Exonerated Aide Still Bitter Over ‘Strippergate’

As this city settles in for the holiday season, David Cowan has no trouble counting his blessings.

“I have my freedom,” he said. “I could be looking at a surrender date to start a prison sentence.”

Cowan, 39, an aide to a City Council member, is the forgotten man in the city’s long-running “strippergate” criminal case.

The same jury that on July 18 convicted a strip-club lobbyist and two City Council members of a bribery scheme acquitted Cowan of a charge of lying to the FBI.

The jury listened to secretly taped conversations between Cowan and the lobbyist and decided quickly that the evidence did not come close to supporting the U.S. attorney’s allegation of wrongdoing.

Cowan’s acquittal was given scant notice amid the media coverage of the guilty verdicts against Councilmen Ralph Inzunza and Michael Zucchet on charges of taking illegal campaign contributions in exchange for promising to try to lift the city’s law against nude dancers touching patrons.

Declining interviews, Cowan returned to his job at City Hall dealing with residents’ concerns about police protection, trash pickup and other services in the racially diverse, blue-collar 4th Council District.

Cowan’s legal bills totaled $136,000 and were paid by the City Council only after his acquittal. To celebrate, he took his attorney, Michael Crowley, to a Rolling Stones concert.

The story soon shifted to the forced resignations of Inzunza and Zucchet.

But on Nov. 10, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller took the unusual step of throwing out most of the charges against Zucchet and saying the two remaining counts were barely worthy of a retrial. He upheld the charges against Inzunza but suggested that he might have grounds for a successful appeal.

In the context of Miller’s decision and his scolding of federal prosecutors, Cowan’s acquittal four months earlier could be seen as a sign that the U.S. attorney’s case was weak and the conduct of the prosecutors questionable.

U.S. Atty. Carol Lam declined to comment on the case. The lead trial prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attys. Michael Wheat and John Rice, also declined to speak.

Cowan, a 17-year city employee, said his faith in law enforcement has been shaken by his two-year ordeal.

“It’s a good feeling to have it over for me, but I have my bitter moments when I’m very angry at the government,” he said. “I guess I’m in the healing process.”

Miller has given the government until a Dec. 12 hearing to indicate whether it will appeal his decision to toss out seven of nine charges against Zucchet and whether it will seek to retry him on two remaining counts.

The editorial page of the San Diego Union-Tribune has urged Lam to press forward and attempt to overturn Miller’s decision.

Miller criticized not just the strength of the evidence but also the prosecutors’ decision to allow the strip-club owner to introduce a surprising new allegation: that he had given council members $10,000 in cash.

None of the criminal charges involved payments of cash by strip-club owner Michael Galardi, who had pleaded guilty and was testifying in hopes of getting a reduced sentence. Prosecutors had not mentioned cash in their three-hour opening statement.

Local news coverage called Galardi’s allegation about a cash payment the trial’s most dramatic testimony. But Miller said that Galardi’s credibility was dubious and that prosecutors violated a court ruling by not warning the defense about what he planned to say.

Cowan, in an interview, said he refused offers for a deal: one year in custody and a $25,000 fine if he would testify that he and Councilman Charles Lewis discussed changing the “no-touch” rule. Lewis was indicted with Inzunza and Zucchet but died while awaiting trial.

Cowan said prosecutors later sweetened the deal to include no jail time. But he said the testimony that prosecutors wanted would have been false.

“I was more angry than fearful,” he said. “I always felt I’d be cleared. But you never know, when your fate is in the hands of another person.”

For nearly three years, the FBI had secretly taped the council members’ phone calls. Electronic bugs were placed in their offices.

In his ruling, Miller said prosecutors failed to show that Zucchet promised any action in exchange for campaign contributions. In fact, he noted that the tapes showed that Zucchet repeatedly said any change in the nudity ordinance would have to be approved by the police vice squad.

During the two years between his indictment and his acquittal, Cowan said, he kept focused by trying to make sure that projects for the council district were completed. He now works for Lewis’ successor, Tony Young.

“He came to work every day during the trial,” Young said. “He’s always been a steady, steadfast kind of guy. We never had a single doubt he’d be exonerated.”

Primary among the projects was a $1.1-million skateboard park in the Paradise Hills neighborhood. The park was completed in the summer and named for Lewis.

“Charles would have loved this,” Cowan said quietly. “He was all about kids, giving them alternatives to gangs, making their lives better.”