Judge Ponders Arguments on Request for Rampart Retrial

The week before Christmas has been anything but quiet in the chambers of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Connor, the presiding judge in the recent convictions of three Los Angeles police officers, where the question looms: Will she or won’t she?

After hearing arguments Thursday, Connor put off until today ruling on whether she will grant the officers new trials on charges that they framed gang members, or go ahead with their Jan. 16 sentencing.

Connor hardly spoke during the hourlong hearing Thursday, giving no hint of how she might rule.

There was one tense moment toward the end of the hearing when she told the attorneys to keep the upcoming sentencing date on their calendars. She then reassured a nervous defense team that she is still deciding the issue and would probably issue a written ruling today.

A reversal of the convictions has the potential to weaken an already problem-plagued investigation into police corruption in the LAPD’s Rampart Division, but court observers say that’s not Connor’s problem.

“Judges have to do what they think is right,” said Gigi Gordon, a Santa Monica defense lawyer who has been appointed by the Superior Court to assist anyone who may have been harmed by rogue LAPD cops. “The judge has no business considering the symbolism. It is a legal issue, plain and simple.”

Defense attorneys are seeking to have the Nov. 15 convictions of Sgts. Edward Ortiz and Brian Liddy and Officer Michael Buchanan thrown out, based on a litany of complaints.

Their convictions, which followed a monthlong trial, were heralded as a sign that bad LAPD officers would be held accountable for their crimes.

The guilty verdicts were the first to come out of a scandal that has resulted in the suspension of dozens of officers and the overturning of about 100 tainted cases.

But the convictions quickly came under siege by the defense.

The defense contends that the officers deserve new trials because of insufficient evidence, jury misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct and a computer error that confused jurors and led them to wrongly convict.

The officers were convicted of conspiracy for making up a story that they were hit in 1996 by a truck driven by gang members.

It is routine to file motions asking for new trials after a conviction. Most are denied. But in this case the judge has indicated she has some serious concerns about whether jurors were led off track by the computer error.

Five jurors have signed affidavits saying they were confused by the error, which incorrectly said that the officers claimed they suffered great bodily injury when struck by the truck.

The jurors have said they couldn’t agree on the prosecution’s contention that the officers fabricated the story about being hit by the truck. Instead, they convicted them because the computer error led them to believe the officers had exaggerated their injuries in an attempt to frame gang members.

The jury determined that “skinned knees and twisted ankles did not constitute great bodily injury” and convicted the officers, attorney Barry Levin argued. “That is what the travesty of justice is.”

Levin also said it is reprehensible for prosecutors, knowing the jury was misled, to try to keep the verdict intact.

“I do not believe an ethical prosecutor would want a verdict obtained in this way to stand,” he said.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Laura Laesecke said the defense’s arguments are based on emotion, not law.

“They have in essence taken an emotional plea and shrouded it in some kind of legal argument,” she said. “Their evidence is merely a house of cards.”

She said the biggest problem with the defense’s argument is its reliance on the affidavits of the five jurors. The affidavits are inadmissible under court rules and case law, she said. To encourage free discussion, the court has given jury deliberations a veil of secrecy, she said. The jury can not be asked how it arrived at a decision.

The defense wants to turn a jury into a focus group “where we can stand behind a mirror and peer in,” Laesecke said.

“You can not peer into the deliberative process . . . it chills open discussion.”