Wheels Wobble but Justice Rolls On

A fortuneteller's toy sits on the desk in the public defender's office. Shake the pirate's head and lift the eye patch to read the future.

Michelle Paffile gives it a try. "Clear sailing ahead, matey."

About time, she mutters impatiently. It's about time for the justice system to clear things up and deliver some justice to one defendant.

Paffile is a public defender at the Los Angeles County Superior Court in Norwalk. She shares an office with attorney Ramiro Cisneros, who has guided The Times for a week into the courthouse's felony criminal calendar -- the daily process that delivers a good share of the ground-level justice on the southeastern flank of the county, the kind of justice that seldom rates headlines. On this Friday, the spotlight turns from Cisneros to Paffile's case of the man with an eye patch who didn't do it. Or supposedly didn't do it.

It is a case that has dragged on for months with an eyewitness who is ready to clear the man.

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Back in April, police were summoned to the scene of an attempted burglary in Downey. A man had been seen cutting a screen to gain entry into an apartment, the kind of crime that raises a community's blood pressure and police statistics but gets little attention beyond that. A woman from an upstairs unit rushed out and confronted the man face-to-face in the manner of, just what do you think you're doing? He fled.

Later that day, officers on patrol attempted to question a 25-year-old Compton man in the case.

He ran. Police chased. He was arrested. The man had a prior conviction for grand theft and an outstanding warrant for driving with a suspended license. To top it off, officers reported that the eyewitness identified him. Police had their man.

This, Paffile says, was the first, and crucial, misunderstanding.

The neighbor who witnessed the crime is a native of Greece and speaks with a lingering accent. Officers believed she was identifying the defendant as the suspect. The witness later said that all she meant to do was identify him as someone she had observed in the vicinity, but not the man who cut the screen, not the man whose face she saw close-up.

The witness has told Paffile -- and has been trying to tell others -- that the man she confronted at the scene has a pair of eyes.

The defendant did not. The first time Paffile peered under an eye patch it was on the head of the accused. Underneath was an empty socket. He had lost his eye, he said, as a teenage victim of a drive-by shooting in Long Beach.