Records in Claim Against D.A. Sealed

The supervising judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court’s criminal division has taken the extraordinary step of sealing all documents in a Civil Service Commission case involving a veteran prosecutor’s charge of political retaliation by Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti.

Judge John Reid’s order was not only issued without notice to the attorney representing Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino, but also extends to documents not yet filed in her claim against Garcetti.

“I have never heard of anything like this,” said prominent Los Angeles defense attorney Harlan Braun.

“If there was ever a political controversy the public needs to know about, it is when the criminal justice system is being manipulated for political purposes and the supervising judge is preventing the public . . . from knowing about it,” Braun said.

Reid, who is a former deputy district attorney, did not return a phone call seeking comment. Jerrianne Hayslett, spokeswoman for the Superior Court, said she was told by the judge that he granted the sealing order at the request of Garcetti’s office, which under the ruling also has the sole right to authorize release of any information in the Civil Service Commission file on the case in which the district attorney is a defendant.

Garcetti “had requested a sealing order . . . because of the fear that a defendant in a criminal case might have his right to fair trial compromised as a result of some of the information that might come out during the Civil Service [proceeding],” Hayslett said.

*

Hayslett said the judge would not identify which defendant’s trial might be affected because it is in a sealed indictment.

But Reid’s order identifies the case as that of Glen Rogers, an alleged cross-country killer who is on Florida’s death row and is scheduled to stand trial in Los Angeles in the 1995 strangulation slaying of Sandra Gallagher of Van Nuys.

Moreover, one source close to the case said that before signing the order, Reid may not have reviewed the entire file, which already had been presented to the commission and is said to include a three- or four-line summary of Rogers’ alleged involvement in the killing and D’Agostino’s role in the case--information that has been largely reported in the media.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Pat Dixon, who has been assigned to the Rogers case, declined to comment on the court order other than to insist it was directed at that criminal prosecution and not the Civil Service case. “I don’t care about the Civil Service proceeding,” he said. “I care about the Glen Rogers case.”

D’Agostino, who has been with the district attorney’s office for 20 years, filed her Civil Service claim against Garcetti because she was removed as the prosecutor on the Rogers case after what she said was two years seeking his extradition from Florida.

Initially, Civil Service commissioners denied D’Agostino’s claim that she was the victim of political retribution by Garcetti. A onetime candidate for district attorney, D’Agostino is one of the veteran prosecutors who have become well-known critics of Garcetti.

Commissioners agreed last month to hear D’Agostino’s claim after she submitted documents--including depositions from other prosecutors--that were said to support her claim that Garcetti was angry with her for urging City Atty. James Hahn to challenge Garcetti’s reelection last year.

But after the commission’s decision, Garcetti’s office went to court and urged Reid to seal all documents in the administrative proceedings on grounds that it could jeopardize the criminal case against Rogers. Reid issued that sealing order last Monday.

“It’s a total abuse of power,” D’Agostino said of the district attorney’s actions. “This is not about the Glen Rogers case. . . . This is about me and political retaliation in this office.”

Because her attorney was not notified of the hearing, D’Agostino said, there is no way of knowing what Garcetti’s office asserted in its request for a sealing order. Likewise, she said, the judge’s sweeping order may have temporarily left the Civil Service Commission unable to act because it has no ready access to records in the case without the district attorney’s permission.

And beyond the legal import of Reid’s order, D’Agostino said, is the implication that she would jeopardize her ability to prosecute a high-profile murder case in her Civil Service claim.

“I have spent two years literally begging to get this guy here [to face trial]. I wouldn’t do anything to damage this case,” said D’Agostino, who said she was assigned to the case in September 1995 and removed in July of this year only days after she secured Rogers’ extradition.

“There is only one reason they don’t want this [Civil Service evidence] to be released,” she said. “They don’t want Gil Garcetti to be embarrassed.”

*

Steve Sowders, head deputy for the district attorney’s employee relations division, flatly denied D’Agostino’s assertion that the judge’s order was aimed at undermining her claim of political retribution.

“There is no attempt by us to stop this [Civil Service] hearing,” Sowders said, noting that a decision is pending on selecting a hearing examiner for the case.

To the contrary, Sowders said, the court order was sought solely to prevent the possibility of anything being revealed during the commission proceedings that might jeopardize the prosecution of Rogers.

“Some of the information on file there is considered confidential and should not be disclosed to the public at this time,” Sowders said. “I raised the issue with our criminal prosecutors, including Dixon, and they said I should file the [request for a court order]. If they didn’t care, I wouldn’t care.”

Sowders added: “I don’t see anything wrong with us, in an abundance of caution, having a criminal judge do this. . . . We have done everything we can to protect the defendant’s right to a fair trial.”

But D’Agostino’s attorney, Diane Marchant, while hoping Reid will reconsider his action during a court hearing this week, said the order at minimum cloaks the Civil Service proceeding in an unusual veil of secrecy.

“The way I read it, any time I have appeared or will appear before the Civil Service Commission to discuss this case, my words go straight into a sealed bag, right out of my mouth,” she said.

D’Agostino also said there was nothing in the Civil Service Commission file that could imperil the Rogers case. “If you could see these documents . . . you would know there is nothing in [them] that would in any way, shape or form compromise the case of Glen Rogers,” D’Agostino said.

D’Agostino’s complaint about the handling of the case won support from an unlikely ally--defense attorney Braun, who was opposing counsel during D’Agostino’s prosecution of the “Twilight Zone” trial.

“The 1st Amendment presupposes that government has to be conducted in the open so you can’t get away with fudging the system or cheating it . . . very rarely do you have official secrets,” Braun said.

“What they have done is closed up a quintessentially political [proceeding] so the public will have no idea whether Gil Garcetti is acting correctly,” Braun said. “And that is more important than any particular criminal defendant’s [case] because it deals with the integrity of the system.”

Times staff writer Henry Weinstein contributed to this story.