Racketeer Suits in Rampart OKd

In a ruling that could markedly increase the city’s financial exposure in the Rampart police scandal, the federal judge presiding over all Rampart-related civil suits has ruled that the Los Angeles Police Department can be sued as a racketeering enterprise.

The ruling, for cases in which individuals say their rights were violated by Rampart Division officers, marks the second time in seven months that a federal judge has rebuffed efforts by the city attorney’s office to dismiss Rampart-related claims filed under the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act.

U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess’ ruling is more significant than the one issued by his colleague William J. Rea last August because Feess is presiding over about 100 Rampart cases. He is also the judge overseeing the consent decree between the city and the federal government, stemming from the U.S. Justice Department’s plans to sue the LAPD for a pattern or practice of civil rights violations.

Legal experts said Feess’ ruling takes the city into uncharted territory because no police department or major police official has ever been held liable under the RICO law.

Originally enacted to help ensnare mobsters, the law has been used over the last three decades in a wide range of cases ranging from stock manipulation to major health care fraud.

Feess’ ruling, in a suit filed by Los Angeles resident D’Novel Hunter, was hailed by his attorney Stephen Yagman, who has filed 23 cases seeking damages as a result of allegedly illegal conduct by Rampart Division officers.

Hunter spent four years in prison on a drug conviction and charges in his suit that he was framed by Rafael A. Perez, the former LAPD officer whose allegations of rampant illegal action by officers is at the center of the Rampart scandal. So far, abut 100 convictions have been overturned as a result of the scandal, but Hunter’s is not among them.

Feess’ ruling “makes clear that there will be racketeering liability for City Atty. Jimmy Hahn and his racketeer cohorts,” Yagman said.

Thomas Hokinson, who heads the civil liability section of the city attorney’s office, took issue with Yagman’s conclusion. He said that Feess’ ruling came only on a limited issue--whether Hunter’s RICO claim should be barred because of a 1994 U.S. Supreme Court decision that precludes federal civil rights actions against law enforcement by a defendant whose conviction had not been tossed out by a court.

Feess dismissed some of the counts in Hunter’s suit--including a separate claim under a federal civil rights law--but not the RICO claim. Feess said that the 1994 ruling, Heck vs. Humphrey, was not a valid defense for the city.

The Heck case only addresses actions filed under the federal civil rights law and “focuses on the interplay of that statute and the federal law on overturning criminal convictions on constitutional grounds,” Feess wrote in his decision.

“Nowhere in the [Supreme Court] majority’s opinion” in Heck “did the court suggest that the rule applies more generally to . . . all civil actions that might be filed by individuals with outstanding criminal convictions,” Feess added.

In his ruling, Feess acknowledged that two other federal district judges, including one in Northern California, had issued contrary rulings. But Feess said that those judges had improperly extrapolated the breadth of the Heck ruling.

Loyola law professor Laurie Levenson, a RICO expert, said Feess’ action was noteworthy. “If this were a judge who just wanted to kick the RICO allegations in the Rampart cases, there was an avenue for him to do so,” Levenson said. “These RICO allegations are not just a vehicle for a defendant to collaterally attack his conviction but to deal with a broader pattern of conduct by the LAPD.”

USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, who did a special report on the Rampart situation for the Police Protective League, called the ruling important.

“The significance of this decision is [that] the court is saying the RICO claim is not barred even when a civil rights action on the same facts would be barred,” Chemerinsky said. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that “there is still a long road with many obstacles before the Rampart plaintiffs can recover under RICO.”

Hokinson said the city attorney’s office would soon file another motion to have the RICO claim dismissed on the grounds that the case does not involve allegations properly brought under the RICO law.

Columbia University law professor John C. Coffee noted that to win monetary awards under RICO, the plaintiffs will have to show that they have been injured in their “business or property,” unlike cases involving traditional charges of excessive force in which damages can be awarded for brutality or mental distress.

“That’s not a problem,” Yagman said. “Our claim is that our clients are entitled to damages for lost wages while they were improperly imprisoned” after being convicted on false charges.

For example, in the Hunter case, Yagman asserts, his client, 47, lost an average of $43,000 a year in wages as a truck driver for the four years he was improperly imprisoned. Those damages could be tripled under the RICO law.

Hunter, a Vietnam veteran with a drug record, was sentenced to five years in prison in August 1992 after pleading guilty to one felony charge of possessing cocaine for sale.

Hunter faced a longer stretch in prison if he risked going to trial.

Legal experts have estimated that the city ultimately could be liable for more than $100 million in total damages as a result of the Rampart scandal.

The city attorney’s office says 135 Rampart-related cases have been filed against the city. The city has paid out $30.1 million in settlements, according to figures provided by the office.

About 100 convictions have been overturned, mostly as a result of requests to Superior Court judges by the district attorney’s office. So far though, Hunter’s conviction is not among them.

About 70 LAPD officers have come under investigation for committing crimes and misconduct in the Rampart scandal or failing to report them.

Eight LAPD officers have been criminally charged with corruption-related offenses.

Most recently, Perez’s onetime patrol partner, Nino Durden, pleaded guilty in state and federal courts to a host of crimes, including the shooting of an unarmed man who was then framed for assaulting police.

Last month, an officer pleaded no contest to assault in a 1998 beating, while another pleaded no contest to filing a false police report. A third officer has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

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Times staff writer Matt Lait contributed to this story.

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