By David Kravets, The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office said Thursday it is considering retrying three Rampart police officers whose convictions for framing two gang members were overturned.
The announcement by a spokesman for District Attorney Steve Cooley came a day after the California Supreme Court, without comment, declined to review lower court decisions tossing the convictions. The judge who presided over the trial and an appeals court had overturned the jury’s 2000 verdicts, in part, because of insufficient evidence to support the convictions.
The officers were the first members of the now-defunct Rampart station anti-gang unit to be tried on charges based on the allegations of ex-officer Rafael Perez, who said police beat, robbed, framed and sometimes shot innocent people in the city’s tough Rampart neighborhood near downtown.
“We’re evaluating at our office about whether we are going to proceed with it or not,” Cooley spokeswoman Jane Robison said.
Los Angeles Police Department officers Sgts. Brian Liddy and Edward Ortiz and Officer Michael Buchanan were accused of falsifying police reports that Buchanan and Liddy were hit by two gang members driving a truck in an alley as an excuse to arrest them.
“The prosecution had not presented enough evidence that the crime was committed,” said Joel Franklin, an attorney for the officers who are on administrative leave. “This was an extremely weak case in my opinion.”
Under California precedent, when there’s conflicting evidence, a defendant can be retried if a judge sets aside a conviction.
The case is People v. Ortiz, S127327.