Grand Jurors Say D.A. Was Intimidating

SANTA ANA —  Several former Orange County grand jurors said Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi “intimidated” them into dropping a request for an independent counsel to assist in their civil investigation of the county’s unprecedented bankruptcy, according to newly released court transcripts.

Capizzi--and his lieutenants--threatened to impanel a second grand jury to hear the criminal cases if grand jurors pursued their own civil investigation, the grand jurors said.

The allegations against Capizzi were contained in transcripts of a closed meeting Jan. 4 between Superior Court Judge David O. Carter and 14 members of the outgoing grand jury.

According to the transcripts, Carter held the private meeting in his chambers after several grand jurors sought advice from the judge about subpoenas they had received from defense lawyers trying to disqualify Capizzi from prosecuting three elected officials charged by the grand jury with willful misconduct in office.

“I’d venture to say that there was a majority of us that did feel the intimidation, which is part of the reason, I think, why we dropped the [request for a special counsel],” grand juror Laird D. Grant told the judge during the meeting.

Other grand jurors supported Grant’s interpretation, saying they worried about being excluded from considering the criminal aspects of the investigation.

“We weren’t willing to give that up,” Grant added.

Grand juror Mary Evelyn Bryden told the judge that local prosecutors gave the grand jury “the clear impression that they didn’t need us, that unless we bowed to their will, we wouldn’t be of any use to them . . and then we all said, ‘OK, we will cooperate with you.’ ”

The district attorney’s office on Tuesday denied the jurors’ allegations.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Brent Romney said prosecutors did not want the grand jury to conduct both civil and criminal investigations “because it could taint any subsequent criminal indictment that they issued.”

“We didn’t want to jeopardize potential indictments,” Romney added. “They had to make a hard choice about which course they wanted to take and apparently a majority chose to continue with the criminal investigation.”

The grand jury last December issued a criminal indictment against former Budget Director Ronald S. Rubino and civil willful misconduct accusations against Board of Supervisors Chairman Roger R. Stanton and Supervisor William G. Steiner, as well as Auditor-Controller Steve E. Lewis. In May, the same grand jury returned an indictment against former Assistant Treasurer Matthew Raabe.

But Capizzi’s role in the grand jury’s investigation has been questioned by defense lawyers who want the district attorney disqualified from prosecuting the officials.

On Tuesday, Allan Stokke, who represents Steiner, said Capizzi’s threats to the grand jury “looks like an obstruction of justice from the D.A.”

“The grand jury was supposed to hear the evidence without any intimidation, or under no threats,” Stokke said. “It’s outrageous that the district attorney would tell the grand jury who they could talk to and who they could not talk to. This is not normal action.”

But Romney shot back, “The defense attorney who makes that comment would be the very first . . . to attack an indictment of his client because he would be concerned the grand jury would be tainted by conducting two investigations.”

The showdown between Capizzi and the grand jury last June was detailed in previously released transcripts.

But the grand jurors’ meeting with Carter shed some new light on the dispute between the panel and the district attorney’s office.

The meeting between Carter and the grand jurors caused the judge last week to remove himself from overseeing the criminal case of former Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron, who has pleaded guilty to six felony counts of securities fraud and misappropriation of funds.

Citron, who is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 23, faces up to 14 years in prison.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge J. Stephen Czuleger was appointed to conduct Citron’s sentencing.

Czuleger was a federal prosecutor before he was appointed to the bench in 1990 by then-Gov. George Deukmejian.

Last year, Czuleger found himself briefly in the national spotlight when he handled several hearings involving the Los Angeles grand jury investigation of the O.J. Simpson case.

In one ruling, Czuleger jailed a witness for contempt for disobeying an order to testify before a grand jury that was also investigating the actions of Simpson’s friend, Al C. Cowlings.