Legal Adversaries in Hells Angels Trial Come From Different Worlds

One is a Boy Scout, the other a godfather’s son.

One is a veteran street cop turned Ventura County prosecutor, the other a former Naval Academy cadet who entered criminal law to defend his Mafioso father in a Los Angeles racketeering case.

The fast-rising Ventura prosecutor can boost his career by winning the longest and most complicated case in Ventura County history. The veteran Century City defense lawyer can restore a reputation marred by drug addiction, unpaid income taxes and a recent State Bar suspension.

For the next year or two, Jeffrey G. Bennett, 45, and Anthony P. Brooklier, 55, will serve as legal bookends in a massive case that charges national Hells Angels leader George Christie Jr. with running a criminal gang that stole drugs from an Air Force clinic and sold them to high school students. In all, 28 defendants are charged on 132 criminal counts.

Bennett, a chief deputy district attorney, is a tightly wound, tight-lipped ex-motorcycle officer who lifts weights and surfs competitively. He has spent four years preparing the Hells Angels case and leads a four-lawyer team hoping for trial this year.

“I do what I’m told; it’s a job,” said Bennett last week, speaking through a cell phone while on a family hike near Yosemite Falls. “Since July it’s been a seven-day-a-week job. I think about it 24 hours a day. The fact that I’m talking to you while I’m supposed to be enjoying myself should tell you a lot. It’s been very tough on all of us.”

Brooklier, one of Los Angeles’ most respected and successful criminal lawyers until his own legal troubles emerged in 1998, is perfectly coiffed and affable. He is known for meticulous preparation and a disarming courtroom style. He took the Angels case last month just three weeks after serving a three-month State Bar suspension.

Off drugs since 1997, Brooklier said he turned to cocaine and his finances fell into disarray in the years after he lost a federal racketeering case against his father, Dominic Brooklier. The onetime Mafia boss in Los Angeles died in prison in 1984.

“That was an excruciating experience, and I blamed myself for years,” Brooklier said during a break in a San Jose trial last week. “But I deserved the suspension, and I’ve been treated fairly.

“You learn lessons in life. And I’m going to hold my head up high and do the best I can. But you can never become arrogant and say it’s over. It’s never over. You run scared every day.”

The Hells Angels case is compelling in its own right because of Christie’s squeaky-clean image and charges that he directed a team of teenage drug dealers who peddled Vicodin and Valium on or near school campuses in Ojai and Ventura. And because his estranged wife, adult son and daughter--an attorney herself--are also defendants.

But the matchup of Bennett and Brooklier adds a sharp contrast in lawyerly style, experience and background.

Bennett, who buys his suits off the rack at Penney’s, is a self-taught computer whiz whose spreadsheets track intricate webs of criminal conduct. Brooklier, whose suits are tailored, still plots his strategies on yellow note pads and in three-ring binders, and he says he doesn’t even know how to turn on a computer.

Both will need their organizational skills in the Hells Angels case. Prosecutors presented 120,000 pages of evidence, scores of witnesses and hundreds of audio- and videotapes during an eight-month grand jury proceeding.

Bennett’s 197-page indictment against Christie--just one of eight in the case--is the longest and most detailed that Brooklier has ever seen. And he’s never heard of a case with so much grand jury evidence.

“It’s going to be a challenge just to manage,” Brooklier said. “Even if you’ve read everything and you know it, you’ll find yourself in trial and you will have to know instantly where to find that one piece of paper you need right then.”

Brooklier said he and longtime partner Donald Marks will need help as trial approaches to match the efforts of Bennett and his partner on the Angels case, Mark Pachowicz. Two more computer-savvy prosecutors--Scott Hendrickson and Kevin Suh--have also been added by Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury.

“I go into this with a little trepidation,” Brooklier said. “There’s so much work to do; we have a good client and his life is in our hands, and you feel such responsibility. People hate lawyers, and I never know why. I practice from a firm and complete basis of total insecurity.”

For now, Brooklier is juggling early bail motions in Ventura with trial responsibilities in San Jose, where he is defending a client accused of stealing computer chips. He said he had 27 three-ring binders in his hotel room, each tabbed and indexed to lead him through every detail of the case.

But trials are not all organization. Emotions play a big role too.

And although early sparring in the case has been generally civil, Brooklier’s temper flared Monday before a bail hearing, when Pachowicz questioned him about Christie’s choice of a bail bondsman.

Brooklier ordered him away with a dismissive curse, which Pachowicz later repeated to a judge, who rolled his eyes and moved on.

“Look, it’s an adversarial system. We’re not in England. We don’t wear wigs,” Brooklier said. “There’s some rough and tumble sometimes. We’re all big boys. But I do regret what I said.”

As for Bennett, Brooklier said the lead prosecutor is honorable and straightforward.

“This guy has been absolutely arrow-straight with me,” Brooklier said. “And I hope he thinks the same thing about me, despite our little rift.”

Bennett said he doesn’t think about Brooklier one way or another.

“He’s a defense lawyer, just like all the other ones,” Bennett said. “I’m sure he’s good at what he does.”

Their first real battle will probably be over whether the Christie trial should be moved out of Ventura County because of juror-tainting publicity.

To deflect an expected defense charge that prosecutors welcomed news coverage, Dist. Atty. Bradbury backed the sealing of grand jury indictments and transcripts until all 28 defendants are arrested. Two remain at large. And, the 11,000-page transcripts remain sealed.

Bennett said he’s confident he can avoid a prosecutorial nightmare by keeping the trial in Ventura, close to files, evidence and witnesses.

“Where are they going to move it where people haven’t heard of the Hells Angels?” Bennett said. “George Christie will get a fair trial.”

That trial will feature the skills and personal characteristics of its two principal lawyers, who are a study in contrasts in some ways but not so different in others. Both say they live for work and family.

The son of an elementary school teacher and a tile contractor, Bennett was Ventura County’s athlete of the year as a high school senior, excelling in football, track and wrestling.

He starred as a defensive back at Cal State Sacramento, then served as a peace officer in Sacramento and Santa Barbara for a decade. While working, he attended Ventura College of Law at night.

Bradbury hired him in 1989, and was so impressed with Bennett’s hard work and intensity that he named him prosecutor of the year in 1990.

“Jeff is extremely bright, has boundless energy and he is determined to do the right thing. . . . He’s one of the last Boy Scouts,” said federal Administrative Law Judge John Geb, Bennett’s onetime mentor in the district attorney’s office.

Soon Bennett was directing the office’s major fraud unit, and by 1995 was one of Bradbury’s top five deputies and in charge of the district attorney’s Bureau of Investigation.

In 1997, Bradbury chose Bennett when he decided to take on the Hells Angels investigation, a case that began with suspected tax evasion and quickly became a wide-ranging drug and racketeering inquiry.

“This is the most complicated and difficult case undertaken by this office,” Bradbury said. “It required someone extremely bright and very hard working and mentally tough. And someone who had a good grasp of computer technology. Jeff filled the bill. This guy makes things happen by the sheer force of will.”

Even Bennett, however, is feeling the strain of the seemingly endless Hells Angels case. He’s most animated when talking about his wife, Dee, a teacher, and two daughters. Or about surfing. But he hasn’t been in the surf for six months.

“This case has been very tough on my family,” Bennett said from Yosemite. “I’m here trying to catch up. My kids love it. We’re hiking to Half Dome, and tomorrow I’m going fishing.”

If Bennett is a lifelong Boy Scout, the Anaheim-raised Brooklier isn’t. He was kicked out of Cub Scouts, not to mention the fourth grade in a Catholic school.

Still, he got enough A’s in public school to gain entry to the Naval Academy. But it wasn’t long before his father made national news in a crackdown on organized crime, and the son was asked to leave.

After graduation from UCLA Law School, Brooklier worked as a California deputy attorney general. Then Dominic Brooklier asked his son to defend him against charges of extortion--the first of two cases in which Tony would represent his father.

Then for two decades, Brooklier and Marks built a prominent law firm that defended people accused of being white collar criminals, cocaine barons, corrupt public officials, stock swindlers and even crooked law enforcement agents. Clients included Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss and singer Rick James.

In 1999, Brooklier found himself in trouble, pleading guilty to failing to file federal income tax returns for 1993 and 1994, misdemeanor offenses that allowed him to keep his law license. After receiving a sentence of eight months in a community correction facility, he pledged to pay the $400,000 he owed the Internal Revenue Service in taxes from 1985 through 1996.

While in custody, Brooklier left each morning for work. He tried nine cases while serving his time.

Brooklier maintains that his life is now decidedly low key. He’s raising a second set of two sons with the help of girlfriend Pat Lalama, a former KCBS-TV Channel 2 news reporter.

“I’m the most boring guy in Southern California,” Brooklier said. “I get up at 4:30 a.m. and go to my office. I work out, then get in about two hours while it’s real quiet. Then I come home, wake my sons, and I’m off to court.”

He’s usually in bed by 9 p.m.

“The important things for me now,” Brooklier added, “are being a competent lawyer for my clients and taking care of my family.”