Man Gets Jail for Leaking Police Files

A federal judge Monday sentenced a legal consultant who leaked confidential Los Angeles Police Department records to a television reporter to 60 days in prison.

Attorneys for Robert Mullally, 57, said they would appeal the sentence, which most likely would be served in a low-security facility.

Mullally, convicted of criminal contempt in January, leaked a confidential report to former KCBS reporter Harvey Levin, who was investigating domestic violence on the police force, in 1997.

The records included LAPD files on 79 officers accused of domestic violence. At the request of the city, a magistrate ordered that they be kept confidential. Mullally was working for an attorney who had access to the files as part of civil litigation involving one of the officers. U.S. District Judge William Keller acknowledged that Mullally’s actions were in part well-intentioned but said they were “ego driven” and “deplorable.”

“The system has to be vindicated,” Keller said. “Mr. Mullally gave himself the role of being the final judge of what to do here.”

In issuing his ruling, Keller went against the recommendation of Assistant U.S. Atty. Tom Warren, who recommended probation. Keller could have sentenced Mullally, who now makes $8 an hour at a hardware store, to a maximum of six months in prison. Keller postponed Mullally’s sentence for 30 days.

Mullally had obtained files on the 79 officers while working as a consultant to attorney Gregory Yates, who had filed a lawsuit against the Police Department after an officer allegedly murdered his estranged wife and her lover. The officer later committed suicide.

The files led to Levin’s two-part series, which resulted in a probe by then-LAPD Inspector General Katherine Mader. Mader recommended sweeping changes in how the department investigates domestic violence cases.

Though a magistrate ordered a protective order to keep the records from being made public, Mullally told reporters that he feared the issue of domestic violence by police would die once the lawsuit was settled.

“I didn’t think the order would apply because it protected evidence of brutality by police officers,” Mullally said Monday. “I didn’t think any judge would authorize such an order.”

Keller criticized Mullally for posting, to this day, LAPD records on a Web site. The judge lingered on the fact that Mullally referred to the protective order as “the so-called confidential protective order.”

“I’m telling you, there is no ‘so-called’ about it,” Keller said. “It is a protective order. . . . He, Mullally, thought he could, would and did trump the protective order and he did so purposefully and put himself above the law.”

But officials from the Feminist Majority Foundation called Mullally a “hero” and said they would support his appeal.

Katherine Spillar, national coordinator for the foundation, cited national statistics that suggest that 40% of the nation’s police officers engage in domestic violence.

“911 calls for domestic violence are the most frequent calls to police,” Spillar said. “So if a woman calls 911, there’s [a 40% chance] that the officer answering the call has engaged in wife abuse.”