Vista

The San Diego County district attorney will not file perjury charges against sheriff’s deputies who investigated a murder case involving a former Vista crime commissioner charged with killing her brother.

Steve Casey, a spokesman for Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller, said Wednesday that a review of the Evanna Cavanaugh murder investigation found “no substance to an allegation of perjury” against detectives involved in the case.

Miller sent a letter to Sheriff’s Department officials March 9, but the district attorney has refused to make it public because the case is still pending, according to Casey.

Casey declined to comment further on the contents of the letter.

Cavanaugh, 48, is charged with shooting her brother during an argument in November, 1985, in their mother’s Leucadia home.

Defense attorneys for Cavanaugh said detectives violated her rights during the investigation that followed the shooting.

Although detectives maintained during pretrial hearings that they entered the home only after receiving permission from Cavanaugh’s mother, a recording made with a microcassette tape player Cavanaugh had hidden in her purse revealed that deputies were inside the house soon after the incident.

Cavanaugh’s attorney, Charles Goldberg, is seeking to have the murder charges against Cavanaugh thrown out because of the conduct of sheriff’s investigators, saying that evidence was gathered illegally. Judge Herbert Hoffman is expected to rule on that matter Wednesday.

In a hearing earlier this month, Hoffman criticized sheriff’s deputies--in particular Detectives Craig Henderson, Robert Fullmer and Gary Fisher--for what he called “sloppy” police work.