It’s Boss vs. Employee in Fiery D.A.’s Race

A man on a mission, Tony Rackauckas hung up his judge’s robes in 1998 to rid the Orange County District Attorney’s Office of what he called the political cronyism and destructive prosecutorial policies that had tarnished the agency.

Nearly four years later, Rackauckas finds himself accused of waging his own political crusade, with his loudest critics--and his challenger in the March primary election--coming from within the ranks of the district attorney’s office.

The attacks have done little to dent the resolve of a man who rose from being a Long Beach street ruffian to a respected Superior Court judge and the county’s top prosecutor. His up-by-the-bootstraps success story helps explain Rackauckas’ abundant self-confidence, which served him well on the bench and during his years as a deputy prosecutor trying murder cases.

As district attorney, however, Rackauckas has been a magnet for controversy, attracting scrutiny from the state Attorney General’s Office and an Orange County grand jury.

In December, Rackauckas was forced to dissolve his nonprofit charity after state investigators found it mismanaged its assets. Earlier, he came under fire for ordering prosecutors to withdraw from a lawsuit against a firm owned by now-Ambassador to Spain George Argyros, an Orange County GOP stalwart, whose apartment company donated $1,000 to Rackauckas’ 1998 campaign.

Rackauckas has dismissed the accusations of political favoritism and interoffice retaliation as the handiwork of his political enemies--he calls them a few “disgruntled attorneys” left over from former Dist. Atty. Mike Capizzi’s administration, an administration that Rackauckas said voters elected him to dismantle.

He has accused his political opponents of orchestrating and hyping the investigation, which he said is nothing more than a “routine audit.”

“We have this situation where we’ve got these people who are basically trying to take the office back [and] are doing all this complaining,” Rackauckas said last week. “I see it as a organized effort to get my opponent elected, so I think a lot of that is going to change after the election.”

Rackauckas urged voters to look at his record.

Since taking office, gang murders have dropped 50%, child support collections are up 60% and the county’s overall crime rate has been on a steady decline, he said. He’s launched outreach programs in the Latino and Vietnamese communities and made prosecuting environmental crimes a priority, as when felony charges were filed against the city of Huntington Beach for allowing millions of gallons of raw sewage to leak from aging underground pipes.

“Ask yourself, do we have a safe community? How are we doing? What’s the crime rate look like around here? In that regard, we’re doing great,” said Rackauckas.

Rackauckas was known as both a tough trial lawyer and fair-minded judge before being elected district attorney in 1998.

He served for 16 years as a deputy district attorney, and was named 1986 Prosecutor of the Year by his peers before then-Gov. George Deukmejian appointed him as a municipal court judge in 1990. Three years later, Gov. Pete Wilson elevated Rackauckas to the Superior Court bench.

Rackauckas, 58, lives in Santa Ana with his son, Zack, and wife, Kay, who also is one of his deputy district attorneys.

Before serving on the bench, Rackauckas led efforts to remove Chief Justice Rose Bird from the California Supreme Court and coauthored the Crime Victim’s Justice Reform Act. In response to the 1979 case against Larry Singleton, who served an eight-year prison sentence after he raped and cut off the arms of his victim, Rackauckas authored a new “torture statute” that mandates a life sentence for such crimes.

“When Tony walked down the hall, people held him in awe. He was a consummate homicide prosecutor, considered one of the top prosecutors in the office,” said Assistant Dist. Atty. Bill Feccia, an Orange County prosecutor for 23 years, who joined the office when Rackauckas was in the homicide unit and now serves as one of his managers.

His supporters say Rackauckas is extraordinarily fair, and interested in justice above all else.

Rackauckas said he chose to run for district attorney in 1998 because he thought Capizzi was unfairly pursuing the maximum punishment in three-strikes cases for such offenses as petty theft.

He also wanted to do away with Capizzi’s policy of prohibiting plea bargaining, insisting that it forced judges to deal exclusively with defense attorneys and led to lighter sentences. Prosecutors say the change has given them a renewed voice in the process--and made them more credible in the courtroom.

“What he restored is our ability to seek justice, to seek the appropriate punishment for the crime and gave us a voice in the system,” said Assistant Dist. Atty. Marc Rozenberg, head of the office’s gang unit.

Along with boosting salaries, Rackauckas’ supporters emphasize that he has improved the technology available to his staff. Prosecutors have their own computers and e-mail access, and routinely bring computers into the courtroom. Rackauckas hired a full-time grant-proposal writer who helps the office obtain millions of dollars each year, said Chuck Middleton, chief assistant district attorney.

“He simply says, ‘I trust you to make the right decision.’ And he gives us the tools to do our job efficiently,” said Assistant Dist. Atty. Rosanne Froeberg.

He’s also placed an emphasis on gang prosecutions, adding three full-time prosecutors and three investigators to the office’s existing gang unit.

Still, the praise for Rackauckas has been tempered by a series of questionable personnel moves and prosecutorial decisions.

In December, the Assn. of Orange County Deputy District Attorneys endorsed Rackauckas’ opponent, veteran prosecutor Wally Wade. It was the first time the association has not endorsed an incumbent district attorney.

“He is like a two-headed monster. He has some ideas that are good and some that are completely unethical,” said Christopher Evans, former top assistant to Rackauckas, who left the office and is now supporting Wade. “The problem is, you can’t have a district attorney [who] has ethical issues.”

When Rackauckas took office, it was the first time in more than four decades that an outsider was elected district attorney--and he did so by defeating Wade, Capizzi’s choice as a successor.

For Rackauckas, it was similar to a hostile corporate takeover--with one major difference. Because of civil-service protection for county employees, Rackauckas could demote but not fire Wade and his political supporters in the district attorney’s office, many of whom were top managers.

Within three years, the office was hit with at least four employee lawsuits, and accusations that Rackauckas was retaliating against critics.

One of the most controversial moves was Rackauckas’ decision to fire veteran prosecutor Mike Jacobs, the man who once headed the homicide unit. Rackauckas claimed he had legal cause for the termination. But Jacobs denied that and filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit that is pending.

“I was the only one in management who stood up against him and challenged his breaches in ethics and breaches in following the law, which seemed to be almost constant,” Jacobs said.

Jacobs and two other prosecutors eventually flew to Sacramento and urged state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer to investigate Rackauckas.

They did so after learning that Rackauckas’ nonprofit foundation had plans to issue district attorney badges--like those issued to prosecutors--to some donors. They also told state officials that Rackauckas was using public employees to help run his foundation, specifically to conduct background checks on potential foundation board members. State investigators also said the charity had mismanaged its assets, but would not reveal details.

Officials at the attorney general’s office dropped the investigation after Rackauckas agreed to shut down the foundation.

“If a cop or prosecutor misuses their badge, they face serious consequences, including the loss of their job,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Joe Smith, who said he was reassigned after he complained to Rackauckas about the badges. “But what consequence befalls a rich, politically connected friend of Tony Rackauckas who gets pulled over by the CHP and flashes the badge?” Smith asked.

Rackauckas also came under fire earlier this year for intervening in a case involving a friend, Newport Beach businessman Patrick DiCarlo, who came to him in 1999 to say he was being threatened over a business deal.

The district attorney. assigned two investigators to the case but pulled them off weeks later, saying they were treating DiCarlo more like a crime suspect than a victim. Rackauckas then placed the investigators on paid leave and publicly accused them of stealing tapes and other records related to the investigation.

After being criticized for his actions, Rackauckas asked the state attorney general to take over the case.

The incident that has attracted the most attention was Rackauckas’ involvement in a consumer-protection case involving Argyros. Rackauckas ordered prosecutors to withdraw a lawsuit against Argyros’ company, accused of unfairly keeping security deposits from thousands of tenants, and then Rackauckas took over negotiations himself. After critics faulted his actions, Rackauckas handed the case over to the state attorney general. Argyros’ company settled for $1.5 million.

Rackauckas said most of the complaints against him are thinly veiled political paybacks orchestrated mostly by Wade, whom Rackauckas trounced in the 1998 election. In his latest campaign, Wade has used the allegations to attack Rackauckas’ integrity.

“So many of these complaints that were being raised were encouraged and exacerbated by Wally all along the way,” Rackauckas said. “Ultimately, he’s the beneficiary of them.”

Despite the turmoil, Rackauckas is confident that the majority of the prosecutors in his office are happy, both with their jobs and his tenure in office.

As a kid growing up in Long Beach, Anthony Rackauckas’ future as a judge and Orange County’s top law-enforcement officer appeared to be, at best, a longshot.

While in high school, Rackauckas hung out with what he now jokingly calls a “social club”--a band of teenage boys hyped on fast cars and no strangers to trouble.

After a fight with a rival club, Rackauckas wound up in Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles, charged with assault.

“It was an important reality check,” he said. “I didn’t have my head screwed on right at the time, and I needed to fix it. And I did.”

After serving a few weeks in Juvenile Hall, he received probation and eventually went on to join the Army, graduate from Cal State Long Beach and earn a law degree from Loyola University.

“It’s an important life lesson, and it’s the kind of thing that you need to keep in mind and keep in perspective when you’re trying to protect society,” he said. “Some people can be rehabilitated and some can’t. We need to make that distinction.”