Scripps Howard News Service
October 27, 2003, Monday
Dr. Henry Lee
Forensic authority who has testified in more than 1,000 legal proceedings, including for the defense in the O.J. Simpson double-murder case. Also consulted in JonBenet Ramsey murder and President Kennedy's assassination.
Dr. Cyril Wecht
Nationally recognized forensic expert and coroner of Allegheny County, Pa., which includes Pittsburgh. Examined remains of Modesto's Chandra Levy.
Private investigator and former veteran Los Angeles police detective. Previously worked on Simpson's defense team.
Gary Ermoian
Local private investigator retained when Modesto police began focusing on Scott Peterson. Authorities secretly monitored part of one of his calls to Peterson.
For the prosecution:
Steve Jacobson
Investigator with the Stanislaus County district attorney's office and former police officer. Supervised wiretaps on Peterson's phones.
Jon Buehler
Modesto police detective. Amber Frey, Peterson's girlfriend, reported to Buehler after telephone conversations with Peterson, which continued at least a month after Frey went public with their romance.
Craig Grogan
Modesto police detective and lead investigator in the Peterson case. Previously named in a federal lawsuit filed by the family of 11-year-old Alberto Sepulveda, who was killed by another officer during a 2000 raid.
Al Brocchini
Modesto police detective. Helped escort Peterson from San Diego to Modesto after his arrest in April. Defense lawyers say Brocchini mishandled a hair found in Peterson's boat.
James Brazelton
Stanislaus County district attorney since 1996 and a local prosecutor since 1985. Previously worked as a policeman and in private practice.
John Goold
Chief deputy district attorney since 1999 and former Bay Area policeman. Often serves as a spokesman for the Peterson prosecutors.
(Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service)
BYLINE: By HELEN KENNEDY
O.J. Simpson's lawyers lied and willfully broke the law when they tried to hide damaging information, said Judge Lance A. Ito, who slapped the Dream Team yesterday with fines and various other punishments.
"This was, at the very least, a representation made with reckless disregard for the truth, if not a deliberate attempt to mislead both the prosecution and the court," Ito wrote in a strongly-worded ruling.
When the jurors come back Monday, Ito - as part of the punishment - will tell them the defense lawyers broke the law and it is their fault the jurors have been cooped up in hotel rooms for the last 10 days.
Lead defense attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. will have to pay a $ 950 fine, as will Carl Douglas, whom Ito has warned once before about violating the law of discovery by holding back information.
Misconduct fines under $ 1,000 do not get reported to the California Bar.
This is the second time the defense has been blasted by the judge for trying to put one over on the prosecution. The first was when Cochran surprised prosecutors with a raft of new witnesses in his opening statement.
The latest uproar stemmed from a July 29 interview conducted by defense investigator Zvonco "Bill" Pavelic with Rosa Lopez, Simpson's star alibi witness, who said she saw Simpson's Bronco parked at home at the time he was allegedly killing his ex-wife two miles away.
The interview produced a written statement and a tape recording, which contained different information. Neither was given to the prosecution.
Prosecutors charged that the defense hid the records because Lopez made easily-disprovable statements - notably that another Brentwood maid, Sylvia Guerra, was at her house June 12 and could back up her story.
Guerra has denied being there and said Lopez claimed Simpson's lawyers would pay her $ 5,000 to give Simpson an alibi.
When the defense belatedly produced the July 29 written statement last week - just before Lopez was to take the stand - prosecutors cried foul.
A stern Ito quizzed the defense team about any other records, but Cochran, Darden and Pavelic all heatedly denied any existed. Only after prosecutor Marcia Clark suggested Ito place Pavelic under oath, did he admit he had an audiotape.
Cochran and Darden claimed they never knew of the tape.
Cochran told reporters late yesterday: "I'm glad it's over. We'll pay and move on."
Ito also ruled that "when or if" Lopez' testimony is ever shown to the jury, he may allow prosecutors to tell the jury about the unethical defense tactics in their closing argument.
That's just one more reason for the defense to scrap Lopez's testimony altogether.
The slight Salvadoran maid finished testifying yesterday, but continued to be vague and confused about almost everything.
The defense did not ask the judge to order Lopez back, indicating they will not fight hard to have her testimony put before the jury.
Prosecutor Christopher Darden continued to demolish her testimony on cross-examination yesterday. But when Cochran got up to ask her more questions and try to mop up the mess, Lopez's answers actually became even more contradictory.
When Cochran - trying to elicite a "no" - asked Lopez if she had told a former employer that "O.J. Simpson is a great guy. I would testify to anything, anytime," Lopez responded: "Maybe I said that, I don't remember."
Cochran tried to tell the court that when Lopez said "I don't know," it meant "no" in her Salvadoran dialect.
But the Salvadoran consulate in Los Angeles released a statement saying that in no Salvadoran dialect do the words "I don't remember" substitute for "no."
Lopez also responded "no me recuerdo" when asked if she ever told Guerra she was being paid by Simpson's lawyers.
Later, she listened to a tape of Guerra saying that Lopez claimed she was being paid and that Guerra could also make $ 5,000 by pretending to have seen Simpson's Bronco.
"I never said that, sir," Lopez replied.
"Sylvia's lying?" Darden asked.
"100 percent, sir," Lopez said.
Though her estimate of when things happened changed almost every time she was asked a question, Lopez stuck adamantly to the core of her story: that she heard Simpson leave his home, that she heard scary footsteps in hard-soled shoes and that she later heard Simpson's voice and felt safer.
Because Lopez was unable to fix a time for these events, prosecutors may be able to argue that Lopez actually heard Simpson creeping back onto his own property after murdering his wife, and that the later conversation was Simpson talking to his limo driver.
Cochran has said Simpson was home chipping golf balls in his yard - but Lopez never mentioned seeing him do that.
BYLINE: By G. LUTHER WHITINGTON
SECTION: Domestic News
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
A mental patient who allegedly raped a mentally ill woman at a hospital was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder for the attack because he tested positive for the deadly AIDS virus, authorities said.
Ben Lezine, 31, of Los Angeles, was arrested at Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center just before his scheduled release Thursday. He was the second person arrested for attempted murder in Los Angeles County on the basis of being an alleged AIDS carrier.
''We had to expedite this arrest,'' detective Bill Pavelic said Friday. ''Despite our pleas to hold him, the hospital was about to let him go. We had to book him.''
Lezine allegedly lured an unidentified 26-year-old woman -- also a mental patient -- to his room on Ward 3B of the County-USC psychiatric building Sept. 3 and attacked her, said Pavelic, a detective with the police Mental Evaluation Unit.
Lezine had reportedly been in and out of different psychiatric facilities for years, according to Pavelic, and was admitted to County-USC after threatening his mother.
Pavelic said he could not comment on whether Lezine was aware that he had tested positive for acquired immune deficiency syndrome, a deadly disease that afflicts mostly homosexual men and intravenous drug users.
The detective also declined to say when Lezine, who was held Friday in isolation at County Jail, was given a test that indicated he had been exposed to the AIDS virus.
In late June, Joseph Markowski, a 29-year-old prostitute afflicted with acquired immune deficiency syndrome, was taken to the same hospital for psychiatric care after he attempted suicide. Despite pleas by police that Markowski be held, he was released on schedule only to be arrested a day later on suspicion of attempted murder for allegedly selling AIDS contaminated blood.
BYLINE: By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH, City News Service
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
A millionaire businessman acquitted of charges that he sexually assaulted nine women, seven of whom allegedly were drugged, said today that the allegations have been "a devastating experience."
"The nightmare is over, absolutely. I'm looking forward to just relaxing and going back to work, and salvaging a lot of the money that I've lost and just looking forward to a new life and getting married and having a family," John Gordon Jones said at a downtown news conference.
Jones spent more than two years in county jail without bail until a Long Beach Superior Court jury acquitted him yesterday of 29 charges, including kidnapping, rape of an unconscious person, rape by use of drugs and sexual battery.
The 46-year-old owner of Worldtech Computer in Encino, which he had helped to run from jail, maintained that he had been "wrongfully accused."
"They falsified documents, they hid documents. There was prosecutorial misconduct that was just to an unbelievable, devastating state," the businessman said.
"Well, what happened is the District Attorney's Office wanted to have a GHB date rape case, and they wanted to go ahead and prosecute me no matter what the truth was.
"They went ahead and they got these women to go ahead and say false allegations against me, with blackouts that never existed, by lying. When these women wanted to back out, I believe that they forced them to go ahead with their stories," Jones said.
One of Jones' lawyers, Milton Grimes, said his client is "thinking very seriously of suing the county for false imprisonment because of the incompetent investigation in this case."
"Nine different women caused this man, this man here, to sit in jail wrongfully for 793 days over two years with wrongful allegations," Grimes said.
On behalf of the district attorney, Sandi Gibbons said her "office will not be commenting on such silly allegations that aren't true anyway."
The woman whose allegations launched the case against Jones claimed he had date-raped her and that she got home after spending the night with him and believed she had been drugged, Grimes said.
"Well, when she was tested the next day, it turned out that she had snorted a considerable amount of cocaine, which would definitely inhibit or prohibit or keep anyone from being knocked out, so this is the young lady that started this avalanche going," the defense lawyer said.
He noted that the jurors cleared his client after taking a field trip to Jones' home.
"Once the jury went out to the residence of Mr. Jones and viewed it, they had no doubt of his innocence because the descriptions of some of the women were that they were locked in bedrooms that turned out to have no locks on the doors," Grimes said.
Another of Jones' lawyers, Richard Sherman, said his client became the "poster boy for date rape."
"He was a rich man, he was a prominent man in the business community and they took him into custody. They never investigated the allegations of the first victim, the alleged victim. Had they done that, they would have realized that he didn't do that and that she was not telling ... a true story," Sherman said.
Jones said he learned that "county jail is very rough," and that he was jumped and beaten up while on the county jail bus.
"It has been a devastating experience with tremendous loss of income. And it took a lot of praying and a man like Milton Grimes and (private investigator and former LAPD detective) Bill Pavelic and Mr. Sherman to prove my innocence," he said.
Jones and his lawyers said they believed the case was motivated by his wealth and the prospect that the women might get hefty legal judgments in civil lawsuits if he had been convicted.
The women "started coming forward" with the allegations after the District Attorney's Office went to the media in December 1998 and "asked are there any victims out there who have been victimized by the alleged millionaire limousine rapist?" Grimes said.
"I don't think there'd be any charges if I didn't have any money, there would have been no charges, absolutely not," Jones said.
Jones, who had faced the possibility of consecutive life prison sentences if convicted, said he spent his first night of freedom in more than two years at a gathering with his mom and some of his friends.
"It's like starting all over again, really. Just driving the car was amazing," he said, adding that he plans to go back to work next Monday at his company, which sells laser jet cartridges and office products nationwide. "Basically, I'm just happy to be free."
The case against two other people indicted along with Jones in April 1999 on a much smaller number of charges is under review given the jury's verdict in Jones' case, according to the District Attorney's Office.
Pina Marie Colapinto and Lawrence Elliott are awaiting trial next month in downtown Los Angeles.
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