3 Officers Plead Not Guilty in Plot to Frame Suspect

The first three officers to be criminally charged in connection with the unfolding Los Angeles Police Department corruption investigation each pleaded not guilty Monday to charges that they conspired to frame a man in a 1996 gun possession case.

Sgts. Edward Ortiz and Brian Liddy and Officer Paul Harper entered their pleas during an arraignment before Superior Court Judge Larry P. Fidler. A preliminary hearing was set for July 3.

The three officers, former colleagues in the LAPD’s Rampart Division, appeared in court dressed in jackets and ties. Family members, including one officer’s mother, nervously looked on as the three entered their pleas.

Before the proceeding began, attorney Barry Levin, who represents Ortiz, asked Fidler to ban media cameras from the courtroom--a request the judge rejected.

“Given the public interest in this case and the fact that the criminal justice system faces scrutiny, the motion is denied,” the judge said.

In a news conference after the arraignment, the officers’ lawyers vigorously asserted their clients’ innocence and blasted the district attorney for creating what they called hysteria about the charges.

They scoffed at Laura Laesecke, the prosecutor in the case, for seeking an informal gag order, a request also denied by the judge.

“The biggest lips are on their ship,” said Levin. “They have the nerve to ask for a gag order. . . . There’s no way, on behalf of my client, that I’m not going to continue to assert his innocence in this case and try to level the playing field so he can have a chance for a fair trial.”

The attorneys said they may file a change of venue motion to move the trial out of Los Angeles, where the corruption scandal has been extensively covered by the news media.

“There are two sides to the story,” said Joel Isaacson, Harper’s attorney. “These officers are entitled to a fair trial and to have the community keep an open mind until all the evidence is in. That’s all that we’re asking.”

Part of the defense strategy became apparent at the news conference, in which the lawyers attacked the credibility of former Officer Rafael Perez, the main informant in the LAPD’s corruption investigation. They noted that several LAPD internal affairs investigations against officers have fallen apart because Perez’s information was deemed not credible by department officials.

“Perez is a liar and it has been shown that he is liar,” Levin said. “Every case that he has so far implicated officers in, he has lied, and we expect to win this case.”

The attorneys also derided the district attorney for allegedly treating Perez like a “rock star” whenever they accompany him to LAPD disciplinary hearings to testify against his former colleagues.

Attorney Paul DePasquale, who represents Liddy, said the security officers who protect Perez when he testifies refer to him as “Elvis,” saying over their radios “Elvis is in the building, Elvis has left the building.”

“You practically have to learn a special handshake to get into a position to cross-examine Mr. Perez,” DePasquale quipped.

The three officers, who have been relieved of duty because of the scandal, have been shaken by the allegations that they conspired to frame an innocent man, their attorneys added.

Levin said Ortiz is facing criminal, civil and administrative charges at the same time.

“He’s being bombarded,” Levin said. “I don’t know how he copes with it. It’s extremely stressful.”

Harper, Isaacson said, is a veteran of the Gulf War and an upstanding member of the LAPD who “has been really crushed” by the prospect of criminal prosecution.

The charges against the three officers stem from the April 26, 1996, arrest of Allan Lobos at a party being thrown by 18th Street gang members in the 400 block of South Hartford Avenue.

Liddy and Harper were partners that night. Ortiz was a supervisor at the scene and approved Lobos’ arrest. Liddy alleged in his report that he saw Lobos hide a handgun in the wheel well of a car. Liddy wrote that he told Perez where to find the weapon, and that Perez did so.

Lobos was arrested and charged with being a felon in possession of a weapon. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year in jail and three years’ probation. He now is serving a state prison sentence on an unrelated murder conviction.

Perez has since told investigators on the department’s corruption task force that Lobos was framed on the gun charge, according to court documents. Perez said that it was a patrol officer who discovered the weapon and that there was no evidence linking the gun to Lobos.

Lobos, who was interviewed by task force detectives last December, denied having a gun on the night he was arrested. He said he was taken to the station and questioned extensively. Lobos claimed he said he did not know who owned the gun, and Liddy rubbed it against his fingers and told him he was going to jail.

Prosecutors have declined to publicly discuss the evidence against the officers. But according to sources familiar with the investigation, prosecutors have tape-recordings of police communications the night Lobos was arrested that contradict key elements of Liddy’s report.

Attorney Richard Macias, who represents LAPD Officer Humberto Tovar, said Tovar was Perez’s partner the night Lobos was arrested and was given limited immunity to testify about what he saw.

According to Macias, Tovar told prosecutors that he did not witness any crimes or misconduct by officers that night, and that Perez did not mention that he had either. Macias said prosecutors did not ask what Tovar would say before granting him immunity.

In addition to the allegations stemming from the Lobos arrest, Ortiz, Liddy and Harper are accused of numerous other crimes and acts of misconduct.

Perez has accused Ortiz of helping to cover up unjustified shootings by the officers he supervised in the Rampart anti-gang CRASH unit. A police official once described Ortiz as “quarterbacking” the cleanup of shooting scenes, helping officers to get their stories straight and tampering with evidence to make it match the fabricated accounts.

A defense attorney has accused Liddy of attempting to frame her client in a third-strike murder case that is pending in Superior Court in Van Nuys.

About the same time Harper was entering his plea in Fidler’s courtroom, a federal judge in a courtroom across the street was throwing out another of his cases amid allegations that Harper and another partner planted a gun on a suspect.

In what was the first federal case tainted by the Rampart scandal, Chief U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. threw out the case against Jorge Sisco Aguilar, 28. Aguilar has been serving a 70-month sentence at Leavenworth penitentiary on a charge of being an illegal alien in possession of a weapon.

He was convicted in a 1997 Los Angeles federal court trial in which Rampart CRASH Officers Harper and Mark Wilbur testified that they saw him toss away a handgun during a chase through the hallways of a residential hotel.

Despite conflicts in the officers’ accounts and Sisco’s insistence that he was being framed, a federal jury convicted him after deliberating 45 minutes.

In court Monday, Assistant U.S. Atty. Thomas K. Buck asked Hatter to dismiss the case without prejudice, meaning it could be refiled “if we regain confidence in the evidence” against Sisco.

Hatter refused to give the government any chance to refile the case, saying he had misgivings about the officers’ credibility during the original trial.

Despite the dismissal, Sisco is not about to go free any time soon. He is to be turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, pending deportation to Mexico.

However, the U.S. attorney’s office said it probably will ask the INS to keep Sisco in the country as a possible witness in the ongoing LAPD corruption probe.

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Times staff writer David Rosenzweig contributed to this story.