LAPD Rampart Division Trial: 2000

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LAPD Rampart Division Trial: 2000

Defendants: Michael Buchanan, Paul Harper, Brian Liddy, Edward Ortiz
Crimes Charged: Conspiracy to obstruct justice, filing false police reports, lying under oath
Chief Defense Lawyers: Harland Braun (Buchanan), Joel Isaacson (Harper), Paul DePasquale (Liddy), Barry Levin (Ortiz)
Chief Prosecutors: Laura Laesecke, Anne Ingalls
Judge: Jacqueline Conner
Place: Los Angeles, California
Date of Trial: October 4-November 15, 2000
Verdicts: Harper: not guilty on all charges; Buchanan: guilty of conspiracy to obstruct justice and of two counts of perjury; not guilty on the other charges; Liddy and Ortiz: guilty of conspiracy to obstruct justice and of filing false police reports; not guilty on the other charges
Sentences: None. On December 22, 2000, Judge Conner overturned the convictions on the basis of jury misconduct. As of March, 2001, her decision is under appeal

SIGNIFICANCE: The arrest in 1996 of a crooked cop who was assigned to the Los Angeles Police Department's (LAPD) Rampart station led to one of the largest police scandals in American history. It also served to confirm the belief of many who feel that the entire LAPD is corrupt and can't be trusted.

Rampart is an eight-square mile area in Los Angeles west of the city's downtown core. Densely populated, it is home to approximately 375,000 residents, most of whom are working class immigrants or members of a racial minority. Rampart is also one of the busiest and most dangerous beats for the Los Angeles Police. However, not all of the officers who patrol the area play by the book.

A Crooked Cop's Arrest Opens the Floodgates

During the 1980s, gang violence dramatically rose in Los Angeles. Various factors caused this problem, including high unemployment, a dramatic increase in rent and other living expenses, cutbacks in education and health care, and a 40 percent poverty rate among the city's youth. To combat the violence, the LAPD formed anti-gang units at each of its divisions, including the one in Rampart. These units were known as CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums). The officers assigned to CRASH were to be the elite of the city's police force.

In 1996 Rafael Perez, a six-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police, joined the Rampart Division's CRASH unit. However, he was arrested two years later for stealing eight pounds of cocaine (worth approximately $1 million) from the Rampart station's evidence locker. On September 15, 1999, Perez pleaded guilty to the charge. In exchange for a reduced sentence and immunity for other crimes he participated in, Perez agreed to help investigators uncover widespread abuse in the Los Angeles Police Department's CRASH units.

Perez admitted to witnessing or participating in unjustified arrests, shootings, and beatings of suspects. He also claimed to have seen or taken part in the planting of drugs, guns, and other evidence on suspects, filing false police reports, witness intimidation, and giving false testimony in court to obtain convictions. Perez indicated that he and his partner, Nino Durden, framed up to 99 people for crimes that they did not commit. He also said that 75 percent of the convictions arising from the arrests by the Rampart Division's CRASH unit were tainted by police misconduct. Furthermore, according to Perez, such abuses happened not just at the Rampart Division, but at all of the CRASH units and that up to 90 percent of the officers assigned to CRASH were involved. (Indeed, the investigators quickly expanded their scope to look into the actions of the other LAPD divisions.)

According to Perez, he and the others who broke the law did so to wipe out gang violence in the city's toughest neighborhoods. "What we did was wrong" he admitted, but "we were out there fighting a war.… We felt that in our own way we saved lives." In one court hearing, Perez testified that "our mentality was, it's us against them.… They didn't play fair, so we didn't play fair.… One way or another, we were going to get the Rampart crime rate down."

During the next 18 months, over 100 criminal convictions were overturned and several people were released from prison on the grounds that, according to Perez' allegations, they did not commit the crimes that they were convicted of. (Some experts predict that, in the end, up to 30,000 other convictions may have to be reexamined and that the entire process will take years and millions of dollars to complete.) In addition, the city of Los Angeles agreed in November 2000 to pay $15 million to Javier Francisco Ovando for being unjustifiably shot and then falsely accused by Perez and Durden of assaulting a police officer. (Ovando was sentenced to 23 years imprisonment for that alleged crime and he served 30 months before his conviction was overturned.) That same month, the Los Angeles City Attorney's office agreed to pay $10.9 million to 29 other people who had been falsely imprisoned for up to three years because of tainted evidence or perjured testimony from officers in the LAPD's Rampart Division. As of the end of 2000, 64 other lawsuits had been filed related to the scandal, more were being prepared, and up to 200 others are expected. Estimates of the eventual total of civil damages against the city go as high as $200 million.

Perez's revelations also raised the possibility that civil actions in federal court may be brought against the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Police. On August 29, 2000, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that people whose civil rights have been violated by officers at the Rampart Division could sue the LAPD under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. One month later, the city agreed to allow the U.S. Department of Justice to review the LAPD's administration, training, and street operations for five years in order to avoid a lawsuit by the federal government against the Los Angeles Police for civil rights abuses and police wrongdoing.

Indictments and Trials for Only a Handful

In addition, over 70 officers have been investigated as a result of the scandal and dozens have been fired, suspended, or have resigned. However, as of mid-2001, only eight have been indicted. Critics have charged that the District Attorney's Office has not acted quickly enough to bring the rogue officers to justice and these allegations played a large role in District Attorney Gil Garcetti's defeat for reelection in 2000.

Of the eight, Manuel Chavez has pleaded no contest to assault while Shawn Gomez entered the same plea to a charge of filing a false police report. Perez's former partner, Nino Durden, entered into an agreement whereby he pleaded guilty to six felonies, including obstruction of justice, perjury, and filing a false police report. This plea was in exchange for the dismissal of a charge of attempted murder and Durden's promise to cooperate with the authorities in their investigation of other officers. (Durden has since been sentenced to seven years and eight months in prison for those six charges.) Ethan Cohan pleaded not guilty on March 28, 2001, to charges of attacking a suspect and then trying to cover it; he is currently awaiting trial.

The remaining four officers (Michael Buchanan, Paul Harper, Brian Liddy, and Edward Ortiz) all pleaded not guilty to charges of unjustifiably shooting suspects, planting evidence, filing false police reports, and perjury. The charges specifically dealt with the alleged planting of a gun on a reputed gang member, Allan Lobos, in April 1996 and of a conspiracy to falsely arrest two gang members, Cesar Natividad and Raul Munoz, in July 1996, for an alleged assault on Buchanan and Liddy. The four officers were tried jointly in Los Angeles before California Superior Court judge Jacqueline Conner, a jurist who is regarded by some local commentators as pro-police. The trial began on October 4, 2000.

During the following month, 27 people testified for the prosecution. In contrast, the only defense witnesses were the defendants themselves and an accident reconstruction expert. Most of the prosecution's witnesses had credibility problems in that they were gang members with their own criminal past. Many of them were also reluctant to provide any incriminating evidence against their friends and, thus, limited the scope of what they would testify about in court. A number of the prosecution's other witnesses were police officers who were similarly hesitant to testify against their colleagues.

A Key Witness Unable to Testify

One key person who was not at the trial was Perez. Four days before the trial began, Perez's former girlfriend, Sonya Flores, claimed that Perez murdered two people in a botched drug deal and then, with the help of another officer, buried the bodies in a ravine near Tijuana, Mexico. Despite a search by both American and Mexican authorities, no remains were ever found and Flores later admitted that her allegations were a lie. (On February 26, 2001, Flores was sentenced to 14 months in prison after pleading guilty to one felony count of making a false statement to an FBI agent.) However, Flores's admission that she concocted the story did not come until after the trial of the four officers, and Perez's immunity agreement did not cover any murders that he may have committed. As a result, if Perez were to take the witness stand and one of the defense attorneys brought up the murder allegations to discredit him, Perez would have had to exercise his constitutional right not to testify under the Fifth Amendment and that would put the credibility of the rest of his testimony in great doubt.

In the end, the jury delivered a mixed verdict. Buchanan, Liddy, and Ortiz were all found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct justice. In addition, Buchanan was found guilty of two counts of perjury and Liddy and Ortiz were each found guilty of filing a false police report. All of these verdicts related to the July 1996 arrest of Natividad and Munoz. Harper was acquitted of all charges and Buchanan, Liddy, and Ortiz were found not guilty of the charges involving Allan Lobos.

Convictions Overturned

The three convicted officers were to be sentenced on January 16, 2001. However, on December 22, 2000, Judge Conner overturned their convictions after a series of hearings in which she investigated allegations of juror misconduct and the use of flawed evidence during the jury's deliberations. According to the judge, the jurors considered the wrong evidence and failed to decide a key issue in the case, i.e., whether Buchanan and Liddy were struck by a vehicle driven by a gang member in July 1996. As Conner stated in her ruling:

While recognizing the enormous pressure on the community, on the police force, on the district attorney's office, and on the courts to 'fix' the Rampart scandal, this court is only interested in evaluating the fairness of the proceedings and determining whether justice was done in this case.… This court cannot simply look the other way and ignore the improprieties, innocent or not, intentional or unintentional, that served to deny a fair trial in this case.

On January 11, 2001, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office announced its decision to appeal Judge Conner's ruling. The matter is currently pending before the California Court of Appeals. In the meantime, prosecutors hope that whatever information Perez's former partner, Nino Durden, has will help bring further indictments and encourage other officers to cooperate with their investigation.

—Mark Thorburn