Walter Iii Tucker

The jury in the federal extortion trial of Rep. Walter R. Tucker III on Wednesday asked for clarification of the court's instructions on entrapment. In a memo to Judge Consuelo B. Marshall after seven days of deliberations, the jurors asked what it means to be a "government agent" and whether the prosecution's star witness, John Macardican, fits the definition. The government has accused Tucker of extorting $30,000 in bribes from Macardican while serving as mayor of Compton in 1991 and 1992.

Jurors might have wondered Thursday who was on trial in federal Judge Consuelo B. Marshall's Los Angeles courtroom. Was it U.S. Rep. Walter R. Tucker III, who stands accused of extorting bribes from businesses while serving as mayor of Compton, or was it the U.S. attorney's office, which brought the charges against the two-term Democratic congressman?

With trial testimony drawing to a close, the prosecution and defense battled Wednesday over whether gaps exist in secretly recorded FBI tapes incriminating Rep. Walter R. Tucker III in an extortion scheme. Testifying in his own defense, Tucker contended that the FBI audiotapes and videotapes documenting his dealings with an undercover informant are incomplete.

The extortion trial of Rep. Walter R. Tucker III turned testy Thursday as the Democratic congressman faced his first day of cross-examination. Assistant U.S. Atty. Steven G. Madison, lead prosecutor in the case, took aim at Tucker's claim that he was working as a consultant when he took $30,000 from a businessman seeking to build a waste conversion plant in Compton.

Declaring that he wouldn't "sell my vote for any amount of money," Rep. Walter R. Tucker III denied Wednesday that he extorted $7,500 from Compton's residential rubbish hauler in exchange for his votes awarding the firm a rate increase and contract extension. Tucker told a federal court jury that he voted for the measures while Compton's mayor in 1991-92 largely out of fairness and because the city manager's staff had recommended it.

U.S. Rep. Walter R. Tucker III admitted Tuesday that while serving as Compton's mayor in 1992 he wrote a letter of support for a proposed $250-million waste conversion plant in exchange for a $10,000 consulting fee. Testifying in his own defense on federal extortion and income tax fraud charges, the Democratic congressman said he tried to avoid getting embroiled in a conflict of interest while working as part-time mayor and as adviser to the businessman behind the project.

Rep. Walter R. Tucker III testified Friday that he did not object to accepting $10,000 in cash from an undercover FBI informant because he believed he was being hired to perform legitimate consulting work. On the stand for the second day in his federal extortion trial, Tucker denied soliciting a bribe from businessman John Macardican while serving as Compton's mayor in 1991.

Testifying for the first time in his own defense, U.S. Rep. Walter R. Tucker III told a federal court jury Thursday he had no idea that anything illegal was being proposed during a luncheon meeting with an undercover FBI informant in 1991. "I perceived only honorable intentions," Tucker said about his first meeting with businessman John Macardican, who was wearing a transmitter under his shirt as they talked about a waste-to-energy conversion plant that Macardican wanted to build in Compton.

Sitting across a desk from an undercover FBI agent in an office monitored by hidden video cameras, Compton's then-Mayor Walter R. Tucker III reaches for a yellow note pad and writes: "50K now, 200K bonus." "Is that box, package and string for the whole City Council or just for you?" asks agent Robert Kilbane, a member of the FBI's Public Corruption Squad. "Myself . . . that's just for me," answers Tucker. Asked how he would like to be paid, the mayor says, "I'll just take the cash."

When she assumed control of her late husband's rubbish hauling business in Compton in 1991, Jasmine Mgrdichian inherited a crisis she did not foresee--an extortion demand from then-Mayor Walter R. Tucker III, she testified Friday. "I was furious. I thought it was blackmail," she told federal court jurors in Tucker's extortion and tax evasion trial.