Franklin's lawyers tried to convince the jury that Capt. Hayes and other command staff at Pacific had been involved. The lawyers talked about the bad blood at the division. They pointed to the fact that Lt. Paul Torrence, a supervisor there, had transferred to the department's Internal Affairs Group and was at Franklin's house the morning it was searched.
They focused on a phone call between Torrence and Hayes before the search.
They challenged Morgan and Leikam's assertion that they had not known the house belonged to Franklin until the evening before the search and so had not told the judge they wanted to search an officer's house.
The lawyers laid out this theory: Leikam and Morgan, who testified he knew Franklin from previous assignments, had seen an off-duty Franklin on Woodlawn while investigating the shooting. Confused as to why a cop would be in such a rough neighborhood, they called Internal Affairs to inquire about Franklin. Torrence, sensing an opportunity, called Hayes and, in turn, the two persuaded the Newton officers to entangle Franklin in the investigation.
Jurors weren't convinced.
"We felt [Leikam and Morgan] had lied purposefully; we just couldn't pinpoint why," a juror said. "We couldn't connect the dots between these two officers and anything larger."
In addition, several jurors said the judge instructed them to think of Morgan and Leikam as individuals, not agents of the LAPD. "If we had been told to consider the officers as part of the LAPD, it would have changed the whole situation," said juror Orly Benyaminy. "Almost all of us would have voted differently. . . ."
Franklin has appealed.
Meanwhile, the man who was shot eventually died of his injuries. Citing a lack of evidence, however, prosecutors dropped the charges against Bond and Billups. The killing remains unsolved.
In the months that have followed, Hayes took command of another station. Torrence left Internal Affairs for another unit. Leikam remains an officer at Newton, and Morgan transferred to Pacific, where he and Franklin sometimes cross paths.
Franklin was cleared of any wrongdoing by an internal LAPD investigation. He remains bitter, however, that the department also cleared Leikam and Morgan, and he accuses the agency of ignoring his accusations against his superiors. Through an aide, LAPD Chief William J. Bratton declined to allow any top LAPD official to comment on the case. Franklin says life on Woodlawn is different now. Neighbors look at him with suspicion. They avoid conversations.
He no longer thinks of being an LAPD cop as anything but a paycheck. "I used to be proud of my job," he says. "Now, it's just something I muddle through each day -- just something I do to support my family. . . . This whole dream is dead."
He's looking to retire as soon as he can afford it.
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joel.rubin@latimes.com
