Sentences of Police Accusers Voided

A state appellate court has overturned the convictions of an Oxnard couple accused of filing a false police report, saying the law prohibiting false accusations against police officers is unconstitutional.

In a decision released this week, the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles voted 3 to 0 to overturn the convictions of Barbara Joyce Atkinson, 49, and her husband, Shaun Y. Stanistreet, 44.

The couple spent 50 days in Ventura County Jail in 1998 after being convicted by a jury of falsely accusing an Oxnard police officer of engaging in lewd conduct at a Police Activities League event.

Atkinson, an artist and former volunteer director of an Oxnard anti-gang program, on Wednesday praised the court’s decision, saying it reinforces free-speech rights.

“It affects everybody in the state who has been convicted under this code,” she said. “People need to be concerned about this becoming a police state.”

In addition, Atkinson said she would ask a court to find that the couple’s accusations against the police officer were true. She also plans to sue the Oxnard Police Department for wrongful arrest, she said.

Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Schwartz, who represented the state during the appeal, said his office will petition the state Supreme Court to review the lower court’s decision.

“The court’s ruling, now, makes it lawful for a person to knowingly make a false complaint against a police officer for misconduct, yet it’s illegal to make a false report of a crime regarding anyone else,” Schwartz said. “Rather than the police getting special protection, I think they are the only group that gets no protection. They have a right to be protected.”

The court’s ruling held that although current state law makes it a crime to knowingly make a false accusation of misconduct against a peace officer, it’s not a crime to make such an accusation against a firefighter, a paramedic, an elected official or anyone else.

“By protecting only peace officers, [the law] selectively prohibits expression because of its content,” the appeals court ruled. “It therefore violates the 1st Amendment.”

ACLU Says Ruling Protects Free Speech

The justices stated that “the importance of providing to citizens free and open access to governmental agencies for the reporting of suspected illegal activity outweighs the occasional harm that might befall a defamed individual.”

The panel’s decision was hailed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a brief in support of the defendants.

“This ruling clears the way for victims and witnesses of police abuse to inform authorities without fear of being criminally prosecuted,” said Dan Tokaji, an ACLU attorney. “The government must be evenhanded whenever it regulates speech, and this law is not evenhanded.”

Andrew Wolf, a court-appointed lawyer in Ventura who represented Stanistreet during the appeal, said the law under which his client was convicted runs the risk of “scaring people off or chilling their exercise of a 1st Amendment right.”

Wolf said the law creates a situation in which police agencies are investigating themselves.

If a citizen files a complaint against a police officer, the agency where that officer works investigates the complaint. If the investigating agency finds the accusation unfounded, it has the option of prosecuting the accuser for making a false complaint, Wolf explained.

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Times staff writer Tracy Wilson contributed to this story.