LAPD Leak May Mean Jail

A man who leaked documents that led the Los Angeles Police Department to reform the way it disciplines officers prone to domestic violence should not be sent to jail for his actions, his lawyers urged a federal appeals court Friday.

Sending Robert Mullally, 58, to prison for 60 days for violating a judge’s protective order would be a miscarriage of justice because he acted to protect women and children for no personal gain, his attorney, James Weinstein, told a panel of judges from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In 1997, Mullally gave a television reporter copies of LAPD documents that showed the department had failed to discipline officers who beat and in some cases raped their wives and girlfriends. He had access to the documents because he was an expert witness hired by a lawyer who had sued the LAPD. The documents were covered by a court order that prohibited making them public.

Mullally could become the first person ever sent to jail in the United States for violating a protective order in a civil lawsuit, experts said.

His appeal comes at a time of increasing controversy over the use of judicial orders sealing court files containing data on the dangers of cigarettes and automobile tires, and information on child sex abuse committed by priests.

Mullally had been hired by an attorney representing the family of Melba Ramos, who was murdered by her estranged husband, LAPD Officer Victor Ramos. Ramos killed her boyfriend and then himself.

The suit alleged that the LAPD had engaged in a pattern and practice of civil rights violations by ignoring complaints of domestic violence by its officers.

Before trial, the LAPD agreed to turn over to Gregory A. Yates, the Ramos family lawyer, papers documenting incidents of domestic violence by officers and how the department had responded. No officers were identified.

Federal Magistrate Carolyn Turchin signed a protective order, drawn up by lawyers in the case, ordering that none of the documents be made public before trial, or after, without the judge’s approval. The LAPD agreed to settle the federal wrongful-death case for $2.2 million.

Mullally, who had reviewed the personnel records of 79 officers involved in domestic abuse, was disappointed that there would not be an airing of the records at a trial.

The files showed that more than 70 police officers had been accused of beating or raping their wives and girlfriends. The records showed none had been arrested.

Mullally turned the material over to Harvey Levin, a reporter with KCBS-TV Channel 2, whose report led to a major investigation by Katherine Mader, the Police Department’s inspector general.

Mader’s July 1997 report found that officers accused of domestic violence usually received little discipline and were rarely prosecuted. Mader found that one officer was reprimanded for raping his girlfriend and another received a 10-day suspension after breaking his wife’s nose.

In response, the LAPD formed a special unit to deal with domestic violence perpetrated by its officers, and within seven months half a dozen had been arrested.

But then-Police Chief Bernard C. Parks complained to the California Bar Assn. about the release of the documents. Eventually, U.S. District Judge William D. Keller ordered the U.S. attorney’s office to investigate how the documents became public.

Mullally admitted in interviews that he had been the source and was later convicted of criminal contempt of court by Keller.

The U.S. attorney’s office recommended probation, saying that a jail term would be “extreme.”

But Keller, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Reagan and had been the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles during the administration of President Nixon, said mere probation would be a “toothless tiger.”

In March 2001, he sentenced Mullally to 60 days but stayed the sentence pending appeal. Moreover, Keller said that but for mitigating circumstance, he would have sentenced Mullally to the maximum term of six months.

The sentence was condemned by the Feminist Majority Foundation and the National Center for Women and Policing. The groups pointed out that Mullally would be punished more severely than most of the officers whose conduct he had helped disclose.

“Mullally acted to protect women and children because officials charged with their protection had abdicated that duty and had themselves become the threat,” the groups argued.

At Friday’s oral argument, Mullally’s attorneys, Weinstein and co-counsel James B. LeBow, argued that the order was ambiguous, that it violated the 1st Amendment and federal rules of civil procedure, and that a 60-day sentence was “plainly unreasonable.”

At least two of the 9th Circuit judges--M. Margaret McKeown and Pamela A. Rymer--indicated they were troubled by the prospect of lack of consequences for violators of court orders.

If Mullally suffered no consequence, McKeown said, the court would be saying, in effect, that an individual could violate a protective order if he decided it was in the public interest.

“That’s not the kind of rule we can adopt,” McKeown said.

When Weinstein said that not even the government could cite a case in which someone had been sent to jail for violating a protective order, Rymer responded: “If there’s contempt, the statute gives the judge discretion” to impose a jail term.

McKeown said she felt the protective order had been “pretty poorly drafted” and that that might have an impact on what the punishment should be.