Hedgecock Lied, Cheated to Win, Huffman Says

Roger Hedgecock’s “raw ambition” to be mayor of San Diego prompted him to “cheat . . . and callously lie” to win the office in 1983, Assistant Dist. Atty. Richard D. Huffman told jurors Monday at the mayor’s felony conspiracy and perjury trial.

As closing arguments began, Huffman charged that Hedgecock’s “willingness to cut corners as necessary . . . to succeed” led him to conspire with former J. David & Co. principals Nancy Hoover and J. David (Jerry) Dominelli in a complicated scheme to funnel tens of thousands of dollars in illegal contributions into his 1983 campaign via a political consulting firm owned by Tom Shepard, a close friend of the mayor.

Aware that the illegal donations would violate the city’s $250-per-person contribution limit, Hedgecock then “deliberately lied” on campaign and personal financial disclosure statements in an attempt to conceal those transactions, Huffman told the six-man, six-woman jury.

However, when defense attorney Michael Pancer began his summation late Monday afternoon, he described the prosecution’s case as “an illusion that’s been created by the manipulation of isolated facts that have been ripped out of context.”

Accusing the district attorney’s office of “resorting to smear and to character assassination” in its attempt to convict Hedgecock, Pancer told the jurors that “if you look at this case as a giant picture . . . there is a picture of innocence.”

After Pancer concludes his closing arguments today, Huffman will have an opportunity to deliver a rebuttal statement--a process that likely will occupy most of the day. Superior Court Judge William L. Todd Jr. then will read nearly 100 instructions dealing with legal points and evidence in the case to the jurors, after which they will begin their deliberations, probably on Wednesday.

During his more than 3 1/2-hour closing statement, Huffman persistently pointed to actions and comments by Hedgecock and his backers over a 4 1/2-year period in an attempt to weave a complicated plot to circumvent the city’s election laws from a series of seemingly disparate events.

Speaking from a lectern only about five feet away from Hedgecock, Huffman led jurors through a maze of transactions that he argued demonstrate the mayor’s “willingness . . . to scoff at the rules that apply . . . to other people” by relying on illegal financial aid from Hoover and Dominelli to achieve his political and personal goals.

The prosecutor, often altering his voice and countenance for effect, peppered his remarks with phrases such as “absolute falsehood,” “cheat,” “lie,” “incredible explanations” and “silly . . . answers” to describe Hedgecock’s actions and alleged subsequent attempts to cover up his dealings with Hoover, Dominelli and Shepard. The three will be tried separately later as co-conspirators.

Occasionally, Huffman punctuated his accusatory remarks by pointing at Hedgecock, who generally reacted with a slight smile or by mildly shaking his head.

Huffman described Hedgecock as someone who “has campaigned virtually non-stop for political advancement” throughout his political career and began seriously contemplating a mayoral race soon after his June, 1980, reelection as a county supervisor --nearly three years before he won a special May, 1983, election, scheduled after former Mayor Pete Wilson’s victory in the November, 1982, U.S. Senate race.

“How do you run for mayor . . . (over) a long term and collect money from whatever source you can get it from and not be bound by those ($250-per-person) limits?” Huffman asked. “You cheat, you cheat the voters . . . and then you have to lie to them in your public filings. You have to lie, you have to commit perjury to cover up that particular kind of scheme.”

Hedgecock’s dealings with Hoover and Dominelli might never have come to light, Huffman contended, had it not been for the February, 1984, collapse of the J. David company.

“To tell a complicated lie involving many transactions over a prolonged period of time is pretty tough,” Huffman said. “The crazy fabric of those lies that are woven together is as strong as that one thread that can jerk that fabric and unravel it.

“When that house of cards that was called the J. David company came crashing down, it brought down the protective cover over this defendant and left . . . the mayor of this city standing in the rubble of the J. David empire with his schemes . . . exposed to public scrutiny.”

Reiterating points he stressed throughout the trial, Huffman argued that the meetings among Hedgecock’s closest political advisers, a series of polls done on his behalf and allegedly politically oriented work done by then-Supervisor Hedgecock’s county staff between June, 1980, and mid-1982 illustrate that Hedgecock was “already a legal candidate” for mayor.

In the wake of Hedgecock’s 1983 victory, the mayor and his supporters often bragged to the press about how their early organizational start had been a key element in their success, Huffman said. However, in an attempt to rebut prosecutors’ claim that those early meetings were the seeds that sprouted the alleged conspiracy, Hedgecock and his backers now characterize those sessions as “the campaign that never was,” Huffman added.

Indeed, Hedgecock and several other defense witnesses testified that the pre-1982 meetings were speculative ones in which Hedgecock’s long-range mayoral aspirations, countywide issues and other topics were discussed. It was not until after Wilson’s June, 1982, victory in the Republican primary for the Senate seat that serious planning for a potential mayoral campaign began, Hedgecock testified.

Throughout his remarks, Huffman repeatedly sought to bolster the credibility of a key prosecution witness, investment counselor Harvey Schuster, who testified that Hedgecock told him in November, 1981, that he knew that Dominelli intended to invest heavily in Tom Shepard & Associates so that the political consulting firm would be able to run his mayoral campaign.

Schuster’s testimony directly conflicts with Hedgecock’s oft-stated contention that he was unaware that Dominelli had invested in Shepard’s firm, founded in January, 1982, after Shepard left Hedgecock’s county staff. The mayor testified that Shepard told him that Hoover planned to invest in the firm, but added that he believed she did so primarily to help her close friend Shepard start his own business, not to get Hedgecock elected mayor.

Hedgecock and Pancer have argued that Schuster lied because of his anger over not receiving a lucrative contract to develop the county’s bayfront parking lots, a contract awarded in 1982 while Hedgecock was still a county supervisor.

However, arguing that Schuster “needed this case like the plague,” Huffman told the jurors that the investment executive “had no reason to come in here and tell you anything other than the truth.”

Huffman also argued that evidence introduced during the trial bolsters Schuster’s testimony, pointing specifically to a $3,000 check that Dominelli wrote to Hedgecock in late 1981 as payment for a computerized mailing list of voters. Hedgecock says he sold the list to Shepard for use in his firm, and that he regarded the check as actually coming from Shepard because the consultant told him that he would be using the J. David company’s checking accounts until he set up his own.

The prosecutor, though, charged that the real reason Hedgecock was not surprised to receive a check from Dominelli for something he purportedly sold to Shepard is that he already knew that Dominelli was bankrolling Shepard’s firm. Of the more than $360,000 that Hoover and Dominelli invested in Shepard’s firm, $285,000 came from the J. David company--investments that Huffman described as being tantamount to “stuffing (money) down a rat hole because they never got a penny.”

Last month, accountants called to testify for the prosecution argued that Shepard’s firm may have lost as much as $180,000 on the Hedgecock campaign in the form of unreimbursed staff time, overhead costs and other services. In response, Hedgecock and Pancer argue that the campaign had a valid contract with the firm--one that resulted in a payment of about $30,000 over the course of the campaign--and that the question of whether that contract was sufficient to cover overhead costs was Shepard’s concern, not Hedgecock’s.

Huffman, however, called that contract “a legal facade” designed to disguise the improper aid from Hoover and Dominelli.

The consulting firm was, from its inception, little more than a political laundry designed to “help Tom Shepard become a successful business by getting Roger Hedgecock elected, whatever the cost,” Huffman said. An ancillary benefit, Huffman added, was that such a victory would help Hoover achieve her ambition to become a behind-the-scenes “power broker.”

“They were willing to lose as much of the J. David money as that investment company was willing to pump in to get (Hedgecock) elected,” Huffman said.

One of the perjury charges facing Hedgecock alleges that he intentionally did not report the 1982 sale of a $16,000 promissory note to Hoover on a financial disclosure statement for that year. Hedgecock acknowledges that he sold the note to Hoover in 1982, but said that Hoover, at his request, agreed to delay the official public recording of the sale until June, 1983, for tax reasons.

“The fact is, you can’t sell the note, keep the money and then report the sale for tax purposes in some other year,” Huffman said. “You’d have . . . to leave your common sense out on the doorway to this courthouse to believe that statement.”

Huffman similarly ridiculed Hedgecock’s explanation that he did not believe that the $3,000 check from Dominelli for the computerized mailing list needed to be reported, because he spent it to purchase the list from his supervisorial campaign committee.

“That’s one of the more incredible explanations,” Huffman said, chuckling as he addressed the jurors. “Now, if that’s not income, your paycheck’s not income. Don’t go down to the Internal Revenue Service and offer them this definition of income, ‘I spent it.’ ” The more than 100 reporters and spectators packed into the courtroom laughed.

Pancer spoke to the jurors for only 10 minutes late Monday, in essence giving them a preview of what they will hear today.

“We have had now, ladies and gentlemen, trial by innuendo, trial by . . . the raised eyebrow and the lowered voice of Mr. Huffman, trial by character assassination, and . . . trial by the twisting of some facts and by the outright hiding of other facts,” Pancer said.