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Gascón’s Office Fails in Lawyer-Disqualification Bid
Kathleen Cady to Remain As Lawyer for Victims
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Office of Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón failed yesterday to persuade a judge to bar a pro bono attorney for victims from further connection with a habeas corpus proceeding.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli determined at a hearing that Deputy District Attorney Shelan Y. Joseph, a “special advisor” to Gascón, made an inadequate showing that attorney Kathleen Cady of the Glendale firm of Dordulian Law Group, should be disqualified based on having reviewed, as a law clerk in the District Attorney’s Office in 1989, cases in which the prosecution had utilized testimony of jailhouse informants. One of the 130 cases, stretching over a 10-year period, involved such testimony against Jesse Gonzales, who is seeking a writ of habeas corpus based on an alleged Brady violation.
Gonzales was convicted of the murder on May 29, 1979, of Sheriff’s Deputy Jack Williams and the attempted murder of then-Deputy Bobby Esquivel. Cady, a former deputy district attorney—along with former District Attorney Steve Cooley and former Deputy District Attorney Steve Cooley and former Deputy District Attorney Brentford Ferreira, now a Long Beach private practitioner—is representing Williams’s two daughters and Esquivel in opposing the writ petition.
The District Attorney’s Office has joined forces with criminal defense lawyer Mark Overland in urging that relief be granted on the ground that the prosecution did not turn over to the defense reports of psychological examinations of the jailhouse informant who testified as to alleged admissions to him by Gonzales. The victims asserted in their brief that the prosecution did not know of those reports and that, in any event, the witness’s testimony had been discredited and could not have had an impact on the verdict.
Lomeli agreed with Overland that the victims do not have standing as parties to the proceeding. He nonetheless said he will receive the memorandum of points and authorities prepared by Cady, Cooley and Ferreira on the Brady issue as an amicus brief and will consider it.
Other judges have taken the same approach.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for July 14.
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