Local Elections : Ira Reiner: Despite Gaffes, He Appears a Shoo-In on June 7

When elections roll around, Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner usually finds it necessary to break a rule he established for himself a decade ago: to limit his political activities to one night a week.

“This time,” he said with understandable confidence, “it hasn’t been necessary.”

Although Reiner, 52, is facing three challengers in the June 7 primary, he is expected to easily win a second term as Los Angeles County district attorney.

If this were a more volatile political year, it is safe to say, Reiner would be spending plenty of time away from his family trying to defend himself against charges that he has brought embarrassment--some say ridicule--to the district attorney’s office.

His 3 1/2 years at the helm of the largest prosecutor’s office in the nation have been marked by a string of highly publicized failures: the short-lived indictment of then-Rep. Bobbi Fiedler (R-Northridge); the acquittal of film director John Landis and four associates after a long, circus-like trial; the attack on a Glendale Municipal Court commissioner, which was widely perceived in the legal community as unfair.

Raised Hackles

Interspersed with these events were other episodes that raised hackles, especially among some veteran prosecutors, including a verbal assault on the entire Huntington Park Police Department and the unsuccessful filing of attempted murder charges against a man who sold AIDS-contaminated blood.

Critics, including defense lawyers and judges, say the district attorney’s office has been tarnished by Reiner’s seemingly insatiable thirst for publicity and his long-standing tendency to “shoot from the hip.”

“A professional prosecutors’ office has a responsibility to preserve the dignity of the system,” said Richard Hirsch, a prominent defense attorney. “Maybe things are said for their publicity value that shouldn’t be.”

Said a Superior Court judge who wanted to remain anonymous: “I shudder every time I pick up a paper and see what he’s said now.”

Overshadowed by the negative press, according to Reiner and his top aides, are a long list of accomplishments, ranging from a successful new drug policy to encourage 6-month jail sentences for first-time street narcotics sales to an impressive second-degree murder conviction rate for vehicular homicides involving drunk drivers.

Harder to Move

To Reiner, such achievements represent hard-won triumphs over a bureaucracy that is harder to move than most, made up as it is of 872 lawyers, a majority of them career prosecutors.

Mindful that his proudest efforts are often obscured by bad publicity, Reiner seems to have lowered the decibel level. Largely untouched by controversy for the last few months, he has come across in his less frequent news conferences as more circumspect, almost subdued.

This Reiner might be less inclined to characterize an entire police department as “an embarrassment to all of law enforcement” as the other Reiner did in December, 1986, when announcing charges against two former Huntington Park police officers for torturing a suspect with a stun gun.

The diatribe reportedly astonished the original prosecutor in the stun gun case, who “almost had a heart attack” over the boss’s indiscretion, according to one deputy district attorney familiar with the case. Huntington Park police officials, who had brought the case to the district attorney, were furious. Department records that would have been routinely handed over had to be subpoenaed.

Expected to Run

In a recent interview, Reiner, who is known to have gubernatorial ambitions and is widely expected to run for attorney general in 1990, shook his head and looked surprised--perplexed even--when asked if he has consciously quieted down. But a high-ranking aide said Reiner had decided even before his denunciation last summer of the Glendale commissioner, Daniel F. Calabro, that he did not “want to be known as a grandstander.”

The uproar over Calabro had a “sobering effect” on the district attorney, the aide said.

“There was such a better way to have handled it,” said the official, who did not want to be identified. “We leaped in with the ‘death penalty’ before it was really called for.”

Reiner, however, said he had no second thoughts about his conduct in the Calabro affair.

In informing Calabro last August by letter--and press conference--that prosecutors could no longer appear before him, Reiner raised the “strong possibility” that the commissioner was a racist. He quoted from a transcript of a hearing for a white defendant from Burbank who was accused of attacking a black man after saying: “Your kind is not welcome here, nigger.”

“Another nigger case?” Calabro responded. “Another one where this nigger business came up? We’re not past that yet? I thought we were all past that.”

Evoked Sympathy

Calabro apologized for using the epithet but evoked sympathy with the explanation he offered. He said he had intended to express dismay that this case came up only five days after he handled another matter in which the same racial slur was expressed.

After spending several weeks trying to deflect a barrage of criticism from defense lawyers and other Calabro supporters, Reiner was eventually forced to back down and allow the commissioner to resume hearing criminal cases.

“I don’t know of anyone who agrees with the way (Calabro) was handled,” another senior aide said.

Public Defender Wilbur F. Littlefield remains bitter over the incident.

“That was done for one reason and one reason alone--to try to curry favor with the black voters at the expense of somebody he didn’t care anything about at all. He tried to ruin somebody’s career with accusations that were false,” Littlefield said.

Reiner was also accused in some quarters of trying to ruin Fiedler’s political career during her 1986 U.S. Senate campaign. Fiedler and her campaign manager (and now-husband), Paul Clarke, were indicted by the Los Angeles County Grand Jury for allegedly trying to bribe an opponent, state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia), into quitting the race. Four days later, Reiner left for Europe.

Belated Request

When he returned three weeks later, he made what many regarded as a belated request to have the case against the congresswoman dismissed, saying his office had never asked for her indictment in the first place.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert T. Altman dismissed the indictment against both Fiedler and Clarke, saying prosecutors had misinterpreted an obscure section of the Election Code in bringing the case to the grand jury.

Reiner said he drew an important lesson from the Fiedler case.

“I learned that it’s a mistake to bother trusting the grand jury,” he said. “I wouldn’t use the grand jury after that.”

He told the next grand jury that “they could serve a very valuable function as an investigative body, but that there really wasn’t any role for them to indict.”

Less than one week after Reiner made that statement, 34 parking lot employees at Los Angeles International Airport were indicted in the embezzlement of public funds.

“There’s no contradiction,” Reiner said later. “Would I use (the grand jury)? Only when I think it’s maybe advantageous. The experience out of Fiedler limits when I think it’s advantageous.”

More humiliating than the Fiedler case, Reiner critics say, was the theatrical handling of the Landis trial. The film director and his associates were charged with, and ultimately acquitted of, involuntary manslaughter in the 1982 deaths of actor Vic Morrow and two child actors on the set of “Twilight Zone: The Movie.”

Flamboyant Prosecution

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea D’Agostino was derided by colleagues for her flamboyant prosecution of the case. She feuded publicly with the original prosecutor and declared in the courthouse hallway that Landis should have been tried for murder.

The “Twilight Zone” case was more than embarrassing for the district attorney’s office, one senior prosecutor said: “It set back the whole legal profession.”

“There is no question that both sides made mistakes in how they handled that case,” Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Gilbert I. Garcetti said. “I’m talking about how they handled themselves professionally.”

Reiner, who personally approved D’Agostino’s assignment to the case, now refuses to discuss it--or her. D’Agostino is running against him in the primary. The other candidates are Alfred A. Calabro, a Glendale attorney and brother of the commissioner, and Deputy Dist. Atty. Iver Bye.

Under Reiner’s stewardship, D’Agostino charged, “the district attorney’s office has been turned into one big public relations firm with one client: Ira Reiner.” She also criticizes him for spending too much public money on security for himself and his family and for using county personnel to perform personal errands.

Reiner said county employees occasionally do favors for him but only on their own time. As for the annual $400,000 tab to protect the Reiner family, he said: “Security is not a perk of office.”

Perhaps no case better illustrates the Reiner style than his nationally publicized attempted murder filing against Joseph E. Markowski, a male prostitute who sold AIDS-contaminated blood to a private plasma center.

Specific Intent

Reiner filed those charges--believed to be unprecedented--despite objections from several experienced prosecutors who argued that the law requires a showing that the defendant specifically intended to kill someone.

Before the case reached trial, Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Coen dismissed the attempted murder counts for the very reason the prosecutors had cited. A jury subsequently acquitted Markowski of the remaining charges.

Critics say Reiner violated a policy spelled out in the office manual that bars prosecutors from filing charges unless they believe guilt can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

Reiner contends, however, that since no existing law specifically addresses Markowski’s case, filing the case was a justifiable means of drawing attention to the problem.

“Anybody that says it is the position of this office that you are not to file cases that are on the frontier of where the law is is wrong,” he declared.

Coen, a former deputy district attorney, declined to discuss the Markowski case.

But speaking generally, he said, “My personal belief is that if the weight of the law is against you, you don’t file a charge in the hopes of changing the law in the future.”

Comfortable in Role

However much it might rankle some of the old hands in his office, Reiner is comfortable in the role of district attorney as advocate and risk-taker.

“There are some people who make a career out of making 90-10 decisions,” he said, referring to percentages. “I make 50-50 decisions. I’m outspoken . . . and I don’t always expect to be right.”

As he has throughout his political career, Reiner continues to portray himself as a warrior against a lumbering bureaucracy, forced to slay one entrenched attitude after another.

It took “extensive and lengthy meetings” to persuade top deputies to break with tradition and support a new policy for first-time offenders convicted of selling small amounts of narcotics, Reiner said.

In the past, these defendants were usually treated leniently, but since August, 1986, deputy district attorneys have been required to push for 6-month jail terms. The 2-year-old program has been widely accepted by judges, resulting in the recommended sentence “at least 95% of the time,” according to Garcetti.

The policy is not popular with defense attorneys.

“I don’t like anything that takes away the judge’s discretion,” Public Defender Littlefield said.

Substantial Resistance

Reiner aides also give him credit for insisting--against substantial resistance--that second-degree murder charges must always be considered whenever a drunk driver causes a fatal automobile crash. Ten of the 22 cases that have been adjudicated since Reiner took office have resulted in second-degree murder convictions (12 others are pending).

Other efforts he is proud of include a new policy for domestic violence cases, which prohibits a victim from dropping charges under pressure from a spouse; a requirement that most rape prosecutions be handled “vertically,” so that one deputy district attorney stays with the case from start to finish; the establishment of the first “rollout” program in the nation to investigate workplace deaths, and a 97% conviction rate last year in cases tried by his special gang unit.

In addition, Reiner was able to persuade the Board of Supervisors to allow him to hire the office’s first full-time Sacramento lobbyist, resulting in a number of new laws, including several to increase penalties for drug offenses.

Reiner’s struggles with the bureaucracy notwithstanding, prosecutors say morale has improved since his predecessor, Robert H. Philibosian, left office. Philibosian alienated many of the troops by running a highly centralized operation in which deputies had to seek permission before settling routine felony cases.

Climate of Fear

But some deputies describe a climate of fear, stemming from the policy popularly known as “freeway discipline.” Last summer, in the most-discussed example, a prosecutor publicly disagreed with Reiner over whether felony charges should be filed against a man accused of stealing a $1.49 package of bologna. The deputy was transferred from the San Fernando office--a mere eight miles from his home--to Pasadena.

Even so, Reiner had no trouble winning the endorsement of the Assn. of Deputy District Attorneys. He also has the support of Sheriff Sherman Block, the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs and the Assn. of Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriffs.

A somewhat remote figure to most of the deputies in his office, Reiner can be temperamental and demanding with his senior staff. Deputy Dist. Atty. John Lynch was berated over the pace of an investigation of a grand theft case involving the Willco dump in Lynwood.

“We’ve had several spirited discussions,” said Lynch, who runs the environmental crimes and occupational safety and health units. “I’ve got a fairly strong personality and he’s the D.A.”

Bawled Out

When another senior deputy was bawled out by Reiner, colleagues comforted him by citing the even harsher tongue-lashing Garcetti reportedly received because of the Fiedler case. Garcetti denies that the widely rumored confrontation took place.

As he looks toward his anticipated second term, Reiner said he plans to focus on shortcomings in the juvenile justice system.

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., a defense attorney who once served as a high-ranking prosecutor, had other advice for Reiner, a friend for more than two decades. He said Reiner should just “put his best people on the cases” and keep quiet about it.

“A little less talk and a little more doing,” Cochran said. “I think that’s what they need.”