Evidence on Witness-Intimidation Allegation to Stay Unsealed

In a decision that could help prosecutors charge a murder defendant with threatening to kill witnesses, a judge on Wednesday refused to seal court records that allegedly helped the man track the witnesses down from his jail cell.

Attorneys for Spencer Rawlin Brasure claimed that attorney-client privilege protects the police reports, including witnesses’ names, which were seized from his cell.

Deputy Public Defenders Robert Willey and Gary Windom asked Judge Roland Purnell to bar prosecutors from using the reports--and the fact that they were supplied to Brasure by the attorneys--as evidence at trial.

But Purnell ruled that Brasure’s attorneys waived their attorney-client privacy rights when they described in court the police reports that they gave to their client in April.

The police reports in question were papers that prosecutors had already given to the defense in preparing for trial, and the defense had every right to give them to Brasure minus the witnesses’ names and addresses, Purnell said.

“The toothpaste is out of the tube, and we can’t put it back in,” Purnell said, quoting an argument made earlier by Deputy Dist. Atty. Mark Pachowicz.

Brasure allegedly used the reports to compile a “rat list” of witnesses in his murder case.

And he is accused of soliciting the slayings of those witnesses through a series of letters to friends, some of which were written in a secret code of symbols and letters.

One letter identifies five witnesses as the “main rats that need to be killed A.S.A.P.” The letter, now part of court records, also asks the recipient to warn a witness that he had “better think twice before taking the stand” because the Hells Angels have located his son in prison and “won’t hesitate” to kill him.

Brasure is one of three men awaiting trial in the slaying of Anthony Guest, 20, of Redondo Beach.

Park rangers found Guest’s burned body in bushes in Hungry Valley Recreational Area near Gorman on Sept. 13. Authorities allege the men abducted Guest under false pretenses, tortured and killed him and dumped his body there.

Brasure has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, torture, kidnapping, arson, grand theft and conspiracy.

Prosecutors have accused the public defender’s office of giving Brasure the witnesses’ addresses, phone numbers and, in some cases, Social Security numbers, in violation of state law.

But Public Defender Kenneth I. Clayman has called the charges against his office irresponsible and false, and Willey this week again angrily rejected what he called “slanderous” allegations.

“There are multiple copies of the police reports floating around, and anybody who thinks there isn’t a large grapevine for this stuff out on the streets just isn’t aware,” Willey said in an interview.

Besides, Willey said, Brasure has long known two of the witnesses in question, one of whom was a childhood friend and the other a neighbor.

Willey said he sought a court order to bar discussion of his handling of the police reports “so they can’t try at a preliminary hearing to make us testify against our own client.”

Purnell seemed to agree with that argument.

“These partial disclosures [of the police reports] do not open the door to compelling his attorney to answer further questions about the subject,” Purnell said in his ruling Wednesday.

Meanwhile, prosecutors are preparing for a hearing Monday, when they will ask Purnell for a permanent order restraining Brasure from contacting any of the witnesses.

He is already under a temporary order restricting his mail privileges, limiting his phone calls to discussions with attorneys and requiring his meetings with visitors be supervised by sheriff’s deputies.

Pachowicz said he will present evidence Monday that Brasure wrote two of the letters immediately after investigators from the public defender’s office visited him in jail.

Pachowicz said he will also put one of the people allegedly targeted by Brasure on the witness stand to testify about the threats.

Brasure’s attorneys have fought the restrictions, arguing that they infringe on his constitutional rights.