D.A. Won’t Retry Officers

The district attorney’s office announced Thursday that it would not retry three Los Angeles Police Department officers who had been convicted of conspiring to frame gang members during the Rampart scandal but later had their convictions overturned by the trial judge.

The development, which disposes of the last remaining criminal case that had stemmed from the scandal, was applauded by attorneys for Sgts. Brian Liddy and Edward Ortiz and Officer Michael Buchanan, who saw it as a vindication of their clients’ claims of innocence.

“This was an entirely just and proper outcome,” said attorney Paul DePasquale, who represents Liddy. “For the first time in five years, he doesn’t have a criminal case hanging over his head.”

But prosecutors said they still believe that the officers, two of whom remain with the LAPD and face internal disciplinary hearings stemming from the scandal, are corrupt. They said the decision not to proceed with a second trial was based on pragmatic considerations, which were prompted in part by the unavailability of witnesses who had testified in 2000.

The Rampart scandal began in 1999 when Rafael Perez, a former anti-gang officer accused of stealing cocaine that had been booked as evidence, agreed to identify other corrupt officers in exchange for a more lenient sentence on the drug charges he was facing.

Perez told authorities that officers in the Rampart Division’s anti-gang CRASH unit had routinely beat and framed suspects and covered up unjustified shootings.

After Perez’s allegations, more than 100 criminal cases were overturned because prosecutors had lost faith in the credibility of the officers who were involved in the cases. Nine officers, including Liddy, Ortiz and Buchanan, were criminally charged. More than a dozen others resigned or were fired amid allegations of misconduct.

The scandal set the stage for the federal government to impose reforms on the Police Department, which remain in effect.

Ortiz, Liddy and Buchanan were found guilty in November 2000 of conspiring to obstruct justice. The charges stemmed from the 1996 arrest of two gang members who had alleged that the officers fabricated assault charges against them.

The verdict was overturned by Judge Jacqueline Connor, who determined that she had made a “fatal error” in not recognizing that jurors had based their verdict on a misreading of police jargon in the officers’ report about the incident.

During the trial, prosecutors alleged that the officers had lied in charging the gang members with assaulting them with a vehicle. A police report said two suspects allegedly struck the officers with their pickup truck as they fled a police gang sweep. Part of the report, which was generated automatically by a computer, said the officers had suffered “great bodily injury,” although they had not.

Because jurors did not believe that the officers had been seriously hurt, several took the notation regarding “great bodily injury” as a sign that the officers had lied, which bolstered the prosecution’s contention that they had fabricated the charges.

But the officers never claimed that they had suffered such injuries. Noting that the jury had erroneously attributed the phrase “great bodily injury” to the officers when in fact it had been generated by a computer, Connor determined that the verdicts could not stand.

Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley filed an appeal with the 2nd District Court of Appeal, arguing that Connor had abused her discretion in overturning the verdict. The court ruled this summer that she had not. The state Supreme Court has thus far refused to hear the case.

Janet Moore, director of the district attorney’s special prosecutions unit, said D.A. officials continue to believe that the original convictions were valid and just. But the case, she said, has suffered from the passage of time.

“Essentially, we were looking at a case that is a very different case than it was four years ago,” Moore said. “The case has been weakened.”

She said some of their witnesses could not be located or have continued to engage in conduct that might undermine their credibility. Others have sued the city, she said, and others have been incarcerated. Moore also said that adverse rulings by Connor during the first trial would undermine the strength of the prosecution’s case in a retrial.

“We believe it was a very righteous verdict,” Moore said.

In deciding to dismiss the charges, Moore said, prosecutors considered the financial cost of retrying the case as well as the many “positive actions” that had occurred since the officers’ first trial, such as the reforms and better oversight of the LAPD.

Moore said prosecutors also considered the fact that Buchanan had been fired and that the LAPD had filed administrative charges against Liddy and Ortiz, who could ultimately be fired.

Liddy, Ortiz and another officer -- Paul Harper -- were acquitted of all charges in connection with a second gang-related arrest that also occurred in 1996. In that case, the officers were accused of framing a gang member on a gun charge.

The three officers are pursuing a federal civil rights suit against the LAPD, alleging that they were falsely arrested, maliciously prosecuted and treated like “common criminals.”

Etan Z. Lorant, the officers’ attorney in the civil case, said the LAPD’s corruption task force bungled the investigation and failed to consider evidence that supported the officers’ version of events.

“We’re very grateful that justice has prevailed. It’s a vindication,” Lorant said. “We’re looking forward to proceeding to a civil jury.”