury’s decision.

According to Harland W. Braun, who represented Buchanan, the defense plans to challenge the jury’s verdict on two fronts.

First, he said, it will charge that the officers deserve a new trial because the jury foreman, Victor Flores, was not objective. The defense contends that Flores told two alternate jurors on the first day of the trial that he believed that the officers were guilty.

One alternate juror has testified that she heard Flores make the statement. But Flores and another alternate testified that they do not remember such a conversation.

In addition to that challenge, Braun said the defense will argue that a computer error on a police report confused jurors and led them to convict the officers improperly.

Defense attorneys said five jurors have signed affidavits saying that they could not agree on whether the officers were struck by the pickup. Instead, the jurors say that they convicted the officers after agreeing that the three had not suffered great bodily injury.

The officers, however, never said they had suffered great bodily injury--merely that they had been assaulted in such a way that was likely to cause such an injury. An error on a computer-generated report incorrectly claimed that they had.