Monday, March 30, 2009
Page 7
PERSPECTIVES (Column)
Van de Kamp Irked Over Reporter’s Presence at 1978 Meeting He Thought Would Be Private
By ROGER M. GRACE
Eighty-Ninth in a Series
John Van de Kamp was considerably more cordial when I interviewed him in his office earlier this month (in connection with this series) than he had been the only other time I had come to his office, nearly 31 years earlier.
On the recent occasion, I joined him on the 26th Floor of the Bank of America Plaza at 333 S. Hope, where he’s of counsel to Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP. The earlier visit was in May, 1978. He was district attorney then, and, unbeknownst to me, wasn’t expecting any member of the press to be present at a meeting he had agreed to hold with a group of attorneys critical of a call he had made. To top it off, I was scruffily attired.
That first meeting with Van de Kamp came on a day when I had driven my wife, Jo-Ann, to LAX in the morning. I was clad in moccasins—even then, at a young age, I had aching feet—but intended to stop back at the house before going on to the office. Instead, for whatever reason, I went directly to the MetNews office in downtown L.A. from the airport. I suspect I hadn’t shaven.
At the office, I received a telephone call from a lawyer inviting me to attend a meeting that he and a few others would be having shortly with the DA to discuss the decision not to launch prosecutions in the aftermath of the shredding of files bearing complaints against Los Angeles police officers. I had no idea that the person who phoned had no authority to include me in the meeting.
The issue of the file-shredding was a sizzling one. The Office of Los Angeles City Attorney had authorized the destruction of files containing charges that had been made against Los Angeles police officers which were “other than sustained.” City Attorney Burt Pines (now a Los Angeles Superior Court judge) had been advised by deputies in his office that criminal defendants were only entitled, under recent case law, to discovery of complaints against arresting officers that had been determined to be valid. Trial judges, however, subsequently viewed it differently, and more than 100 criminal cases had been dismissed based on the shreddings.
In a statement released Feb. 6, 1978, Van de Kamp said there was no evidence of criminality, though there was “ample evidence of bad judgment and some eye-brow raising inconsistencies” on the part of City Attorney’s Office staff members and the police in their testimony.
A segment of the criminal defense bar was incensed over the decision not to prosecute those responsible for obliterating evidence of charges leveled against officers. (The irony is that clients of many of them had benefited from the gaffe.)
One vocal objector was attorney Terry Smerling, now a member of the Los Angeles Superior Court.
This column of May 16, 1978, contains a report on the meeting in Van de Kamp’s office. It begins:
Dist. Atty. John Van de Kamp was fuming.
He had agreed to meet with representatives of the “Ad Hoc Committee Against Police Shredding.” But he was expecting a contingent of three or four.
Twelve showed up at his office for a 1 p.m. meeting. The motley crew included seven attorneys and five legal workers.
What seemed to irk the DA most was the presence of this reporter. He had thought the meeting would be private.
The meeting came on the heels of a letter from ACLU staff attorney Terry Smerling—which was released at a press conference—complaining that a report by Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald Eastman had explained the lack of prosecutions in the shredding case on the ground that the relevant Government Code section requires specific intent.
Eastman had taken the “opposite position that specific intent is not an element of the crime” in prosecuting former Marshal Timothy Sperl for destruction of radio logs, according to the letter.
(A more careful reading shows that Eastman said the crime requires “proof of criminal intent,” not specific intent. Destruction of official records is a general intent crime.)
Smerling ended the letter by saying:
“In light of Mr. Eastman’s faded memory of the position he took in the Sperl case and his apparent inability to remain consistent, we recommend that he be removed from SID. In that regard, we are willing to share with you additional information reflecting adversely on Mr. Eastman’s performance with SID.”
SID stands for “Special Investigations Division.”
Van de Kamp started the meeting by protesting, angrily:
“I’m getting a little tired of operating in a press conference situation. You’re trying to try a deputy DA in a scurrilous way.
“You’re here with the press today in a way you did not represent.”
One of the members of the committee tried to draw attention to the supposed inconsistency on Eastman’s part. Van de Kamp did not want to discuss that contention.
“I invited you to come in to give me information,” he said in an intense, about-to-walk-out-of-the-room manner.
“You give it to me!
“Right now!”
Van de Kamp said he had intended to have Eastman come in, but wasn’t going to under the circumstances.
“You invited the press—and with a group other than you represented,” he said, gaining control, but still upset.
He told Smerling:
“I welcome you to come to a private meeting sometime.”
After awhile, the DA had cooled off. The 1978 column quotes him as telling the delegation of 12:
“I’m taking what you say seriously. I think you know it.
“If there’s a wrong that’s been created by the work of this office, I want to correct it.”
Yet, the sparring continued.
At one point, the visitors announced they were ready to proffer the “additional information” about Eastman which Smerling had promised, and which Van de Kamp had demanded a short time earlier in the meeting be provided “right now!” At this juncture, however, the DA declared that he would “prefer not to” have the information aired in front of the press…that is, me. I offered to leave; the visitors asked that I remain; Van de Kamp did not take me up on my offer, but did advise his guests:
“I’m not going to subject myself to cross-examination.”
Van de Kamp was told that Eastman had allegedly leaked information as to grand jury proceedings in the Sperl case to Los Angeles Times reporter Bill Farr, and that this was a ground set forth in a habeas corpus petition filed on behalf of Sperl.
(Sperl had been convicted on Aug. 12, 1974, on four felony counts, one of which was destruction of public records. The logs had purportedly chronicled free transportation improperly provided by his deputies to Supervisor James Hayes and other public officials. Another of the counts alleged his utilizing deputies in campaign activities on behalf of Hayes in 1972. The ex-marshal was spared serving his six-month sentence based on ill health.)
The column recites that Smerling said of the allegation in Sperl’s petition: “If true, this is very serious misconduct.”
Van de Kamp’s reaction:
“I’m not going to respond. I’m not going to get into a public trial which you want to do here.”
Smerling: “I’m asking if you know the habeas corpus was filed.”
Van de Kamp was silent. Smerling, as if to make a record, recited: “And we get no answer.”
The callers also pointed to an allegation that Eastman had failed to prosecute in connection with a 1973 police shooting.
Smerling pressed his contention that Eastman had rationalized the non-prosecution of deputy city attorneys and police on the basis of a lack of “specific intent” on their part. At one point, he told Van de Kamp:
“What you’re saying is that absence of specific intent is an affirmative defense to a general intent crime. You know this position does not make any sense. You’re sticking yourself in a corner.”
Near the end of the get-together, a representative of the Greater Watts Justice Center told the DA: “We’re about ready now to talk to Mr. Eastman.” Van de Kamp asked Assistant District Attorney Johnnie Cochran (now deceased), who had recently joined the meeting, to fetch Eastman, which he did.
Eastman tried to explain that his position both in the Sperl case and the file-shredding matter was the same: that destruction of public records is a general intent crime; it does not have to be done for any specific purpose. In the shredding situation, he put forth, his recommendation against prosecutions was not predicated on lack of “specific intent” but, rather, in deference to the valid defense of a “benign state of mind” on the part of the lawyers and the police.
Smerling characterized Eastman’s explanation as “convoluted, apologetic, and goal-oriented.”
More than three decades have passed, and Van de Kamp says: “I don’t have any strong recollection of that meeting.”
Smerling—who was appointed to the Los Angeles Municipal Court in 1982 by Gov. Jerry Brown and gained a seat on the Superior Court bench four years later through election—says he doesn’t remember Van de Kamp “fuming” at the meeting. He characterizes the session as “tense but quite civil.”
Smerling remarks:
“I still believe that I was correct in my legal analysis of the potential culpability of those who authorized the shredding of complaints against police officers; but 26 years on the bench has taught me to value the careful discretion that a diligent prosecutor must wield in the interests of justice.”
The jurist adds:
“Since that meeting 31 years ago I have come to appreciate that John Van de Kamp was a fine district attorney, probably the best during my legal career. He was also an excellent attorney general and continues to be an exemplary public servant.”
POTSHOTS AT PINES: A one-liner by Van de Kamp at the meeting seemingly reflected a rift that had developed between him and Pines. The column relates:
Committee member Carol Smith commented that Van de Kamp had a background in criminal law.
“You’re not a Burt Pines,” she said.
“That’s the nicest thing,” Van de Kamp responded.
In his Feb. 6 statement explaining his decision not to institute prosecutions over the file shreddings, Van de Kamp took this slap at Pines:
“When a public office makes a mistake, as happens, its leader stands accountable to those who elect him. Those electors have the opportunity to consider the good and the bad and sort those things into perspective at the time such an elected leader seeks to renew his public contract or seek higher office.”
Pines was, at that time, seeking higher office. He was running for the Democratic nomination for attorney general, and his rival was U.S. Rep. Yvonne Braithwaite Burke (later to serve on the Board of Supervisors from 1979-80 and 1992–2008).
Van de Kamp’s statement adds, with direct reference to Pines:
“As an elected public officeholder, the city attorney is accountable through this process.”
With respect to that comment, Van de Kamp now reflects:
“I certainly wish I hadn’t said it.”
He explains that it was intended as a “throw-away line” to convey that those who were upset over the shreddings had a means of redress. Van de Kamp notes that Pines—who he says is a friend of his, as is Burke—was upset over the remark at the time.
“It hit a raw nerve,” he brings to mind.
Indeed, the issue of the shreddings was to dog Pines in his campaign. A United Press International analysis of the statewide races which newspapers published days before the June primary says “the bloodiest battle” that year was between Burke and Pines.
“In what is perhaps the single biggest issue in the race,” the wire service story says, “Mrs. Burke accused Pines of failing to hold his subordinates ‘accountable’ for their advice that led to the shredding of four tons of ‘unsubstantiated’ complaints against Los Angeles Police.”
As it turned out, Pines lost the 1978 nomination to Burke; she was defeated in the general election by George Deukmejian. Pines was named to the bench in 2003 by outgoing Gov. Gray Davis, who had been recalled. Pines had been serving as the governor’s judicial appointments secretary.
The judge shows no signs of bitterness toward Van de Kamp over his 1978 remarks.
“Van de Kamp and I worked together in the ’60s in the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” he says. “I gained a great deal of respect for the man at that time for his judgment, his integrity, his work ethic.”
As district attorney, Pines says, Van de Kamp was “level-headed, fair, dedicated, trustworthy.” He terms Van de Kamp “one of the best DAs in my lifetime.”
In like vein, Van de Kamp says of Pines: “Burt was probably the best city attorney that we’ve had,” terming him “a great public servant.”
He says there was “a little bit of competition” between his office and Pines’s—“which,” he remarks, “is a good thing.”
Pines refers to “healthy rivalry.” By way of example, he notes that both his office and Van de Kamp’s had consumer fraud section, recalling that his deputies would “gloat” over uncovering something the DA’s Office had missed.
Copyright 2009, Metropolitan News Company