Gates Accused of Misusing Role as Rights Trial Begins

LOS ANGELES —  Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates was accused of misusing his office for political gain Tuesday as a trial began in a lawsuit alleging that the perennially popular sheriff violated the civil rights of his political foes.

Gates, in his fourth term and 14th year as sheriff, is accused of conspiring to deprive private investigator Preston Guillory of his rights by arranging to prosecute him after he began work for two men who unsuccessfully challenged Gates for office.

In the federal lawsuit, Guillory has demanded $5 million in damages. He was charged, and subsequently acquitted, of illegally carrying a firearm and impersonating an officer in a 1985 case investigated by a special police unit directly under Gates.

Guillory was harassed and spied upon because he chose to oppose Gates, according to Michael Cisarik, the detective’s lawyer.

“They attempted to punish and deter him and dissuade him from exercising his rights,” Cisarik told jurors in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. “His rights to criticize Mr. Gates and law enforcement. His right to complain about government abuses and wrongdoing or what he feels is wrongdoing. And his right to associate with anyone he feels like associating with.”

As the trial opened, lawyers for Gates contended that neither he nor several other public officials had done anything wrong in the prosecution of Guillory.

“What the (defendants) did was reasonable, it was lawful, and it was not improperly motivated, and they had probable cause to believe that Mr. Guillory had committed some offense,” said Eric Dobberteen, Gates’ lawyer.

It is not the first time that Gates has been accused of illegal surveillance and harassment. Three would-be political rivals, including former Orange County Municipal Court Judge Bobby D. Youngblood, won $375,000 in a settlement of police-spying claims against Gates’ office in 1987.

The county denied those claims in making the deal, but it was reached shortly after a tape recording of one of Gates’ rivals turned up in investigative files maintained by his office.

Guillory also sued Gates in 1978, alleging that he had been unfairly denied a permit to carry a concealed weapon by the sheriff. That case, in which Gates also was accused of using the permits to help friends and punish enemies, still is pending.

Tuesday’s proceedings mark the first case alleging misuse of government resources by Gates to reach trial, and the first in which Gates will have to answer direct questions from the witness stand about his actions. Gates, along with his top subordinate, Undersheriff Raul Ramos, is scheduled to testify today.

The shadow of the Youngblood case hung over proceedings Tuesday as lawyers clashed over how much reference to it may be made. At one point, U.S. District Judge Richard A. Gadbois, rebuking lawyers for both sides, insisted: “I have no intention of trying the Youngblood case here.”

Although Guillory is claiming that he suffered emotional distress and damage to his business and income, the key demands are for so-called punitive damages against the county, Gates and other defendants. Cisarik asked jurors to “penalize and punish” Gates “for the reckless disregard he had for Mr. Guillory’s constitutional rights.”

The trial will revolve around the investigation and arrest of Guillory in 1985. The charges were based on actions that Guillory allegedly took 6 months earlier, while working for Youngblood. Guillory was attempting to find Richard Wilder, a defendant in the Youngblood case and an acknowledged informant for Gates’ elite criminal activities section, which reported directly to the sheriff.

Guillory contends that he found Wilder and legally served him with papers notifying him of the pending Youngblood case.

Lawyers for Gates contend that Guillory posed as a police officer and misrepresented himself in other ways while trying to find Wilder, and that he carried a concealed firearm on Oct. 21, 1984, the night Wilder was served a notice of the lawsuit.

Guillory’s later acquittal of all the misdemeanor charges does not mean the charges were not properly brought, Dobberteen insisted on Gates’ behalf. Guillory had been investigated both by sheriff’s deputies and police in Anaheim, where the incident took place.

“It’s our position that all of the evidence together will show one basic thing: It can be dangerous to be a police officer in today’s society. Not in a physical sense, everybody knows that,” Dobberteen told jurors.

“The county and Anaheim investigated Mr. Guillory properly, reasonably, and within the law,” Dobberteen said.

Wilder was living in the Oakwood Garden apartments in Anaheim in 1984. For a week, Guillory interviewed neighbors and employees until he established that Wilder was living there. He then hired an off-duty officer of the Los Angeles Police Department, Doug Haskins, to accompany him.

Guillory also learned that Wilder was wanted for a traffic offense. He requested that Anaheim police send an officer along to make the arrest. Guillory carried a firearm, but insisted he wore it on his hip in plain view--a claim that Cisarik told jurors the Anaheim police officer confirmed.

When Wilder was arrested, he insisted that Guillory be arrested on a weapons charge. He also called Orange County Deputy Sheriff Randy Blair, who was working for Gates, to report his arrest and his claims against Guillory.

Blair, who also was a defendant in the then-pending Youngblood case, investigated, along with another deputy, with Gates’ approval, according to Cisarik. The case was referred to Anaheim city prosecutors, but not through normal channels, Cisarik contended.

According to Cisarik, Gates’ aide, Raul Ramos, called now-retired Anaheim Police Chief Jimmie Kennedy directly, then hand-carried Guillory’s file to the chief. Kennedy recognized the sensitivity of the case, involving Gates and Blair, both defendants in the Youngblood case, the city’s lawyer, Paul Paquette, told jurors Tuesday. Kennedy told Ramos to submit the case through normal channels, and then called Mark Logan, the municipal prosecutor who would receive the case for evaluation.

“He (Kennedy) could see the specter of impropriety arising,” Paquette said. “He calls Logan, and makes the statement, ‘Be careful.’ ”

When Logan twice pressed Kennedy for details, the chief advised him of Guillory’s lawsuit against Gates and the Sheriff’s Department’s role in the investigation.

Logan realized that any prosecution of Guillory could be viewed as “retaliation” by the sheriff’s office, Paquette said. So Logan arranged for an Anaheim police detective to re-investigate the case and, 6 months later, decided to charge Guillory with nine misdemeanors. Guillory was acquitted of all counts on Dec. 27, 1985.

Whether the charges were reasonable at the time they were filed is central to the case, and at least six employees and residents of Wilder’s apartment building will testify about Guillory’s tactics.

They include:

- Apartment security guard Radford Mayes, who Dobberteen said will testify that Guillory first identified himself as a “detective.”

- Retired California Highway Patrol Officer Abelardo Armenta, a resident, who claimed Guillory “showed a badge” when questioning him, according to Dobberteen. Cisarik contends that Armenta confused Guillory with the LAPD officer who accompanied him.

- Security guard Mike Pintos, who thought Guillory was a policeman, according to Dobberteen.

Anaheim’s police reinvestigated the key elements of the investigation by the Sheriff’s Department, and that was why Guillory was prosecuted, according to Paquette.

“What did they (the witnesses) say except exactly what the county’s report said they did,” Paquette told jurors. “Mr. Guillory’s criminal prosecution and the investigation by the city of Anaheim Police Department grew out of the fact that there were witnesses who heard and saw what Mr. Guillory did. That’s why he was charged and for no other reason.”

But Cisarik contends that both the Anaheim and the county investigations were suspect. He suggested that the investigating officers pressured the witnesses to come up with the story that would fit into a criminal case.

Haskins, the 18-year veteran LAPD officer, was not interviewed at all, Cisarik said. And Guillory was not questioned until after the charges were filed, he added.

Lawyers in the case estimated the trial will take at least 2 weeks.

Gates was reelected to a fourth term in 1986, in which he outpolled two opponents combined by 100,000 votes.