Twenty years after convincing a San Fernando Valley jury that Bruce Lisker killed his mother, a retired prosecutor testified in federal court Thursday that he has doubts about the case.
Phillip H. Rabichow said he still believes Lisker committed the crime but acknowledged that key evidence and testimony presented at his 1985 trial have been disproved or undermined by new information.
"There are some doubts that I have that I didn't have at the time of the trial," he said.
The 62-year-old former deputy district attorney was the first of four witnesses to testify at an evidentiary hearing that is the first step in a process to determine whether Lisker's conviction was unjust and should be overturned.
Also testifying were two crime scene analysts and a weather expert, each of whom contradicted evidence presented at trial.
Lisker, now 40, was convicted of fatally beating and stabbing his 66-year-old mother, Dorka, in the family's Sherman Oaks home on March 10, 1983. He was sentenced to life in prison. Lisker, confined at Mule Creek State Prison near Sacramento, attended the hearing in the downtown courtroom of U.S. Magistrate Judge Ralph Zarefsky.
Dressed in a bright orange state prison jumpsuit, Lisker listened attentively as Rabichow testified, at times scribbling notes on a legal pad. Rabichow spent about 2 1/2 hours on the witness stand.
Under questioning by attorney Richard Hirsch, one of Lisker's lawyers, Rabichow acknowledged that he had learned of several evidentiary problems with the case in recent months.
Among them:
* A bloody shoe print that Rabichow said during the trial had been left by Lisker has since been found not to match his shoes, strongly suggesting that someone else had been at the scene. The mystery print, found on the bathroom floor, is also similar in size and dimension to a newly discovered apparent shoe print on the victim's head.
* Dorka Lisker's purse, described as containing no money at the trial, actually contained $120 in cash, undermining the prosecution's theory that Lisker killed his mother after stealing her grocery money.
* A crime scene reenactment conducted by Times reporters in March, and observed by Rabichow, has undercut his central argument to jurors that Lisker could not possibly have seen his mother from a sliding glass door at the back of the house, as he claimed on the day of the murder.
