Ex-Officer to Get New Trial in Rights Case

A federal appeals court Thursday reversed the dismissal of a civil rights case filed by a former Los Angeles police officer who claimed fellow officers illegally searched her home looking for evidence that she had had improper sexual relations with a teen-age boy.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ordered that Kathleen Oborn, 34, be granted a new trial, overruling a 1989 decision by U.S. District Judge Jesse W. Curtis, who has since retired.

The case arose after Oborn’s former boyfriend told police she had been having sex with a 16-year-old exchange student from Germany, who was living in her San Fernando Valley home.

Oborn subsequently married and divorced the youth, Andre Rossky, who is now a businessman in Munich, according to her attorney, Stephen Yagman.

In her suit filed in January, 1988, Oborn alleged that the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division arranged for a civilian, Allyson DiConti, to covertly search Oborn’s West Hills residence while visiting her on March 27, 1987.

The complaint claimed that there was no warrant or probable cause for the search and that it violated Oborn’s constitutional rights against unlawful search and seizure.

At the trial, it was established that DiConti, who had at one time rented a room in Oborn’s home, took letters, real estate deeds, a tape recording and other personal items from the residence and gave them to Internal Affairs officers. It was also established that the officers wired DiConti with a microphone and waited outside in a van while she was inside Oborn’s home.

DiConti and three police officers testified that, although she had entered the house at the behest of police, she had been told not to take anything.

Curtis ruled against Oborn, saying she had not proved that DiConti had taken the items at the request of police.

It also was established at the trial that, after DiConti left Oborn’s house, police took her to the home of someone else under investigation, where she entered and took a utility bill.

Before the U.S. 9th Circuit judges in Pasadena, Assistant City Atty. Christine C. Patterson argued that police could not control DiConti action’s. But Judge Harry Pregerson expressed skepticism.

“Why would you send a kleptomaniac back into another house?” he said, according to a court transcript.

On Thursday, Pregerson, joined by Judges Cynthia Holcomb Hall and Melvin Brunetti, rejected the Police Department’s claims that the court was bound to accept the officers’ testimony that DiConti was not acting as a police agent. The judges ruled that a new trial was warranted because a jury could have disbelieved that testimony since the department did not return the letters DiConti stole to Oborn.

“This is another example of dishonest and awful conduct by the LAPD, this time against one of their own,” Yagman said afterward. “And they are not going to get away with it.

“We have the recording made through the wire attached to DiConti’s thigh, and it clearly shows that the Internal Affairs officers wanted DiConti to conduct an illegal search.”

The lawyer added that he could “prove that the tape was altered while in possession of Internal Affairs.”

Oborn, a mother of five, is still living in the San Fernando Valley. She was suspended from the Police Department in November, 1987, and fired last year after a department Board of Rights hearing.

Yagman said that Oborn would not comment on the case at this time.

In her suit, Oborn contended that “there is a leering preoccupation with sexual conduct of female LAPD officers and complaints against female officers generate a leering, inappropriate response.”

The defendants include the city of Los Angeles, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, DiConti, and Internal Affairs officers Terrence Dyment, Jerry C. Szymanski, Donald L. Cheatham, Larry R. Goebel, Carlo S. Cudio and Connie L. Castruita.

An LAPD spokesman declined comment on Thursday’s decision.