Boy’s Suit Over Slaying Is Dismissed : Civil rights: The child was unborn when police killed his bank-robber father and wounded his mother. Therefore, he has no legal standing to sue, a judge rules.

John Henry Crumpton IV was a fetus in his mother’s womb in 1982 when undercover Los Angeles police detectives wounded her and killed his father after watching the couple rob a bank.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson dismissed a lawsuit brought against the Los Angeles Police Department in behalf of John Crumpton, now 7, concluding that the boy was unborn at the time of his father’s death and thus had no legal standing to later sue.

The $10-million lawsuit, filed by Crumpton’s aunt, alleged that the officers had violated the boy’s civil rights by depriving him of his father.

Wilson, in essence, declined to challenge a narrow body of existing case law, most notably Roe vs. Wade, in which various courts have held that a fetus is not a person and, therefore, not entitled to protections under U.S. civil rights laws. The issue has become a flash point in the national debate over abortion.

“Whether (they) are correct or incorrect . . . those other cases are well-reasoned,” Wilson said in granting a motion by Assistant City Atty. Jack L. Brown to throw out the Crumpton case.

The boy sued the Police Department in October, 1988, after The Times published a series of articles revealing the little-known activities of the LAPD’s Special Investigations Section.

The Times found that teams of well-armed SIS detectives had, for years, tailed career criminals but often ignored opportunities to prevent armed robberies and burglaries by legitimately arresting suspects beforehand on lesser crimes or outstanding warrants. Instead, records showed, the officers routinely stood by until the suspects they were watching had committed violent crimes. Many suspects were shot when they returned to their getaway cars.

One of those cases involved John Crumpton III and his wife, Jane Elizabeth Berry. The couple, both paroled bank robbers, had been linked by witnesses to five bank robberies and already were wanted on federal felony warrants for parole violations.

Theoretically, they could have been arrested at any time on the federal warrants, but because investigators said they could not conclusively link the couple to the robberies, the SIS was assigned to shadow them. After 18 days of intermittent surveillance, during which the suspects stole a car, the detectives in September, 1982, watched Berry and Crumpton don masks and rob a bank in Burbank.

The detectives confronted the couple at their getaway car. Police reports contend that both bandits “whirled” toward the officers after being ordered to put their hands up. Four SIS officers armed with shotguns fired a total of 18 times, striking both Crumpton and Berry repeatedly in the back, records show.

Crumpton was unarmed but was wearing a holster on his belt, which officers said they mistook for a weapon. Berry had a semiautomatic pistol but it was not fired.

Berry later pleaded guilty to robbery and was sentenced to state prison. She will be eligible for parole in 1993 but faces another 44 months in federal custody for the parole violations.

On Monday, attorney Stephen Yagman, who is representing the Crumpton boy, said he intends to appeal Wilson’s ruling.