For Some, It’s Too Late to Overturn Convictions

When Jorge Armando Torres was arrested four years ago on suspicion of selling $10 of rock cocaine, he told his attorney that the LAPD officers were lying. But facing a trial where his word would be pitted against that of two Rampart Division officers, he agreed to a plea bargain.

Since Torres finished serving nine months in county jail, judges have overturned nearly 150 convictions in cases that relied on evidence from allegedly corrupt Rampart cops. In almost all these cases, the convicts were released from prison, parole or probation.

Torres thought that he, too, had a chance to have his record cleared. After all, one of the officers who arrested him was later charged with cocaine trafficking and was under investigation in connection with a murder. And both officers were accused of misconduct by disgraced former Rampart Officer Rafael Perez.

However, Torres’ request was rejected in February by Judge Larry P. Fidler, who said that convicts already out of jail and off probation are not legally entitled to have their convictions reviewed in court. The judge suggested that Torres, 23, should instead apply to the governor for a pardon.

Twenty-three other former inmates in situations similar to Torres’ have also filed petitions in Los Angeles County Superior Court. They say they were wrongfully convicted because of false testimony and evidence supplied by tainted police officers. But they also cannot get their convictions reviewed in court hearings.

The situation has sparked legislation that would give such former inmates a guaranteed right to have their cases heard by judges.

“It’s just the right thing,” said author Sen. John Burton (D-San Francisco). “The record would be cleaned like it all never happened.”

Prosecutors statewide counter that such a law would result in a flood of petitions, most filed by those who indeed are guilty.

In cases where defendants are no longer behind bars, their convictions continue to affect their lives. They often serve as “strikes” under the state’s tough three-strikes law and can prohibit them from participation in drug-treatment programs under Proposition 36. A criminal record also puts convicts at risk of deportation and prevents them from getting certain jobs.

Even though judges are routinely denying the requests, defense attorneys have continued to file two kinds of petitions: habeas corpus and coram nobis. However, judges have ruled that habeas corpus applies only to people in custody or on probation or parole. Coram nobis, meanwhile, requires the petitioner to show that a specific fact--unrelated to his guilt or innocence--would have prevented the conviction had it been known at the time.

Public defenders are also asking judges to use their judicial power to create some kind of “equitable relief” because of egregious police misconduct.

“How does our court system right the wrongs of the falsely accused and convicted? It is by saying, ‘Too bad,’” Torres’ attorney, Deputy Public Defender Fred Manaster, wrote in court papers.

Manaster said the irony is that the people who are still serving time have more rights than those who have completed their sentences.

Los Angeles County Public Defender Michael Judge began lobbying for reform soon after Perez revealed that some Rampart Division officers had planted drugs and weapons and lied in court. Judge said the defendants are being punished because of the length of time that the misconduct was concealed. If the corruption had become public earlier, many of the defendants would still be on probation or parole and entitled to habeas corpus relief.

“We’re not saying that people should automatically get their convictions set aside,” said Judge, who has lobbied for the legislation. “That’s up to us to demonstrate that, in fact, they were wrongfully convicted.”

But judges don’t even allow defense attorneys to appear at a hearing and present their evidence of police misconduct, he said. “That’s what we’re trying to remedy.”

Prosecutors, however, say the legislation is too broad.

“We’re very concerned about the specter of thousands of frivolous motions being filed by defendants who have been convicted of very serious crimes,” said Larry Brown, executive director of the California District Attorneys Assn. “Our concern is defendants who are without question guilty attempting to exploit the new statute.”

Prosecutors said there is a need for judgments to be final and they don’t have the time or staff to reopen thousands of cases just because defendants who are already out of custody say they have been wronged. Nearly all of the convicts are guilty and are just coming forward so they can get their convictions overturned and file potentially lucrative civil suits, prosecutors say.

“Even Perez made good arrests,” said James Dabney, who heads the habeas corpus team for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Some judges agree.

“There is an assumption that there is a whole mass of people who were wrongly convicted,” said Assistant Supervising Criminal Judge David S. Wesley. “I don’t believe that.”

There are, however, isolated situations where people out of custody can get their convictions overturned. In two recent cases, Fidler dismissed the convictions after receiving a letter from Dabney saying prosecutors did not oppose the petition for habeas corpus.

Though Los Angeles prosecutors made an exception in those two cases, Dabney said they don’t routinely have time to study such cases and plan to continue focusing on those where the convicts are still behind bars. “Obviously, those are the cases we need to look at first,” Dabney said. “We are dealing with finite resources. It’s also an issue of fairness.”

Fidler declined to be interviewed for this story but said in court that he believes prosecutors would not oppose habeas corpus if there was a “smoking gun” to show that the person was innocent.

Fidler said that most of the cases “have been nothing but allegations that in another case the officer lied.”

Fidler said he is abiding by a state appellate decision last year that denied relief to Carlos Mendez, a Los Angeles man who was convicted of drug charges and had finished serving his time. Mendez had been arrested by then-LAPD Officer David Mack, who is serving a prison sentence for bank robbery. The justices said Mendez failed to show that Mack lied in his case or that his guilty plea was tainted by Mack’s own conviction, which occurred four years later.

In the Torres case, LAPD Officers Ruben Palomares and Sonny Garcia were working undercover on March 24, 1998, when they said he sold them rock cocaine.

Torres, a Guatemalan immigrant who has admitted being a street gang member, denied selling any drugs. “I have my conscience clean with God,” he told the probation officer who evaluated him. “I know I can’t win with humans, but with God I can.”

Facing a possible state prison term, Torres pleaded no contest in April 1998 and was sentenced to one year in county jail. “I had to take a deal because I didn’t want to go to prison,” he said in an interview. “If I went to trial, I would have lost. [Jurors] weren’t going to believe me.”

He has not been rearrested since. However, because he is a convicted felon, Torres said, he cannot become a permanent resident or receive public assistance. He also fears being deported.

“I don’t think that’s right,” said Torres, who was later paralyzed in a drive-by shooting. “It makes me feel mad and sad because I already did time for some stuff I didn’t even do.”

Deputy Public Defender Manaster said the judge should dismiss Torres’ conviction because it was based on a false police report and fabricated evidence and the officers were unreliable and dishonest. Manaster said he believes that if the officers’ pattern of misconduct were known at the time, it would have changed the outcome of the case.

“If an officer is facing charges himself for dealing a ton of cocaine and he is arresting your client for the sale of a $10 rock, most jurors would be affected, and it would tend to decrease the credibility of the officer,” Manaster said.

Palomares pleaded guilty in March to federal cocaine-trafficking charges and is under investigation for a Huntington Park murder, an on-duty police shooting and a string of home-invasion robberies. Garcia was reprimanded for accidentally shooting at a suspect and suspended for 110 days for maintaining a personal relationship with a convicted felon and for improperly using an LAPD computer for personal reasons.

In addition, Rafael Perez told investigators that Palomares told him that he and a partner shot an unarmed man and planted a gun on him to cover it up. He also said Palomares filed false drug charges against suspected gang members, according to court papers. Perez said Garcia falsified police reports and accidentally fired his gun because he “wasn’t using good tactics” and had his finger on the trigger while he was chasing a man.

Defense attorney Gigi Gordon, who was appointed by the Los Angeles County Superior Court to represent people allegedly victimized by police corruption, said it’s extremely frustrating to tell her clients who are out of custody that there is nothing she can do for them.

She has filed only one such petition, in the case of Alan Hector Arredondo, who pleaded no contest in January 1996 to a charge of possessing an assault weapon. Gordon detailed in court papers the alleged misconduct of the involved officers and wrote that Perez told investigators he believed the gun was planted and the arrest report was fabricated.

Fidler has not ruled on the Arredondo case, and Gordon is not optimistic. Prosecutors opposed the petition.

“I have made every effort under the sun to get the district attorney’s office to make an exception in these circumstances,” Gordon said. “I think it’s unreasonable when their own investigation took as long as it did. The purpose of debriefing Rafael Perez was to find out what happened. If we now know what happened, we should be able to do something about it.”

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Times staff writers Matt Lait and Scott Glover contributed to this story.