Rampart Decision Poses 1st Challenge for New D.A.

Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley won a bitter election, in part, by criticizing his predecessor’s handling of the Rampart corruption investigation.

Now, less than a month into his new job, Cooley’s big test has come: What should he do with the prosecution of three LAPD police officers now that a judge has overturned their convictions?

Cooley, who inherited the case from his predecessor, Gil Garcetti, is expected to announce his decision shortly after returning Tuesday from a Christmas vacation in Hawaii.

He could appeal the order. He could seek a retrial. He could drop the charges.

Or, he could avoid making any of those choices and hand the case off to the U.S. attorney’s office, which could decide to prosecute the officers for violating the civil rights of gang members.

Regardless of what decision Cooley reaches, it is almost certain to generate controversy.

“Today, every [major case] has a constituency. No matter what decision you make, it is going to be controversial,” said former Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, who was dogged during his administration by his failure to win convictions in the McMartin preschool molestation case.

“But none of us are drafted for [the D.A.] job, so there is no basis to bellyache about being second-guessed. The bottom line is, [Cooley’s] honeymoon is over.”

The honeymoon ended late Friday, when Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Connor overturned the convictions, saying jurors misunderstood a piece of evidence and reached their verdicts in error. She said she did not believe prosecutors had proved their case.

Already, people are lining up to try to win Cooley over to their side.

The Rampart officers’ attorneys are eager to talk to him.

“We would meet him at the plane if we could,” said one of the lawyers, Harland Braun.

Meanwhile, LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks, upset by Connor’s ruling, said he would do everything he could to ensure the officers are retried--if not by the district attorney’s office, then by federal authorities.

“This is not over by a long shot,” he has said.

Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, who also wants the case pursued, said she finds it hard to believe Cooley would ignore Parks’ comments.

“I think with the emphasis Steve Cooley placed on getting to the bottom of the Rampart scandal during his campaign and the fact that the police chief called on him to prosecute, I would have a hard time imagining him dropping it,” she said.

The reality is that the case Cooley is inheriting is only a fraction of what it was when it began.

Two-thirds of the counts--and one of four original defendants--have fallen away after jurors declined to return guilty verdicts. The officers cannot be retried on the dismissed counts because it would be unconstitutional.

The prosecution only won convictions on a narrow part of its case. The jury convicted Sgts. Edward Ortiz and Brian Liddy and Officer Michael Buchanan of conspiracy to frame gang members by concocting a story that they had been hit by a pickup truck driven by gang members.

But that conviction was based on the jury’s misunderstanding, Connor ruled, of a computer-generated police report that incorrectly led jurors to believe the officers had exaggerated their injuries.

Ortiz, Liddy and Buchanan were the first officers prosecuted in an ongoing probe into corruption in the LAPD’s Rampart Division. Critics of the Police Department had hoped the convictions would spur more prosecutions. (Only one other officer, Nino Durden, is awaiting trial as part of the investigation. He is charged with attempted murder.) But Connor’s decision changed that. If Cooley appeals Connor’s decision and loses, he would have to decide whether to seek a retrial. Or, he could decide not to appeal and go straight to a retrial. But a retrial conviction is hardly a sure thing.

Cooley’s predecessor built the Rampart case on former police officer-turned-informant Rafael Perez, whose love life had made him a difficult witness.

In the recent trial, Perez was not called as a witness after his ex-girlfriend had accused him of murder. After the trial, she recanted, saying that she was trying to get revenge onPerez. Even with that issue out of the way, defense attorneys see Perez as an easily impeachable witness.

Bill Carrick, a political consultant who ran Garcetti’s unsuccessful reelection campaign, said that losing a Rampart retrial could haunt Cooley’s administration. Like it or not, prosecutors are judged by their success at trial.

“Is this going to be Cooley’s O.J.?” Carrick said, referring to the acquittal of O.J. Simpson and the damage it did to Garcetti’s legacy. “I don’t have a crystal ball, I don’t know. But I think in terms of long-term impact there are going to be a series of Rampart issues. He will be judged on all the verdicts, fairly or unfairly.”

Cooley said his mission would be to seek justice, not to win convictions at all costs, a veiled reference to messy cases like McMartin and Simpson.

So far, Cooley’s actions seem to suggest that he will stick to his promises, even if it means letting some defendants go.

He rewrote the office’s policy for enforcing the California three-strikes law, saying that third-time felony offenders should not automatically be sent away for 25 years. He determined it was unfair to pursue the harsh penalty unless the crime involved violence or large quantities of drugs.

He also told his prosecutors to quit using the three-strikes law as a bargaining tool because some defendants were pleading guilty to lesser crimes they didn’t commit to avoid a 25-year mandatory sentence.

Perez’s lawyer, Winston Kevin McKesson, who doesn’t want to see the Rampart prosecution dropped, sees these developments as signs that Cooley will pursue the Rampart case.

“I am sure he’s going to power full speed ahead in an effort to eradicate any injustices in criminal justice by continuing to pursue a prosecution,” McKesson said.

Defense lawyer Braun said he foresees Cooley’s philosophy leading him to drop the case.

“My guess is he’ll decide it on the merits, like the judge. She said she can’t worry about implications. She has to worry about the facts of this case. I think Cooley will take the same approach.”

Until Friday’s ruling, Braun said, Cooley had been honoring prosecutorial decisions begun under Garcetti. “Now, for the first time, it has been officially handed off. It is Cooley’s case, and he has to decide what to do.”