Ruling Eases Use of Police Personnel Files for Defense

Ruling in a Los Angeles case, the California Supreme Court made it easier Thursday for criminal defendants to obtain evidence of past misconduct by police to try to prove that officers lied or rigged evidence.

In a 5-2 decision, the court said judges must order police to turn over any records of officer misconduct that could support allegations of improprieties in a defendant’s case.

The decision is expected to lead to greater use of police personnel records, which include citizen complaints and discipline matters, by defendants who challenge police statements and evidence. In recent years, many courts have denied defense motions for review of police records.

“We hold that to obtain in-chambers review a defendant need only demonstrate that the scenario of alleged officer misconduct could or might have occurred,” Justice Joyce L. Kennard wrote for the majority.

Once a judge reviews the pertinent records, he or she must give defense attorneys information that could help support their contentions of officer malfeasance, such as the names and addresses of people who complained about the officers in the past and the officers’ discipline records.

Justice Janice Rogers Brown, who was joined by Justice Marvin Baxter, dissented. Brown said the ruling infringed on the privacy rights of officers, and she criticized the majority for compelling police records in the Los Angeles case based on “patently absurd” claims by a drug defendant.

An assertion of police misconduct “that runs counter to experience, nature, logic and reason should be rejected -- even if it is technically possible,” Brown wrote.

In the case before the court, Los Angeles police arrested Donald Paul Warrick in 2002 on suspicion of possession of cocaine for sale. Police were patrolling 5th Street between Spring Street and Towne Avenue, an area that they said was known for violent crime and narcotics, when they spotted Warrick.

When the officers stopped and got out of their car, Warrick fled, discarding several off-white lumps that resembled rock cocaine, police said.

An officer retrieved 42 lumps from the ground, and two others arrested Warrick after a short pursuit.

Warrick was carrying an empty plastic bag and three porcelain sparkplug chips, which police said were tools for smashing car windows, as well as $2.75.

Warrick pleaded not guilty to the drug charge, saying that someone else had dropped the cocaine. He said he had come downtown to purchase drugs, not to sell them, and alleged that police had lied when they said they saw him discarding the drugs.

Warrick’s lawyer asked a Los Angeles judge to order police to turn over any information in the officers’ personnel files that showed prior dishonesty. The judge refused.

An appellate court upheld that refusal, ruling that Warrick’s story that police lied about him dumping the rock cocaine was implausible.

The state high court, in overturning that decision, said defendants needed to show only that misconduct might have occurred and that the evidence potentially would be admissible at trial.

A defendant’s claim of misconduct “may consist of a denial of the facts asserted in the police report,” Kennard wrote.

In her dissent, Brown called Warrick’s contention that he was downtown to purchase drugs “very doubtful.”

“In the course of many years of studying criminal records, I have never encountered a case in which (a) a drug purchaser brought his own baggie, and (b) narcotics were sold on the street in $1 or $2 increments,” wrote Brown, whom President Bush has nominated to serve on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.

Deputy Public Defender Mark G. Harvis, who represented Warrick, called Brown “completely wrong” in her analysis. Although “in her vast amount of experience she never saw $2 rocks,” a police officer in the case testified that the chunks of cocaine sold for $2 to $5 a piece, Harvis said.

Harvis said many courts have refused to grant defense requests for information in police files because of what he called mistaken rulings by an appeals court in San Jose in 1998 and 2000.

Thursday’s decision “restores the correct balance to the process,” he said.

The favorable decision nonetheless will have no practical effect for Warrick, who eventually pleaded guilty to possession for sale and was released for time served while the case was on appeal, Harvis said.

Los Angeles Deputy City Atty. Kim Rodgers Westoff, who represented police in the case, could not be reached for comment.