Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Albracht, a former deputy district attorney, thinks he knows why. There is tremendous pressure on prosecutors and judges to ignore police lying, he said. A young prosecutor who challenges a veteran cop's claim is "dead meat," said Albracht. "They'll complain to your supervisor: 'You've got some kind of Jerry Brown liberal here.' "
Judges are in a pickle too, said Albracht, who was appointed by Brown. The district attorney's office, which prosecutes all felony cases in the county, can, and does on rare occasions, boycott a judge it does not like by filing peremptory challenges against him in every case.
"If you called the police liars, they'd 'paper' you," the judge said. Then, "instead of working on a nice assignment near your home, they [your fellow judges] send you downtown or to juvenile or dependency court, where they send the slugs."
Few in the legal system believe that police routinely engage in the kinds of extreme lies alleged in the Rampart scandal.
These were not lies to justify how evidence was found or linked to a defendant. They were lies about whether evidence was found at all.
Former LAPD officer-turned-informant Rafael Perez, the scandal's central figure, says he and his colleagues planted illegal guns and drugs on suspects and, in at least one case, deliberately shot a gang member, then framed him for trying to kill them.
The alleged audacity of Perez and his colleagues came to light not because of checks and balances in the criminal justice system--that is, not because some judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers or police colleagues had moments of spectacular insights, courage or contrition--but only because Perez was himself caught stealing cocaine from a police locker and confessed to win himself a deal.
The sheer power of his lies, which would presumably have gone undetected if he had not admitted them, can be seen in the case of Samuel Bailey, whom Perez now says he framed for the crime of being an ex-felon with a gun. Bailey was a gang member in his early 30s who had been in trouble most of his adult life.
He encountered Perez outside a gang party that Perez and other Rampart anti-gang officers were raiding.
Perez claimed on the witness stand at Bailey's preliminary hearing that he saw Bailey when he pulled up to the party and recognized him as a gang member on parole.
He said that he noticed Bailey had his right hand in his waistband.
He said he told Bailey to put his hands up.
Bailey, he said, instead pulled a handgun from his waistband and dropped it.
Bailey just listened at the defense table as Perez perjured himself about the gun.
Then the judge asked Perez how he had known that Bailey was a gang member.
"I have interviewed him 15, 20 times," began Perez. "I have . . . "
It was too much for Bailey. He erupted in profanity and called Perez a liar.
"You're a lying ----, you know that? Sorry, Your Honor."
The judge quickly reminded him where he stood. "Let me explain something," he said. "You have a right to speak only to your lawyer, and very quietly, and if you do that again, there will be a gag in your mouth."
Bailey seemed to get it. He pleaded guilty soon afterward--to possessing the gun that Perez now says he planted on him--in return for a sentence of two years, eight months in prison.
It was more or less the same story with Joseph Jones and Miguel Hernandez.
Hernandez had been standing in the mouth of an alley when Perez and his partner, Officer Nino Durden, drove by.
Perez's partner claimed he locked eyes with him and Hernandez responded by pulling a gun from his waistband and dropping it.
Perez now says Hernandez did not have a gun; it was a plant.
But Hernandez, who had a long record, took a deal at his very first Superior Court appearance, pleading guilty in return for a 16-month term.
Jones was accused by Perez and Durden of being the middleman in their undercover purchase of $20 worth of rock cocaine in the hallway of a residential hotel.
Perez now says that Jones actually refused to sell them the cocaine.
Jones was in a tough spot. Because he had been convicted of roughing up and robbing two pedestrians at knifepoint in 1992, the district attorney's office could have prosecuted him for a third strike. Conviction would have resulted in a life term.
When prosecutors offered instead to let him plead guilty to a second strike, he took the deal.
"All right, this is No. 27," said Superior Court Judge John Reid, a former prosecutor, referring to Jones' place on the calendar. "You're Joseph Jones?"
"Yes, sir."
No. 27 went along with the program and accepted an eight-year sentence for a crime Perez now says he did not commit.
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Guilty Pleas for the Sake of Expediency
Criminal justice is administered so inexactly that courts regularly allow people to plead guilty while claiming they are innocent.
It keeps the system moving.
