Case Against Deputy Goes to Jurors

A Los Angeles Superior Court jury today is expected to begin deliberating the fate of a sheriff’s deputy charged with falsifying records and filing false reports in three criminal cases.

David Auner, 32, was arrested last year after one of his trainees, James Best, complained to Auner’s supervisor that he had been fabricating reports. Auner, who has been suspended pending the outcome of his trial, faces up to five years in prison if convicted.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Valerie Aenlle-Rocha said during closing arguments Tuesday that Best, whose father and grandfather were law enforcement officers, came forward because he wanted to do the right thing. “You can’t change the rules out there because the ends don’t justify the means,” Aenlle-Rocha told the jury.

Her remarks were made before a courtroom filled with Auner’s relatives and about 30 sheriff’s deputies who came to show support for him because they believe he is falsely accused.

Auner’s attorney, Richard G. Hirsch, in his closing statement accused the Sheriff’s Department of botching the investigation by failing to look at anything that might exonerate his client.

Hirsch said Best was a liar who reported Auner’s alleged misconduct only after Auner gave him several bad performance evaluations.

Auner, in the evaluations, complained that Best had made several serious mistakes, including failing to secure his shotgun and failing to take a pen away from an inmate, Hirsch said.

The lawyer argued that Best feared that the evaluations would prevent him from living up to the expectations of his grandfather and father.

“You think he could face the prospect of failing?” Hirsch asked jurors. “His ego, which you’ve seen on the stand, is too big to have taken that.”

Hirsch pleaded with jurors not to use Auner to make a statement against bad police officers. He said that although there has been much publicity about criminal activities and poor behavior by law enforcement officers in Los Angeles and elsewhere, that doesn’t mean Auner is bad.

Defense lawyers have said the charges were politically motivated, coming amid the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart corruption scandal.

“No one is here to justify the condition of flawed law enforcement officers who break the law,” Hirsch said. “Those individuals deserve to be punished. But we cannot and should not solve the problem in this courtroom.”

At the time the charges were filed, the deputy district attorney said she considered the felony charges “wobblers,” meaning they could have been either misdemeanors or felonies. However, Aenlle-Rocha said her office chose to file them as felonies because of the severity of falsifying information about a case.

The charges against Auner involve three incidents.

In one, Auner is accused of having Best falsify a report that indicated he and Best saw a man spray-painting graffiti on a wall. Best said he did not see the man paint the wall. Best also said that the man was not read his Miranda rights, although the report said he was.

Another incident involved a report that said Auner and Best had fully admonished witnesses of their rights when they went to identify suspects in a drive-by shooting. Auner might not have fully admonished those witnesses, Best said.

The third incident involved a man with cocaine. The man put the cocaine in his mouth before spitting it out. Best said Auner grabbed the man by the throat to force him to spit out the drugs. The arrest report failed to mention the use of force, which would have triggered an internal investigation, prosecutors allege.

Auner’s defense is being paid for by the Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs Assn., said the group’s president, Roy Burns. Burns, who attended the proceedings Tuesday, described Auner as a “straight arrow. A model officer. The poster boy.”