Positions of Clout Behind the Powers That Be : D.A. Adviser Wields ‘Considerable Influence’

San Diego County Dist. Atty. Edwin L. Miller Jr. concedes that he often doesn’t have time to be witty.

“When I need to, I can be very quotable,” he said. “But, as a day-to-day affair, I’ve got so many other things to do that devoting time to phraseology and public verbalisms is just more of a luxury than I can afford.”

That’s where Steven J. Casey comes in. In 12 years as Miller’s chief spokesman--or, officially, his special assistant--Casey has become such an expert on the tight, colorful quote that he trains new prosecutors in media “tactics” when they join the office.

“Talk in sound bites,” he tells them. “Not legalese.”

But Casey, a former San Diego Tribune reporter and television columnist, is much more than a media handler. Over time, the affable Casey’s job--and his clout--have grown. With a spacious window office three doors down from Miller’s, Casey, 47, is now among a handful of top-level executives who advise Miller on policy.

“Everybody knows he’s not a lawyer or an investigator. The legal decisions are left to those assigned to do it,” said 4th District Court of Appeal Judge Richard Huffman, a former assistant district attorney who recruited Casey to Miller’s office. “But there are a lot of other decisions in the office. There, his advice is often solicited, and it’s often heeded, or at least added to the calculation.”

Casey put it this way: “I have considerable influence, no power.”

Most mornings when Miller’s deputies gather in his office to discuss the day ahead, Casey is there. He attends management and personnel meetings, helps write and edit departmental reports and generally is credited with being one of the D.A.’s most trusted arbiters of taste and common sense.

In any given week, Miller’s busy schedule makes it difficult for him to meet personally with more than a fraction of the 240 attorneys and 80 investigators who work for him. Casey said he sees Miller as often as four times a day.

“I do not make policy. The D.A. makes policy,” Casey said in an interview last week. “But, in discussions about what policy is sound, reasonable, fair, equitable, nice, fuzzy, warm--then, yeah, I participate in that.”

Miller, who calls Casey a close adviser and friend, said that is because he likes Casey’s blunt honesty and his non-lawyerly perspective.

“Sometimes, when you’re discussing problems with attorneys, they become very legal in their analysis, and at times miss some of the practical effects of decision-making, and I find it rather refreshing at times to get another sounding board,” Miller said.

Others say the D.A., ever mindful of his next reelection campaign, realizes that his public image largely depends on Casey.

“I’ve heard judges tell me how good Casey makes Miller look,” said Rivian Taylor, an attorney and former newspaper reporter who works for the state Court of Appeal. “His special talent is he often does it with humor, of varying degrees of subtlety. . . . He’s the ultimate ghostwriter and ghost-speaker.”

Casey, a bearded Irishman with a penchant for one-liners, spent the last years of his journalism career writing about network television. By 1979, when Huffman, then Miller’s senior deputy D.A., approached him to talk about joining Miller’s office, Casey said, he was ready to go.

“A person can watch just so much ‘Laverne & Shirley’ if that person is an adult, without having some sort of brain damage,” he says now.

Already, he was dating one of Miller’s investigators--a former police officer and expert marksman who would soon become his second wife. By the time he traded his notebook in for a D.A.’s badge, Casey said, he was already “a believer” in Miller’s administration.

“I truly believe what we’re doing is right,” Casey said.

From the beginning, Casey recalled, he was asked to speak his mind. And he never considered himself merely a “P.R. guy.” Sure, he writes Miller’s speeches. And, more than any of Casey’s other attributes, his persuasive oral skills are said to make him the perfect complement to Miller.

“I don’t think of Ed as a person who can give you a startling statement in 30 seconds,” said C. Logan McKechnie, a defense attorney who spent nine years as Miller’s spokesman before Casey was hired. He said Miller has more depth than the average sound bite.

“He’s not going to give you news-at-11 headlines. To put it politely, he doesn’t speak in crisp, staccato type of language,” McKechnie said. “He explains things, and he doesn’t explain it quickly.”

So, more often than not, it is Casey’s face that flashes on the evening news.

“I talk to people for a living, so surprise, surprise, I’m going to be in the paper more than Donny or Debbie Deputy,” Casey said. “Some would see that high visibility as something that we bring on ourselves--to the exclusion of the people who are doing the work. But frankly, if I never found my name in the newspaper I’d be happy.”

Besides, he said, that is just a fragment of what he gets paid $77,000 a year to do. For the past six years, this special assistant has had his own assistant, Linda Miller. That gives him more time for other tasks.

He supervises the countywide Victim/Witness Assistance Program, which helps crime victims to file compensation claims and understand the court process. Casey has a hand in refining most departmental documents before they are made public. And he edits the glossy Law Enforcement Quarterly, which features his own column: “Pontifications.”

“In a lot of organizations, they have somebody who can write a pretty decent press release. You put a quarter in their ear, and their mouth moves,” Casey said. “That’s not my idea of what I do.”

What Casey does do, however, has sometimes prompted resentment. He believes that, in order to earn his keep, he must speak frankly--no matter who it offends.

“One of the things I do to serve the D.A. is to rear back and say, ‘This doesn’t hold together. It doesn’t make sense.’ And the architect of that idea, letter, proposal or concept sometimes gets his nose out of joint,” he said. “Folks will sometimes say, ‘Well, you’re not a lawyer. What the hell do you know?’ ”

Casey, who attended two years of law school but never got a degree, acknowledges that the style of his critiques may sometimes be as much to blame as the substance.

“Sometimes I am not tactful,” he said.

“If he thinks you did something foolish and stupid, he’s just as likely as not to tell you,” said Superior Court Judge Charles R. Hayes, a close friend of Casey who was chief of Miller’s fraud division in the 1970s and early 1980s. “And there are times when he’s impatient with bureaucrats.”

Casey has his critics, among them people who are dissatisfied with Miller’s track record on prosecuting police officers. The last time the D.A.’s office prosecuted an officer involved in a shooting was 1984, and it has cleared more than 100 officers in shootings since.

“Casey has a job where he’s paid to take the heat. So who believes what he says? . . . Isn’t he really a paid apologist?” Deputy Public Defender Richard Gates asked.

“To the extent that Ed Miller is conscious of public image, I guess maybe Casey would have some input. But is this a politically aware or socially conscious bureaucracy? Come on!” Gates continued. “If they were, people who were shot by police officers for wildly wielding a garden trowel would see action taken.”

The issue frustrates Casey.

“There is a great distinction between saying this shooting is legally, morally, ethically and spiritually good and saying that there is no credible evidence to prosecute an officer as a criminal,” he said. “Many shootings fall somewhere in between.”

So far, Casey, who occasionally carries a .38 revolver himself, said he has been “pretty unsuccessful” at clarifying that difference. In the minds of many people, he knows, when the D.A. deems a shooting legally justifiable, “justifiable becomes justified becomes good, which becomes condoned. And that is unfortunate.”

So Casey keeps trying, sticking by his boss’s side.

“I serve at his pleasure,” Casey said. “The boss runs for office every four years. I run for office every day.”