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Los Angeles Sentinel

March 18, 1992

BYLINE: Mitchell, Marsha

SECTION: Vol. LVII; No. 48; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 1198 words
   Cloud of Controversy Hangs Over Chief Selection Process.
 In what can be considered as more than an ironic twist, Bill Pavelic, an
18-year veteran detective, charged that Police Chief Daryl Gates is the target
of a Los Angeles Police Department probe for allegedly interfering with
internal investigations of top-ranking LAPD officers. The charge comes on the
heels of the Police Commission’s decision to allow Gates to supervise the
investigation of three top-ranking officers who are now finalists to succeed
him.

Notwithstanding the fact that Police Commission President Stanley
Sheinbaum denied Pavelic’s allegations of an internal investigation, the
detective maintains that it is a well known fact in the department that Gates
protects his top personnel even when misconduct is evident.

 ”There’s a double standard in the Los Angeles Police Department when it
involves staff and command officers, even when they are engaged in a criminal
misconduct,” Pavelic told the reporters. “Chief Gates has always protected
members of management.”

 Pavelic went on to further say that even when undisputable evidence of
wrongdoing has been presented, Chief Gates has shielded favored personnel. The
seasoned officer, who is assigned to the Southwest station, added that
taxpayers would be shocked if they knew how many investigations had been
retarded and impeded at the command of Gates.

Although the police chief has yet to comment on the allegations, his
spokesman, Cmdr. Robert Gil, said that they had not heard of any such probe.
Gil challenged Pavelic’s integrity because the detective has apparently raised
similar accusations about other top personnel in the past that proved to be
unfounded.

“This is a man who has had problems with authority in the past,” Gill
said. “The chief has had the integrity and ethics to carry this department for
14 years. For him to say the chief is covering up is ridiculous. If he had hard
evidence, we’d see an investigation.”

In his defense, Pavelic said he felt he had come forward because of the
Police Commission’s decision to allow Gates to head an inquiry into charges
that three finalists to succeed the chief either obstructed justice or abused
departmental policies. And to prove his credibility, Pavelic said that he would
repeat his claims under oath.

The investigation was launched as a result of NEWS For America telling
the Police Commission that three of the six finalists in the race to be chief
are under internal scrutiny. The group, which is composed of a coalition of
Latino business, community and public employee group’s became incensed because
the police selection process includes no Latino finalist. And although the
group wanted swift action from the commission, it is dismayed that former
assistant chief Jesse Brewer has been placed in charge of the probe.

“I think it raises some serious questions…They have a situation where
Mr. Brewer either supervised, was involved in the promotion of, or had personal
relationships with some of the candidates in question. I’m talking about cop
relationships. Policemen stick together. Why not have two commissioners who
were not police officers,” said Xavier Hermosillo.

Currently, the names of the targeted officers have yet to be released,
but it is believed that Deputy Chief Bernard C. Parks, Matthew Hunt and
Assistant Chief David D. Dotson are the commanders in question.

Parks allegedly intervened in the release of his daughter’s boyfriend
after he was arrested last December on two counts of attempted murder. Hunt is
accused of refusing to release a suspect whom detectives believed was innocent.
According to sources, Hunt detained the man even though he had asked for a
blood test to prove his innocence. Dotson, the only officer to acknowledged
that he is involved in an internal inquest, has been under investigations since
last July for an improper, romantic involvement with a female subordinate.

Despite Sheinbaum’s statements that the ongoing investigations will not
affect the three commanders chances to become chief, and that the investigation
will be completed within two weeks so it will not impede the selection process,
Leroy Baca believes that it should. Baca, who commands the sheriff department’s
Court Service Division, filed an appeal with the city’s Civil Service
Commission because he was eliminated from the police chief selection process.
The would-be chief contends two participants on the seven-member citizens panel
“could have been biased” toward him and another Hispanic semifinalist who was
also passed over.

Baca said that he doesn’t plan to pursue a court battle, and that his
only motive is to be reinstalled to the selection process. He does not feel
that his appeal is unreasonable due to the fact that he received the third
highest score of the 12 semi-finalists. He contends that his score proves he is
more than qualified to be in the running to be the next chief of police.

He also charged that the panel headed by former California Attorney
General John Van de Kamp, ignored established rating standards used by
interview panels for candidates seeking top municipal posts. Those standards,
Baca said, hold that individual panelists’ ratings cannot diverge from one
another by more than five points. But, officials say that despite the fact that
Baca scored well, he failed to outscore all of the LAPD insiders competing for
the job, as candidates are required to do by the City Charter, to advance to
the final phase.

As if the selection process for the new chief needed any further
aspersions cast upon it, earlier this month Chief Gates told the commission
that he knew of “a couple of people” who had their essays prepared for them.

LAPD Cmdr. Frank Piersol, a contender who failed to make the semi-finalist
list, made the same allegation. Later, however, both Gates and Piersol
retracted their accusations stating they had based their comments on hearsay.

The fact that Gates would make such damaging charges proves to some that
he is a hindrance to the process which he has openly criticized from the
beginning. Because Gates and Piersol withdrew their statements, and the 12
finalists signed affidavits stating they had prepared their own material, the
commission was convinced that nothing was amiss.

Neither Gates nor Piersol would return the Sentinel’s calls, however,
sources within the department assured reporters that the finalists’ characters
were not being called into question, as much as the process of “take-home
exams.”

“He (Gates) said from the beginning that the process is flawed. If you
want to measure someone’s knowledge and skills to be the police chief for a
major department, why don’t you lock them in a room and test them. There were
no controls in place,” said police spokesman Gil.

Other finalists for Gates’ job are Philadelphia Police Commissioner
Willie L. Williams, who scored at the top of the list, and LAPD deputy chiefs
Mark A. Kroeker and Glenn A. Levant.

 Article copyright Los Angeles Sentinel.
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LOAD-DATE: August 17, 2001

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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ETHNIC-GROUP: African American/Caribbean/African

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City News Service

No City News Service material may be republished without the express written permission of City News Service, Inc.

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

Tags: William Bill Pavelic

Los Angeles Times

March 5, 1995, Sunday, Home Edition

Impact of ito’s sanctions on simpson defense de-bated;

COURTS: SOME SAY DEFENDANT’S RIGHT TO FAIR TRIAL MAY BE HURT. OTHERS SEE DAMAGE TO THE PRACTICE OF CRIMINAL LAW.

BYLINE: By HENRY WEINSTEIN and TIM RUTTEN, TIMES STAFF WRITERS

SECTION: Part A; Page 1; Metro Desk

LENGTH: 1407 words

“Make the punishment fit the crime” is one of those homey maxims that trips warmly off the tongue. But Friday, when Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito tried to do that after defense lawyers again withheld evidence in O.J. Simpson’s dou-ble murder trial, he twisted the case into something that many legal experts say resembles an ethical pretzel.

Although most analysts agree that the first part of Ito’s remedy — $950 fines for attorneys Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. and Carl Douglas — will have little immediate impact, they say the consequences of the other sanctions the judge im-posed may be serious for Simpson himself.

“In a very important sense, Judge Ito acted unfairly because he protected the lawyers at their client’s expense,” said defense attorney Marcia Morrissey. Al-ibi witness “Rosa Lopez didn’t fail to provide that tape (of an investigator’s July interview with her). It wasn’t her fault and it wasn’t O.J. Simpson’s ei-ther. Yet they are the people being made to suffer by Ito.”

Many defense lawyers also have begun to worry that the picture of the crimi-nal justice system being beamed around the world from Ito’s courtroom may have an extremely damaging impact on the practice of criminal law across the country.

“Quite frankly, this is not a pretty picture,” said Los Angeles defense law-yer Barry Tarlow. “I once worked for the summer in a plant that manufactured ice cream, and I didn’t eat ice cream for a couple of years after that. Something similar is happening to the public in this case.”

Essentially, Ito did two things Friday when he ruled that the defense had failed in its obligation to provide prosecutors with the tape-recorded interview with Lopez, as well as a written report on a conversation with her:

First, he imposed the fines on Cochran and Douglas and reproved them for “a representation made with reckless disregard for the truth if not a deliberate attempt to mislead both the prosecution and the court.”

Second, Ito said that if the defense chooses to play the videotape of Lopez’s testimony for the jurors, he will tell them that Simpson’s lawyers violated the law and that the jury “may consider the effect of this delay in disclosure, if any, upon the credibility of the witness involved and give to it the weight to which you feel it is entitled.”

Simpson’s lawyers have 10 days in which to ask Ito to reconsider his deci-sion.

In an interview Saturday, Cochran said he was still feeling the sting of Ito’s judicial blow.

“I respect Judge Ito. But in this instance he is dead wrong and terribly un-fair — not only to us, but most of all, to O.J. Simpson,” Cochran said.

If Ito’s sanctions stand, said Morrissey and Los Angeles defense attorney Ge-rald L. Chaleff, the judge’s retribution was too lenient in the first instance and so severe in the second that it may threaten Simpson’s right to a fair trial.

“The personal sanctions he imposed on Cochran and Douglas are insignificant,” Morrissey said. “If this trial is a search for the truth, it doesn’t seem fair that Simpson is being made to pay for his lawyers’ mistake.

“The jury needs to make a decision about Lopez’s credibility. The lawyers’ failure to provide the tapes or her prior statements — whatever their reasons — just isn’t relevant to the question of whether Ms. Lopez is a credible wit-ness. So Ito has injected something foreign into the jury’s deliberations, which is how well the defense lawyers have complied with the discovery rules.”

Chaleff agreed. “When the judge says a lawyer has acted with reckless disre-gard of the truth and the fine is $950, that sends a mixed message,” he said. “If a judge truly believes that a lawyer has lied to him or her, then the sanc-tion should be more severe.

“The ultimate victim of that will be the defendant, because the jury is being told by the court and the prosecutor not to trust his lawyers,” Chaleff said. “And if they don’t trust the lawyers, then they won’t believe their defense. And if they don’t believe the defense, O.J. Simpson will be convicted.”

However, Tarlow and fellow nationally prominent defense lawyer Gerry Spence said they feel Ito’s reproof of Cochran and Douglas may be more damaging than it may first appear.

“Money isn’t the issue here,” Spence said. “This is lollipop money for these lawyers. I’d pay a fortune to delete from the record a judge’s statement that I acted in reckless disregard of the truth. A man’s reputation is worth more than money, and this is a serious blow to Cochran’s reputation.”

Tarlow concurred. ” ‘Mr. Johnnie’ certainly won’t miss $950, but as a crimi-nal defense lawyer all you really have is your reputation. In that light, Ito’s critical comments are extraordinarily harsh. I’d give $100,000 to charity — and I know Johnnie would too — rather than have those things written about me. The judge’s damning words will be with these lawyers for the rest of their lives. That makes this anything but a slap on the wrist.”

Cochran said the defense team is not taking “this sanction lightly.”

“I have practiced law for more than 30 years and Carl for more than 15,” he said. “Neither Carl nor I ever have been sanctioned before. We have lived and built our reputations carefully. They are more important to us than I can say. Integrity means everything to me.”

Cochran went on to point out that Douglas assumed responsibility as the de-fense team’s “custodian of discovery only on Jan. 2, and I took over as lead counsel from Bob Shapiro shortly after that. We should not be held responsible for things that may have occurred before that time.

“We have never hidden reports or tapes,” Cochran added. “We are being tarred with an unfair brush. Bill Pavelic (the private investigator who interviewed Lo-pez), worked for Shapiro and his reports went to him. Everything ultimately was transferred to our office, but there are 30,000 documents and hundreds of wit-nesses.

“We asked Pavelic whether there were any other documents and tapes and he told us there were not. We relied on his word. What am I supposed to do, poly-graph the guy? Pavelic will do a sworn declaration that he never told us about the existence of that tape.”

Cochran also said he is “worried about the partiality with which Judge Ito is treating the prosecutors. But the issue should not be whether Judge Ito is being fair to the lawyers, but whether he is being fair to O.J. Simpson. We may choose to be silent on our own behalf, but unfairness to our client is something we cannot abide.”

San Diego defense attorney Elisabeth Semel agrees that Ito’s proposed admoni-tion is unfair to Simpson.

“The person being punished is the defendant, because the presumption of inno-cence to which he is entitled is being undermined,” she said. “This instruction lightens the prosecutors’ burden of proof. It gives them a way to assail the credibility of a witness to which they are not entitled.”

But Spence and USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky said Ito’s instruction to the jury could be read without violating Simpson’s 6th Amendment rights to a fair trial.

Last week’s contentious proceedings in the case have left many lawyers wor-ried that the fallout may further damage the image of defense attorneys and com-promise the rights of defendants far outside Ito’s reach.

“What we’re seeing is poor legal work,” Morrissey said. “But I am concerned that the rest of the world thinks this is dishonesty and deceit. If half the public shares that perception, then defense lawyers — and, more important, their clients — have been severely harmed by this.”

Chaleff said “this whole case is sending the wrong message. Every day in that same building prosecutors and defense lawyers are . . . exchanging discovery, following the rules and proceeding in a quiet but effective manner for their side. I hope that this case does not cause future clients to believe that their lawyers should engage in win-at-any-cost tactics.”

Spence mused that “it seems to me that this whole trial is characterized by lawyers playing fast and loose with the truth. If Marcia Clark’s statement to the court Friday before last concerning her child care problems was false, as her estranged husband now says under oath, that also is very troubling. If a judge can’t believe the lawyers, it confirms what people always have suspected — that lawyers cheat and lie.”

* THE SPIN: The televised trial of O.J. Simpson is a boost for Newt Gin-grich’s populist visions. B1

LOAD-DATE: March 6, 1995

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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