Tapes help free a suspect

At a preliminary hearing, and later at the trial, the prosecution relied heavily on Friedrich's testimony to prove the men's involvement. Friedrich told jurors that he had seen Eady and Montgomery enter the van, saw Montgomery behind the steering wheel as he made a left turn and saw two men who appeared to be Eady and Montgomery flee after the van returned.

Jurors were evenly split in Eady's first trial, which ended in a hung jury. Montgomery was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

The district attorney's office decided to retry Eady. As part of his preparation for the second trial, Apt subpoenaed the LAPD for any audio recordings of radio communications made during the incident. He received three hours of recordings from the radio channel used by the detectives.

The tapes, Apt said, lay out a different and far more confusing story than the one Friedrich told in court. In the recordings, Friedrich, an officer overhead in a helicopter and others on the ground tried to keep tabs on several men who were milling about and getting into and out of the van.

Friedrich, Apt said, never positively identified Eady on the tapes, telling other officers that one of the men dressed in a gray hooded sweatshirt and jeans "could be Eady." Friedrich also expressed confusion on the tapes about whether the men they thought were Eady and Montgomery had exited the van before it left August Street, while the officer in the helicopter is heard saying at one point that the men had, in fact, "unloaded," or gotten out of the van. The tapes also revealed that the van did not make a left turn as Friedrich had testified, raising doubts about how he could have seen Montgomery behind the wheel.

Last week, the detective took the stand again in Eady's second trial and repeated his earlier version of what he saw. On Thursday, during cross-examination, Apt asked Friedrich if he would expect recordings of the incident to support his account. Hilary Williams, the prosecutor in the case, asked for a recess. After listening to the tapes over the weekend and discussing it with Yglecias, she returned to court Monday and requested the dismissal.

LAPD Deputy Chief Charlie Beck, who oversees the department's detectives, said he had directed his staff to do "a complete review" of the case.

Montgomery's lawyer, Dale Atherton, said the tapes undermine his client's conviction. Atherton says he plans to argue Montgomery's release from prison.

"He was calm, he was cool, he appeared totally credible," Atherton recalled of Friedrich's testimony. "He spoke right into the microphone and lied. He didn't blink."

Steve Meister, a lawyer provided for Friedrich by the police union, strenuously disputed those comments, saying that "No amount of chest-pounding and assertions . . . are going to make David Friedrich into a liar."

Eady's case echoes that of Guillermo Alarcon Jr., a grocery store worker who was exonerated of drug possession charges last month after his lawyer turned up a security tape that contradicted the LAPD officers' account.

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joel.rubin@latimes.com