Memo to Defendants: Call Your Attorney

Who doesn’t know about the LAPD’s Rampart scandal? You know, the LAPD’s fiasco d’jour that goes as follows: LAPD Rampart Officer Rafael A. Perez in 1998 got caught stealing eight pounds of cocaine from an evidence locker; his 1998 trial resulted in a hung jury; in September 1999 he pled guilty and bargained for a reduced sentence in return for agreeing to tell all to the LAPD and district attorney about all his (and his fellow officers’) bad deeds going back to 1995; the LAPD and D.A. have continued to de-brief him with his sentencing being put off time and again because he has so much to tell. That’s the pocket version.

Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti compiled a list of all the cases in which Perez and his cohorts were involved, and which therefore might be tainted by bad police conduct. He turned the list over to Public Defender Michael P. Judge, whose office represents over 90% of criminal defendants in Los Angeles County. By doing this, Garcetti craftily shifted to Judge, whose resources and staff are strained, the burden of shoveling out from under the Rampart mess.

Judge set up a tortuously slow procedure to parse through the mess. His office tried to figure out which of its deputies (provided they still worked there) handled each of the 4,000 cases on the list and then sent form memos to each deputy, listing her or his cases, asking that the deputies retrieve the files, evaluate them and then send back to Judge’s deputy, Dennis Plourd, a memo indicating whether any action was warranted. The problem is that Judge did not notify his 4,000 defendant clients of this significant development in their cases, as the California Rules of Professional Conduct require. So an unknown number of convicted felons, some in prison, some out, don’t know that their convictions might be tainted and, therefore, don’t know to try to do anything about it. When Judge’s deputies said no action, in their opinions, was warranted, nothing further was done. And, in some cases in which action was deemed warranted, nothing was done.

Garcetti got to wash his hands, and Judge provided the Pontius Pilate bowl in which Garcetti did the washing. When a California Public Records Act request recently was made to Judge, he refused, on advice of the Los Angeles County counsel, who also represents Garcetti, to turn over the list of 4,000. When a Public Records Act petition was filed against Judge in Superior Court, Judge responded by saying he refused to turn over the list because providing the names and numbers of closed criminal cases, all of which resulted in convictions for his clients, and all of which are a matter of public record, would violate the privacy rights of his convicted felon clients. He said of his indigent clients: “We should not assume we are dealing with unsophisticated people. All have been represented by the public defender’s office and are presumably aware that they can contact their attorneys if they have any questions about their cases. Those who do not may have a good reason for doing so, including the embarrassment of being identified publicly as a convicted criminal who may be incarcerated in prison.”

What makes this statement completely bizarre is what Judge said next. Judge claimed his office is conducting a “methodical investigation” of the 4,000 cases, that “unless people have been living in a cave”--did he really mean prison?--”they have already heard of the [Rampart] incident” and that his office, “[w]ith its limited resources,” “needs time to investigate approximately 4,000 cases handled by his office.” Then Judge gave the real reason he refuses to turn over the list: “The public defender cannot deal with the flood of phone calls and letters from those on the list.”

So, because Judge doesn’t want any of his “not unsophisticated” clients, who don’t “live in caves,” to call or to write to him, he has kept, and now fights to keep, all of them in the dark about the possibility that their convictions might be tainted. Judge repeats it: “Disclosure of the list sought by petitioner would severely obstruct and endanger the successful completion of the investigation. The methodical way the investigation is now being conducted will be disrupted by phone calls and/or letters from approximately 4,000 defendants potentially impacted by this [Rampart] incident.” And, from the other side of his mouth, Judge says all his affected clients “presumably are aware that they can contact their attorneys if they have any questions or concerns about their cases.” Call, but don’t call if you don’t know to call.

Perhaps thousands of potentially wrongly convicted felons, serving long terms in state prisons, don’t know their cases might be tainted. If Judge won’t tell them, who will?