Rampart Officer Is Acquitted of Two of Four Perjury Counts

Superior Court Judge Jacqueline A. Connor on Monday acquitted one of the four officers in the Rampart police corruption trial of two counts of perjury, questioning why prosecutors pursued the charges when the allegedly framed gang member’s testimony contradicted their theory of the case.

Still, as prosecutors rested their case, the judge left in the jury’s hands seven other counts against the four officers, including the most serious charge: conspiracy to obstruct or pervert justice.

The trial, now entering a third week of testimony, is the first criminal case arising from the yearlong Rampart police corruption scandal unleashed by disgraced Officer Rafael Perez’s confessions of police frame-ups of gang members in the city’s busiest, most violent police division.

On trial are suspended LAPD Sgts. Edward Ortiz, 44, and Brian Liddy, 36, and Officers Paul Harper, 33, and Michael Buchanan, 30. The four were members of Rampart’s anti-gang unit, called CRASH, in 1996.

The judge’s decision Monday cleared Buchanan of two of four perjury counts against him. Citing insufficient evidence, Connor granted a defense motion for a directed verdict on the two charges. She said she was troubled that prosecutors did not call Nabil Hassan, one of the gang members allegedly framed by the Rampart CRASH officers.

Deputy Dist. Attys. Anne Ingalls and Laura Laesecke charged that Buchanan lied twice in court when he described events surrounding Hassan’s Sept. 18, 1996, arrest on suspicion of possessing a loaded gun. They contend that official LAPD records show the rookie officer was on vacation that day.

The story Hassan told in court during two trials in 1997 contradicted the prosecution theory.

“I am troubled by the fact that apparently Mr. Hassan does indicate that Officer Buchanan was there,” Judge Connor said. She added that she found it even more “troublesome” that prosecutors went ahead with the case “knowing that Hassan says Buchanan was there and is suing him for it.”

The acquittals and the judge’s comments came at the end of two weeks of testimony by more than two dozen prosecution witnesses. Many of those witnesses were gang members and police officers. Many gave contradictory testimony or seemed to experience memory lapses on the witness stand.

Legal analysts said the acquittals exposed the case as seriously flawed and filed prematurely. “It undercuts the credibility of the prosecution case where they will bring a charge where not even the alleged victim agrees with the prosecution’s theory,” said Laurie Levenson, an associate dean at Loyola Law School who has followed the case.

Levenson added that the situation with Hassan “is another indication that the prosecutors reallywere not ready to go to trial on this case; people they were thinking of having as witnesses couldn’t conceivably help them. . . . They did the wrong thing to succumb to the pressure to bring the cases fast,” she said.

The bottom line, she said: “If this is their best case, we shouldn’t expect to see many more Rampart cases filed by the D.A.’s office.”

Prosecutors Laesecke and Ingalls would not say why they rested without calling Hassan, who was acquitted and filed a complaint against Perez. Also among the missing were two other victims of alleged Rampart frame-ups and the disgraced Rampart officer, Rafael Perez, who launched the yearlong police corruption scandal when he started naming names after being caught stealing $1 million worth of cocaine from police evidence lockers.

Perez, as well as gang members Allan Lobos and Cesar Natividad, became problematic prosecution witnesses when they said they might invoke their 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination if asked about unsolved murders or other gang crimes.

Santa Monica defense attorney Gigi Gordon, who coordinated writs filed by those who may have been wrongly accused, said prosecutors appear to be “in system failure.”

The prosecution’s strategy in reversing convictions seems to have backfired, she added.

“It appears that they had a particular strategy and the people they got out of prison on the writs--they were very selective--they got them out because they believed they would be witnesses in criminal prosecutions,” Gordon said.

“This was about finding witnesses against these cops,” she said. “The prosecutors apparently did not comprehend that once they got these people out and conceded that they were wrongfully convicted, that these defendants would get lawyers and sue.”

Attorney Harland W. Braun, who represents Buchanan, said he was pleased with the acquittals, saying those were the two most troublesome and “weird” counts brought against his client.

But defense attorneys Joel Isaacson, Barry Levin and Paul DePasquale said they were surprised and disappointed that the most serious conspiracy count remained.

Analysts said the judge apparently decided the alleged conspiracy was a matter for jurors to decide.

“This was an understandable choice by the judge,” said USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky. He added that the legal standard for dismissing a case is very high: that no rational juror could rule the other way.

Moreover, Chemerinsky said, “it is hard to think of many high visibility cases decided by a directed verdict.”

Laesecke, citing the testimony of her own reluctant police witnesses, offered a compelling argument that the past two weeks in court have shown that a code of silence exists within the LAPD. Testimony also has portrayed Rampart CRASH as “a tightknit group.”

That is the conspiracy, she argued, and it continues today.

“We know from what we have seen from the dynamics in this courtroom that these officers are still covering for each other,” Laesecke said.

It is a theme not lost on the jurors, who repeatedly questioned the veracity of the prosecution’s witnesses--particularly the police officers.

In questions passed from the jurors to the judge and made public Monday, they have asked several times about dim memories on the witness stand and what that means. They have asked why an officer said one thing in a transcript and another from the witness stand. They asked whether witnesses have been threatened.

“The things they have forgotten are obvious,” said one juror’s note.

Another asked whether a police witness believed the defendants were innocent because they were his friends.

Meanwhile, the defense began its testimony Monday with accident reconstruction expert Mortimer Moore, who testified that Buchanan and Liddy’s police reports and injuries were consistent with the officers being struck by a pickup truck driven between 13 and 19 mph.

Raul Munoz, the gang member who drove the truck, has denied hitting the officers as he fled a gang sweep. Prosecutors contend that Liddy and Buchanan’s police reports are fabricated.

The two officers are expected to take the stand in their own defense as early as today.