Cooley’s Early Actions Hint at a Decisive, Individual Style

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley was in office only a day when he gave the conditional go-ahead to arrest the self-professed “Angel of Death,” Glendale respiratory therapist Efren Saldivar, who confessed in 1998 to poisoning as many as 50 patients but later recanted.

Though lab tests had long ago produced a series of “hits” for the paralyzing drug Pavulon in the bodies of former patients, Cooley’s predecessor, Gil Garcetti, had not filed charges.

Cooley says the arrest last week was the result of “fresh eyes” looking at the case.

But it is also one of a growing number of actions Cooley has undertaken since he took office Dec. 4 that seem to suggest he will be an aggressive, highly active--and sometimes unpredictable--district attorney.

Cooley is investigating Los Angeles Unified School District officials in connection with a controversial high school building project. He has rewritten a key office policy that in some cases will mean murder suspects could face a lighter sentence.

He made it clear last week that he will not look the other way at questionable police activities. He announced that he would appeal a decision by a judge who overturned the convictions of three Los Angeles Police Department officers, in an effort to reinstate their convictions for conspiring to frame gang members.

Sources also disclosed last week that prosecutors in Cooley’s office are calling witnesses before a grand jury to probe the death of Margaret Mitchell, a frail, mentally ill homeless woman shot to death in 1999 by an LAPD officer.

The recent actions of Cooley, a Republican, are not easy to label as liberal or conservative. Some are in keeping with his campaign promises. Others, like the decision on the death penalty, have been surprises that could be seen as something a more liberal prosecutor might embrace.

All his decisions, Cooley insists, are in the best interest of justice and represent his intentions to act quickly and decisively.

“I have been fairly impressed by how quick a start he got,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School. “I think it reflects he had some very concrete ideas for changes when he ran for office and was ready to put some of those in place.”

Over time, Levenson said, it will be interesting to watch how Cooley handles the political pressures that come with the job.

“When he ran, everyone knew he was a very good prosecutor but there was a question of whether he would be a good politician,” she said. “In some of these decisions, we’ll be able to see how well he blends those two. Maybe he can do it by just being a good prosecutor. That remains to be seen.”

Steve Afriat, a Democratic political consultant, agrees that Cooley “has been a busy D.A.”

“But I think it is pretty common for someone just elected,” he added. “You want to prove to the world that you are a different person by contrasting yourself to whoever was there before.”

Actions Taken on Various Fronts

On a recent afternoon in Cooley’s conference room, honorary plaques and unopened boxes were still stacked throughout the room.

As he cleared the yet-to-be-hung pictures on his conference table, he explained that he was just going down a list of issues that had been brought to his attention during his election and added to his “blueprint.”

“We came in with a clear sense of what we wanted to do. Now, we’re doing those things,” he said.

In his first five weeks, Cooley has expanded an investigation into the possibility of crimes related to the Belmont Learning Complex. A new task force, members of which will be announced in coming days, will determine whether former Los Angeles Unified School District officials violated state law by allowing construction of the high school without an adequate environmental assessment. Garcetti declined to file charges.

Cooley also wrote a letter to the school board recently, accusing members of violating the state’s open-meeting law. The board, in a closed session last month, gave Supt. Roy Romer permission to explore proposals to open or sell the half-finished high school near downtown.

“Until they read [the letter], they thought it was a greeting from the new D.A.,” Cooley said, adding that he will aggressively enforce the state’s public records laws.

Cooley also has rewritten two key office policies that could affect penalties for criminals.

He changed the office’s policy for implementing California’s three-strikes law, saying his prosecutors will seek the 25-year mandatory sentences only in cases that involve violence and large amounts of drugs.

He also said he will forgo the death penalty and seek life sentences in some murder cases in which foreign nationals have fled to homelands that refuse extradition in death penalty cases.

Both Democratic and Republican political strategists said the decision about the death penalty, although not a big headline grabber, was the most gutsy one he has made so far.

“That is courageous policy,” Afriat said. “It is easy for critics to say he’s backing away from the death penalty, but what good is it to have a hard and fast policy if no one is showing up for their trials?”

Arnold Steinberg, who often represents Republican candidates, agrees. “I thought that decision was rather bold and thoughtful.”

Cooley said the emergence of the “Angel of Death” case is typical of how an issue comes to his attention.

The case also is indicative of how quickly he moves and his style of doing business.

The week Cooley took office, Glendale investigators made surprise calls to the families of 20 people who had died at Glendale Adventist Medical Center and whose bodies had been exhumed as part of the investigation, telling them to be available should they need to be contacted.

More than 2 1/2 years had passed since authorities began looking into the deaths. Some families had lost hope of any prosecution and feared the call meant that authorities were about to announce they were closing the investigation.

What the families couldn’t guess was the relationship between the calls and an event that happened miles away from Glendale that week: the swearing-in of Los Angeles County’s new district attorney.

Cooley said he became convinced even before his election, as a result of a memo from Deputy Dist. Atty. Al MacKenzie, that the case deserved attention.

A couple of days after winning in November, he met with MacKenzie and members of his inner circle to review the facts.

“It’s actually very routine, what we did,” Cooley recalled. “Evaluate the case. Kick it around with people. You decide on charges. You arrest the person.”

After that meeting, he reassigned the case to MacKenzie. Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Kelberg, the head of the office’s medical unit, had been handling it under Garcetti, but some Glendale officials thought he was being too cautious.

They believed that was at least partly because Kelberg had a difficult experience as part of the prosecution team in the high-profile O.J. Simpson murder trial.

Cooley told MacKenzie he would file charges as soon as MacKenzie resolved a few minor issues with the case, which Cooley would not disclose.

This week, the 20 families received another round of calls, asking them yet again to be available. On Tuesday, the families got the news: Saldivar was under arrest on suspicion of murdering six of the 20 suspected victims.

Murder cases like the one involving Saldivar, who is accused of poisoning his victims, are difficult to prove, even under the best circumstances, authorities say, but being too much of a perfectionist can be paralyzing.

“You can’t be overly cautious in these cases; you’ll never make one,” said Bruce Sackman, special agent in charge of the Veterans Administration’s Office of Inspector General in New York, who has worked on several poisoning investigations at VA hospitals.

Sometimes ‘You Just Have to Go for It’

“At some point in time, you just have to go for it,” Sackman said. “If you feel you have enough to make a strong argument before the jury, you just have to go for it. . . . You have to let the jury decide.”

That seems to be Cooley’s philosophy. Though the Simpson defeat clearly tainted his predecessor, Cooley steered clear of debating whether the lingering impact was one reason for the delay in bringing a case against Saldivar.

For him, the unsuccessful Simpson prosecution, not to mention the troubled murder trial of the Menendez brothers, “wasn’t even a factor.’

“The question is always the same,” Cooley said. “Was there a crime committed? Can we prove beyond a reasonable doubt somebody did it? Is the evidence sufficient that a reasonable fact-finder would find the defendant guilty of the charges we have brought, given all plausible defenses that may be raised?

“If you start saying, ‘Well, O.J. this and Menendez that,’ you’re going to go crazy.”

Still, he cautioned the public against expecting to see a flood of new filings in old cases.

“I don’t think there will be one like this in the next couple of weeks,” he said with a smile.