2 Sides Claim an Edge in Trial of Police Chiefs

Both prosecuting and defense attorneys in the criminal conspiracy trial of Corona’s two highest-ranking police officials claim their cases have benefited from a week of testimony from junior officers who say their bosses told them to alter a police report about a fatal 1982 traffic accident.

Attorneys representing Corona Police Chief Bob J. Talbert and Deputy Chief Edward D. Sampson said last week that the officers’ testimony about various alleged meetings at which, they said, they discussed Corona’s possible civil liability regarding a stop sign that was obstructed by tree branches--and about the obstruction itself--is riddled with significant discrepancies.

But Kevin Ruddy, the deputy district attorney prosecuting the case, said neither he nor the Riverside Superior Court jury could expect witnesses to remember accurately all details about events that happened more than three years ago.

“The details aren’t important,” Ruddy said in an interview outside the courtroom. The facts his witnesses have presented thus far, he contended, clearly show that the stop sign was obstructed and that the obstruction was mentioned in the accident report until the chiefs voiced their concern about city liability and urged that the reference be removed.

Among the testimony most damaging to the chiefs was that of Larry Thayer and David Berkley, sergeants in the Corona Police Department at the time of the crash. Both told of a 45-minute meeting they had with Talbert and Sampson two or three days after the accident at which, they said, they were encouraged to have the accident report changed.

Talbert lectured to them, they said, telling them that as sergeants the pair were part of the city’s management team. The chief told them that “our first loyalty was to the City of Corona,” Berkley testified, “and that we could be removed, like that.” Berkley snapped his fingers.

Both said they felt intimidated by the chief’s remarks and believed their jobs might be at stake. Neither could recall any other time when Talbert or Sampson had suggested altering a police report to protect the city.

Check of Scene

Another sergeant, since retired, said Sampson had “asked me to go to the scene and check how bad the obstruction was” the day after the crash.

“The significance of it was not that great,” Robert Terpening recalled telling Sampson. “. . . A vehicle moving at a reasonable speed on that street could have seen the stop sign” in time to stop at the intersection.

When Terpening reported his findings to Sampson, the deputy chief told him to tell the officer investigating the case not to include a reference to the obstruction in his accident report, Terpening testified.

Terpening could not recall, however, another meeting about the accident that a former Corona police supervisor, William Howe, later testified had involved Sampson, Talbert and Terpening and himself.

At that meeting, Howe said, Talbert “mentioned about the liability of the city regards the stop sign being obstructed. . . . He did not want it in the report.” The chief’s request, however, was more a “casual comment” than an order, he testified.

Howe, then a lieutenant, was in charge of the department’s patrol and traffic divisions. He is now chief of police at UC Riverside.

Chiefs Deny Having Meetings

Talbert and Sampson, who are free without bail and collecting their regular salaries while on administrative leave of absence, maintain that the two meetings never took place.

Sampson’s attorney, Allan Sandquist, said in an interview that he plans to show with payroll records and officers’ testimony that such meetings could not have occurred before the accident report was approved by Berkley.

And although Terpening testified that Sampson wanted mention of the obstruction omitted from the accident report, Sandquist said, such an instruction does not indicate his client was involved in a conspiracy.

An indictment handed down last August by the Riverside County Grand Jury charges Talbert and Sampson with conspiracy to obstruct justice and accuses them of ordering and persuading three subordinates--Berkley, Thayer and Terpening--not to include references to the stop sign being obstructed in the accident report. The chiefs would lose their jobs and could face up to three years in prison if they are convicted of the felony.

Plea-Bargain

The traffic accident at the center of the case occurred on Jan. 4, 1982, when Claude Daniel Hinson, then 24, ran a stop sign on Buena Vista Avenue and crashed into another car traveling on Ontario Avenue.

A passenger in that automobile, 17-year-old Warren Henderson of Corona, died 11 days later from injuries sustained in the crash.

Hinson, whose blood alcohol level was measured at .21%, more than twice California’s standard for that of a drunk driver, pleaded guilty to a charge of vehicular manslaughter and was sentenced to eight months in jail and three years’ probation. The district attorney dropped an additional charge of felony drunk driving in exchange for Hinson’s guilty plea.

Hinson suffered severe brain injuries in the accident and had amnesia afterward, Ruddy said. The vehicular manslaughter charge and Hinson’s plea, he said, were based on the mistaken belief that he had failed to obey “a clearly visible stop sign.”

Witnesses Rudy called last week have differed substantially on the degree to which the sign was obstructed and on the role the obstruction played in the accident.

Officers Describe Actions

Berkley, the watch commander who approved the report, said he and Thayer, his patrol sergeant, had decided that mention of the obstruction should be included, “but not to elaborate on it . . . not to make a major issue of it.”

Bill Mumma, the officer who wrote the accident report, testified that he never looked at the stop sign but relied on other police officers’ observations to include a reference to the obstruction in his initial report.

Mumma also said Thayer told him to mention the obstruction but not to elaborate on it.

But Thayer testified that he believed the obstruction was “the primary cause of that accident,” and that he would not have suggested that it merited no elaboration.

Color photographs police took after the accident seem to show that the sign was at least partly obscured, but the photographs are faded and of poor quality, and their negatives have been lost.

Use of Pictures Questioned

Defense attorneys have attempted to cast further doubt on the pictures’ representation of conditions at the time of the accident by pointing out that although testimony and a local newspaper’s photograph show the accident took place in overcast daylight, the police photographs were taken near dusk and after rain had begun to fall.

“Even my own witnesses are disagreeing over the importance of the obstruction,” Ruddy acknowledged in an interview. “That’s why it is a problem to leave out” such information from a police report.

Had attorneys on both sides of the Hinson case known the stop sign may have been obscured, Hinson not only would have faced lesser charges, but also would have been better able to assemble a defense, Ruddy told the Riverside County Superior Court jury in his opening statement.

Ruddy is attempting to prove that contention in the second phase of his case, which began Friday with the testimony of members of the district attorney’s office who were involved in Hinson’s prosecution.

Ruddy also will call to the stand the deputy public defender who advised Hinson to plead guilty to the manslaughter charge, he said Friday.

Charges Followed Dispute

The charges against the chiefs came to light after a bitter contract dispute that resulted in a five-day walkout by Corona police patrolmen, sergeants and lieutenants in November, 1983.

A group of police officers brought a list of 18 complaints about police management--including the allegation that the chiefs had ordered officers to alter and approve the accident report--to Corona City Council members early last summer, according to James Wheaton, Corona city manager. The council asked the district attorney to perform an investigation, which resulted in the grand jury indictment last August.