Role of Officer, D.A. Official Questioned

A former high-profile member of the district attorney’s Rampart corruption task force and a veteran detective from the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division are accused of improperly influencing the identification of suspects in armed-robbery cases, according to court documents and interviews.

Judges have dismissed three cases, which were investigated by Det. Ray Hernandez and prosecuted by ex-Deputy Dist. Atty. George Rosenstock. Rosenstock and Hernandez deny any wrongdoing.

The two are accused of allowing robbery victims to study and keep photos of their alleged assailants before attempting to pick the attackers out in live lineups or in court, a practice that some legal experts say corrupts the identification process. Two victims said in interviews with The Times that they felt pressured to make positive identifications in their cases, regardless of whether they believed the suspects had actually committed the crimes.

Questions about cases handled by Rosenstock and Hernandez come from a judge, a defense lawyer, prosecutors and crime victims, and they surface amid a law enforcement scandal that has preoccupied city leaders and others for months. If true, the new misconduct charges are particularly stinging because they involve a detective from the Los Angeles Police Department’s vaunted investigative group that probes high-profile crimes and from a onetime member of the special prosecution team charged with ferreting out police corruption.

Rosenstock, who resigned from the district attorney’s office last month, had been removed from the D.A.’s corruption task force in February.

He made headlines two months later when he publicly accused Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti and Garcetti’s handpicked team of prosecutors of being too slow to file charges against LAPD officers implicated in the corruption probe. Rosenstock says that his transfer to the D.A.’s Long Beach office was punishment for his hard-charging ways, and that he has been harassed ever since.

“I’m public enemy No. 1,” the former prosecutor said. The new allegations, he said, are merely a continuation of an ongoing campaign to discredit him.

District attorney sources said Rosenstock was transferred from the task force because he improperly released confidential investigative material to another prosecutorial agency. They denied any harassment.

Judge Dismisses Robbery Charges

The cases now under scrutiny are unrelated to Rosenstock’s role in the corruption probe. They are cases he prosecuted while assigned to the district attorney’s career criminal division.

In the most recent case, a judge dismissed robbery charges against defendant Patrick Williams last month when it was disclosed that a victim in the case had been given a photo of Williams before attending a live lineup in which he identified the suspect.

Deputy Dist. Atty. George Castello, who inherited the case from Rosenstock when Rosenstock was transferred to the corruption task force, asked the judge to dismiss the case because he believed it was fatally flawed by the identification procedure.

Superior Court Judge Judith L. Champagne agreed.

“There has been a lot of time wasted, a lot of expense, because of very poor tactics,” Champagne told Castello. “I hope your office will take some action.”

John K. Spillane, director of the district attorney’s bureau of special operations, confirmed that he is heading an internal investigation of the allegations. He said the matter has also been referred to the LAPD.

Spillane declined further comment, citing confidentiality laws regarding personnel matters.

Hernandez, who is highly regarded by his colleagues in the LAPD and by many prosecutors as well, declined to comment for this article.

A police official familiar with the case said the allegations against Hernandez are the subject of an internal inquiry. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also defended the 25-year veteran of the LAPD, noting that Hernandez was with a partner when the alleged misconduct occurred and emphasizing that the defendants in each of the cases had long criminal records and may have committed the crimes, even though their cases were dismissed.

Williams, in fact, is serving a 15-year sentence for an unrelated robbery in which police who had him under surveillance from a helicopter watched as he knocked a woman to the ground and snatched her purse.

According to several sources in both the district attorney’s office and the LAPD, Hernandez acknowledged giving two robbery victims photos of their alleged assailants in advance of live lineups or preliminary hearings in which identifications were expected to be made.

Hernandez said he felt uneasy about this procedure, and provided the photos only on instructions from Rosenstock, the sources said. Hernandez said Rosenstock told him that the practice would later be revealed to the defense in court, but that never happened, the sources said.

Rosenstock, in an interview with The Times, flatly denied having issued any such instructions to Hernandez, whom he referred to by the nickname “Boom Boom.”

“You don’t tell Boom Boom anything,” Rosenstock said. “Boom Boom is very much his own detective.”

The former prosecutor also pointed to a case last year in which he exposed the alleged coaching of a witness by another LAPD detective. In that case, Rosenstock brought to the court’s attention that the detective allegedly had pointed out the suspect for the victim to pick in a “six-pack,” a display of six photographs of different people used to establish the identity of a suspect.

“The judge heard that and dismissed it outright,” Rosenstock said. “I think that shows I don’t really play the identification game.”

Rosenstock, however, defended the practice of showing crime victims, before lineups or preliminary hearings, photo spreads that include pictures of their alleged assailants to refresh their memories.

“In my opinion, absent a court order saying you should not show a six-pack to a witness to refresh their recollection, it is not inappropriate,” Rosenstock said. “It’s been my practice for years.”

He added, “It may be the better practice not to do that, or to disclose it if you do so. But it’s not a legal requirement.”

Spillane, the district attorney official, while refusing to comment specifically on Rosenstock’s case, said the practice in question is not sanctioned by his office.

“This is not something we encourage or condone, because it raises the question of impropriety,” he said.

Others seized on the risk associated with such a practice.

“Erroneous eyewitness identification is the most common cause of wrongful convictions of innocent people in this country,” said Los Angeles County Public Defender Michael P. Judge. “For the prosecutor and the police to engage in such a suggestive process taints the identification and corrupts the criminal justice system.”

Giving the photographic six-pack to the witness “can make it look as if the witness is being trained to pick the right person in a lineup,” said John Shepard Wiley Jr., a former federal prosecutor and law professor at UCLA. “It is very important to avoid suggestive taints when it comes to identifications.”

Attorney Cites Other Cases

The allegations against Rosenstock and Hernandez were lodged in court papers filed by Williams’ attorney in the robbery case that was dismissed last month.

Attorney Arna H. Zlotnik wrote in a sworn declaration that Rosenstock “is willing and has the propensity to accept less than truthful representations, including suggestive identification techniques.”

Zlotnik said she and her investigator uncovered similar alleged abuses in the handling of victims in other robbery cases investigated by Hernandez and prosecuted by Rosenstock.

The first case Zlotnik referred to in her court papers stemmed from the Feb. 3, 1999, strong-arm robbery of 79-year-old Ethel Austin.

Austin, who provided Zlotnik with a sworn declaration, had just returned home from a trip to the bank and was unlocking her front door when a man ripped her purse from her arm, escaping with more than $200.

After the robbery, Austin said, Hernandez came to her house and showed her several photos of potential suspects. Austin said she was unable to identify anyone as her assailant.

More than two months after the robbery, on April 19, Hernandez returned with more photos. This time, Austin said, she made a tentative identification of one suspect, based on his having a hair style and a complexion similar to those of the man who robbed her.

As soon as she made the identification, Austin said, Hernandez stated, “That person is wanted for other crimes.”

Austin said she cautioned Hernandez that she had doubts about the identification, but she said he instructed her to sign the photo identification report anyway.

Austin said Hernandez returned to her house several days later and assured her that police would get the man she had identified and recover her purse as well. She said Hernandez then handed her a four-page report, including a color copy of the six-pack photo card containing a photo of the alleged suspect, “to keep for my records.”

The next time Austin heard from Hernandez, she said, he was calling to inform her that police “had the guy [who] took my purse” and that she had to testify in court. During the phone call, she said Hernandez told her that the suspect had committed many robberies and that “they were going to put him away for a long time.”

But when Austin took the witness stand at the preliminary hearing Aug. 18, she looked across the courtroom at the defendant and testified that he was not the man who had robbed her, resulting in the dismissal of the case.

In a recent interview with The Times, Austin confirmed the allegations contained in the declaration she had provided to Zlotnik. She added that Hernandez had seemed angered by her failure to identify the defendant in court.

“He kept pressuring me and asking if I was sure and I said, ‘It’s not the guy,’ ” Austin recalled.

Roosevelt Gordon, another robbery victim, said he was similarly troubled by his dealings with Hernandez.

Gordon was held up at gunpoint outside his home in South-Central Los Angeles after a trip to the bank. He told police on the day of the robbery, Jan. 9, 1999, that one man pointed a gun at him while another pulled his wallet from his pocket, took his keys and ransacked his car.

About two months after he was robbed, Gordon was at a neighborhood gas station when he saw a man who he believed had held him up. As the man pumped gas, Gordon scribbled down his car’s license plate number. He then hurried home and called police.

Later that day, two LAPD detectives came to his home and showed him six-pack photo arrays of potential suspects. Gordon tentatively identified one of the men pictured as the man who had pointed a gun at him during the robbery.

The next day, March 19, Hernandez went to Gordon’s house. After showing Gordon some pictures of potential suspects, the detective allegedly filled out a photo identification report in which he wrote: “Photograph (3) in card (C) looks similar to the robber who also had a gun pointed at me. . . . I will be able to make a positive identification if I see him in person.”

The photo was circled, with Gordon’s signature alongside it.

“I do not recall signing an inaccurate and untrue statement like this,” Gordon said in a sworn declaration he provided to Zlotnik. “I did not see [the second suspect] sufficiently to make an identification and I recall seeing only one gun.”

According to his declaration, Hernandez called him “some time later” and told him it was time to come to court. Gordon said police had earlier promised him the opportunity to view in a live lineup the suspect he had tentatively identified as the man who had held him at gunpoint, so he could be sure he had the right man. Because he had not been given that opportunity, Gordon refused to go to court.

“It would be a waste of time,” he said in his declaration.

As it turned out, Gordon was right.

The man police said he had picked out as the second robber--Samuel Davis--was behind bars the day the crime was committed, and therefore could not have been involved.

The charges against both defendants were dismissed.

In a recent interview with The Times, in which he was shown a copy of the photo card on which he allegedly identified Davis as one of his assailants, Gordon appeared perplexed. “That’s my signature,” he said, shaking his head.

But he said he had told Hernandez repeatedly that none of the men in the photos he had been shown was the second robber. At Hernandez’s request, Gordon said, he eventually agreed to point out the man who looked most like the robber--even though, he said, he made clear that the man only resembled the suspect but was not actually the person who robbed him.

Despite his concern, Gordon said he never set out to challenge authorities in the case. In fact, he said, he tried time and again to assist the investigation. “I wanted [the police] to get this guy,” he said.

* SPEEDY TRIAL SOUGHT

The first four officers charged in scandal waive right to hearing, demand prompt trial. B1