Mistrial Declared in Case of Man Accused of Threatening D.A.

The jurors agreed that Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s life had been threatened. And they all sympathized with the man charged with making the threats, an unemployed handyman who saw his life disintegrating and blamed it on the bureaucracy of the district attorney’s child support division.

But after two days of deliberations, the Los Angeles jury that agreed on those two points could not unanimously agree Monday that Roberto Lansing, 56, intended to threaten Garcetti and declared itself deadlocked, 11 to 1 in favor of conviction.

The impasse led Superior Court Judge J. Stephen Czulegar to immediately declare a mistrial and paved the way for the retrial of Lansing, who was ordered back into custody.

The surprising conclusion to Lansing’s weeklong trial came at the end of a harried day of proceedings and courtroom inquiries about the jury’s deliberations.

Lansing, who has been in custody since his arrest in May, was charged with sending Garcetti threatening letters after Lansing’s $10,000 bank account was seized by state tax officials months after a child support dispute between Lansing and his ex-wife had been resolved.

Outraged that Garcetti’s office had not intervened on his behalf and had ignored letters and calls from him and his ex-wife to close the child support case, authorities said, Lansing sent letters threatening the lives of the district attorney, his family and his bodyguards.

But during deliberations, juror Loretta Gay maintained that she could not vote to convict Lansing, who had insisted that his cryptic letters merely recalled nightmares prompted by stress and an overdose of aspirin.

“I did not feel that they showed there was intent . . . to threaten [Garcetti],” the 42-year-old Lennox schoolteacher said after the jury was dismissed.

“And I didn’t feel that Mr. Garcetti and his office felt an immediate threat,” she said, referring to testimony that the district attorney’s security detail did not notify him of the letters until several hours after they were received.

Gay’s position prompted Judge Czulegar on Monday afternoon to poll the jurors about the progress of their deliberations after one complained that Gay was refusing to objectively view the evidence. But after Gay assured the judge that she was following the jury instructions, Czulegar ordered jurors back into deliberations that lasted only another hour before they declared themselves deadlocked.

A frustrated jury foreman, Henry Provencio, said that although all 12 panelists sympathized with Lansing’s plight, only Gay could not conclude that the defendant had gone beyond reasonable behavior and sent letters to Garcetti unmistakably threatening harm.

“For me and everyone else on the jury except [Gay], it was clear, even with a sympathetic view [of Lansing] . . . that he had crossed the line in terms of acceptable behavior,” Provencio said.

“We all recited cases of being lost in the bureaucratic maze . . . we all have had to deal with that,” Provencio said. “But having been there, having been frustrated, we all understand there is a limit” to what is permissible reaction.

Outside court, Deputy Atty. Gen. Bob Snider said he is optimistic that the case, when retried, will result in a conviction. “We think we have a strong case and 11 of 12 jurors agreed with us,” he said.

But Lansing’s attorney took a different view after arguing during the trial that the prosecution failed to prove intent by Lansing. “I’m just glad we had one juror who understood the process,” said Deputy Public Defender Carol Whyte.