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City News Service

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July 27, 2001 Friday

BYLINE: By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH, City News Service

LENGTH: 811 words

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

A millionaire businessman acquitted of charges that he sexually assaulted nine women, seven of whom allegedly were drugged, said today that the allega-tions have been “a devastating experience.”

“The nightmare is over, absolutely. I’m looking forward to just relaxing and going back to work, and salvaging a lot of the money that I’ve lost and just looking forward to a new life and getting married and having a family,” John Gordon Jones said at a downtown news conference.

Jones spent more than two years in county jail without bail until a Long Beach Superior Court jury acquitted him yesterday of 29 charges, including kid-napping, rape of an unconscious person, rape by use of drugs and sexual battery.

The 46-year-old owner of Worldtech Computer in Encino, which he had helped to run from jail, maintained that he had been “wrongfully accused.”

“They falsified documents, they hid documents. There was prosecutorial mis-conduct that was just to an unbelievable, devastating state,” the businessman said.

“Well, what happened is the District Attorney’s Office wanted to have a GHB date rape case, and they wanted to go ahead and prosecute me no matter what the truth was.

“They went ahead and they got these women to go ahead and say false allega-tions against me, with blackouts that never existed, by lying. When these women wanted to back out, I believe that they forced them to go ahead with their sto-ries,” Jones said.

One of Jones’ lawyers, Milton Grimes, said his client is “thinking very seri-ously of suing the county for false imprisonment because of the incompetent in-vestigation in this case.”

“Nine different women caused this man, this man here, to sit in jail wrong-fully for 793 days over two years with wrongful allegations,” Grimes said.

On behalf of the district attorney, Sandi Gibbons said her “office will not be commenting on such silly allegations that aren’t true anyway.”

The woman whose allegations launched the case against Jones claimed he had date-raped her and that she got home after spending the night with him and be-lieved she had been drugged, Grimes said.

“Well, when she was tested the next day, it turned out that she had snorted a considerable amount of cocaine, which would definitely inhibit or prohibit or keep anyone from being knocked out, so this is the young lady that started this avalanche going,” the defense lawyer said.

He noted that the jurors cleared his client after taking a field trip to Jones’ home.

“Once the jury went out to the residence of Mr. Jones and viewed it, they had no doubt of his innocence because the descriptions of some of the women were that they were locked in bedrooms that turned out to have no locks on the doors,” Grimes said.

Another of Jones’ lawyers, Richard Sherman, said his client became the “poster boy for date rape.”

“He was a rich man, he was a prominent man in the business community and they took him into custody. They never investigated the allegations of the first vic-tim, the alleged victim. Had they done that, they would have realized that he didn’t do that and that she was not telling … a true story,” Sherman said.

Jones said he learned that “county jail is very rough,” and that he was jumped and beaten up while on the county jail bus.
“It has been a devastating experience with tremendous loss of income. And it took a lot of praying and a man like Milton Grimes and (private investigator and former LAPD detective) Bill Pavelic and Mr. Sherman to prove my innocence,” he said.
Jones and his lawyers said they believed the case was motivated by his wealth and the prospect that the women might get hefty legal judgments in civil law-suits if he had been convicted.

The women “started coming forward” with the allegations after the District Attorney’s Office went to the media in December 1998 and “asked are there any victims out there who have been victimized by the alleged millionaire limousine rapist?” Grimes said.
“I don’t think there’d be any charges if I didn’t have any money, there would have been no charges, absolutely not,” Jones said.
Jones, who had faced the possibility of consecutive life prison sentences if convicted, said he spent his first night of freedom in more than two years at a gathering with his mom and some of his friends.

“It’s like starting all over again, really. Just driving the car was amaz-ing,” he said, adding that he plans to go back to work next Monday at his com-pany, which sells laser jet cartridges and office products nationwide. “Basi-cally, I’m just happy to be free.”

The case against two other people indicted along with Jones in April 1999 on a much smaller number of charges is under review given the jury’s verdict in Jones’ case, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

Pina Marie Colapinto and Lawrence Elliott are awaiting trial next month in downtown Los Angeles.

LOAD-DATE: July 28, 2001

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

The Associated Press

October 5, 1994, Wednesday, PM cycle

Judge Turns Down Simpson Defense Again on War-rantless Search

BYLINE: By LINDA DEUTSCH, AP Special Correspondent

SECTION: Domestic News

LENGTH: 894 words

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

The judge in the O.J. Simpson case said today it was too late for defense attorneys to explore whether the lead detective lied about why police entered Simpson’s estate without a warrant.
The ruling by Superior Court Judge Lance Ito was a serious blow to defense efforts to suppress evidence seized at Simpson’s estate the day after the slay-ings.

Ito said the defense had a chance during the preliminary hearing this summer to find out if Detective Philip Vannatter lied when he said officers tried to call Simpson before entering his estate without a search warrant.

“I find that the burden of reasonable diligence (by the defense) has not been carried,” Ito said.

The ruling increased the likelihood that some of the most important evidence in the case may be admitted at trial. The evidence includes a bloody glove found behind a guest house at Simpson’s estate and blood drops on the driveway.

In another ruling against the defense, Ito upheld the testing of blood found on Simpson’s driveway. The defense said the tests invaded Simpson’s privacy and that police should have first obtained a search warrant.

Ito said the argument was “rather interesting and novel” but has “no support” in case law.

One issue Ito left unresolved was whether the defense knew during the pre-liminary hearing about allegations that another detective, Mark Fuhrman, had moved evidence in an unrelated case.

The prosecution contended the defense did know about this because one of the top defense investigators, Bill Pavelic, was also an investigator in the earlier case. But Ito put the matter aside for now because that a retrial is pending in the earlier case.

Simpson, 47, is being tried for the June 12 slayings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Jury selection started Sept. 26, but opening statements aren’t expected until November.

Today’s hearing was a continuation of an evidence hearing that started before trial began.

Attorney Gerald Uelmen said a transcript of communications between police and a security company the morning after the murders showed officers were at Simp-son’s front door - not outside the estate’s gate - when they attempted to con-tact him.

During this summer’s preliminary hearing, Vannatter said officers entered the estate without a warrant because they couldn’t reach Simpson by phone and were concerned about his safety. The hearing judge relied on this testimony in order-ing Simpson bound over for trial, Uelmen said.

“Detective Vannatter’s testimony that they placed this call to the inside of the residence before they went over the wall was false,” said Uelmen. “That call was made after they went over the wall, and after they went to the front door.”
He called the preliminary hearing testimony “a well-orchestrated tissue of lies.”

The prosecution argued that the transcript was unclear on just exactly where police were and that at any rate, the defense should have argued the issue dur-ing the preliminary hearing.

“They did nothing,” said Deputy District Attorney Marcia Clark. “They had the opportunity and they failed to do so.”

Clark also criticized the tone of the defense argument, saying the defense was making accusations of lying “very irresponsibly.” A few minutes later, though, Clark denounced as a liar a woman who provided the defense with unflat-tering information about one of the detectives.

That prompted Ito to chastized both sides for saying people were lying with-out offering proof.

The defense today also objected to several searches of Simpson’s Ford Bronco, contending the evidence could have been tainted by a burglary of the vehicle while it was parked at a police tow yard.

Uelmen said one of the items missing from the Bronco was a gasoline receipt bearing the signature of Ms. Simpson. Uelmen called this evidence “extremely ex-culpatory.”

On Tuesday, Ito escalated his battle with the media by revoking a newspaper’s trial seat pass as punishment for a leaked story. The Daily News of Los Angeles - the city’s second-largest paper - published details of a jury questionnaire it obtained a day before it was officially made public.

The Daily News filed court papers objecting to the action as unconstitu-tional.

Ito has harshly criticized the media for using leaked information, but the action against the Daily News was the most severe so far. The passes are highly valued because so many reporters are covering the trial.

Ito will consider whether to impose a ban on cameras and microphones at a Nov. 7 hearing.

Other developments:
- Ito has ordered police and prosecutors to turn over volumes of documents and other items, according to court papers released Tuesday. The items include photographs of shoes worn by investigators at the murder scene - where bloody shoe prints were found - and reports by Detective Mark Fuhrman about responding to a domestic disturbance call at Simpson’s home in 1985. The defense has been trying to portray Fuhrman - who found the bloody glove outside Simpson’s mansion - as a racist who may have planted evidence.

- Simpson’s defense team attacked the validity of glow-in-the-dark Luminol tests for blood in Simpson’s Bronco. The motion released Tuesday argues that tests with the chemical are unreliable and unaccepted in the scientific commu-nity, and that its use has led to reversals in other cases.

LOAD-DATE: October 5, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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