‘Under God’ Ruling Spurred Angry Debate

It was a year in which child abductions, a July 4 shooting at LAX and the arrests of aging radicals and Catholic priests for decades-old crimes drew headlines.

But it was an appellate decision concerning a couple of famous words that provoked unparalleled legal controversy in 2002, a firestorm that reached the White House and classrooms across the nation.

The San Francisco-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in June that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional when recited in classrooms because the words “under God” endorse religion.

The decision, stemming from a lawsuit by an atheist father upset about the recitation of the pledge in his daughter’s elementary school, was condemned by President Bush, Gov. Gray Davis and the U.S. Senate. The Justice Department asked the court to rehear the case. In the meantime, the ruling has been put on hold and children continue to recite the pledge.

Other court-related happenings caused some parishioners to be concerned about their spiritual leaders, parents to fear for their children’s safety and baby boomers to remember the turbulent 1970s.

Among the top criminal justice stories: Former members of the radical Symbionese Liberation Army pleaded guilty to a 27-year-old murder, an outspoken East Coaster took the reins of the troubled Los Angeles Police Department, a San Francisco couple were convicted in the dog-mauling death of a neighbor and two Inglewood police officers were indicted after the videotaped beating of a teenager.

Several celebrities also made legal headlines.

Robert Blake, star of the 1970s television series “Baretta,” was arrested in April and charged with murdering his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, outside a Studio City restaurant in 2001. Prosecutors say he tried to solicit two Hollywood stuntmen and then conspired with his bodyguard to kill her. Blake, who insists that he is not guilty, is being held in the Los Angeles County Jail without bail.

Film star Winona Ryder was convicted in November of felony grand theft and vandalism for shoplifting more than $5,500 worth of designer clothes from Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills.

One guard testified at her trial that she had seen the Oscar-nominated actress snip off security tags and later walk out of the posh department store without paying for much of the merchandise she was carrying. She was sentenced to three years’ probation, mental health counseling and 480 hours of community service.

The scandal within the Catholic church swept across the nation as alleged victims accused priests of sexual abuse. Six current or former Archdiocese of Los Angeles priests were arrested and charged with child molestation, including one who was taken into custody while on a cruise bound for eastern Russia.

More than 70 one-time clerics in the Los Angeles Archdiocese are under investigation in connection with allegations of abuse dating as far back as 1946.

An unsettling string of child abductions began in February, when 7-year-old Danielle van Dam disappeared from her bedroom in a San Diego suburb. Her body was found 25 days later along a rural road. Neighbor David Westerfield was convicted of kidnapping and murdering the girl, whose blood was found in his recreational vehicle and on his jacket. A jury recommended that he be executed.

Another high-profile abduction unfolded in Orange County. Samantha Runnion, 5, was grabbed by a stranger as she played with a friend outside her home in July. Her body was discovered the next day along a mountain road. Alejandro Avila, a factory worker, was arrested and faces charges that could bring the death penalty.

The number of kidnappings also led to the use of the “Amber Alert” network, which posts information about abducted children on radio, TV and digital freeway signs.

The alert system was praised for helping authorities rescue two teenage girls abducted at gunpoint from an Antelope Valley lovers’ lane in August. Authorities tracked down the kidnapper in Kern County, shooting him to death and bringing the girls to safety.

In Los Angeles, William J. Bratton was selected in October to reform the Los Angeles Police Department amid a rising crime rate, low morale and a tarnished public image.

The former New York City Police commissioner immediately announced ambitious plans to turn the department around. But in a reflection of the formidable challenges, 14 people were killed over a four-day period in November, pushing the city’s murder count to the highest annual total since the mid-1990s.

Several high-profile cases landed in California trial courtrooms in 2002.

Early in the year, four members of the Symbionese Liberation Army were charged with the 1975 shotgun killing of a churchgoing mother of four during a bank robbery near Sacramento. Last month, the aging defendants -- Emily Montague, William Harris, Michael Bortin and Sara Jane Olson -- pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. The day after the pleas, the final fugitive, James Kilgore, was arrested in South Africa.

Two Inglewood police officers were indicted by the Los Angeles County Grand Jury on felony charges in July, just days after a videotape showed a handcuffed 16-year-old being slammed onto the trunk of a patrol car and struck in the face.

The tape attracted nationwide attention, drawing comparisons with the 1991 beating of Rodney G. King. Officer Jeremy Morse was charged with assault under the color of authority and his partner, Bijan Darvish, was charged with filing a false police report. Both are free on bail, awaiting trial in Los Angeles County.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley also began a criminal investigation into Entertainment Industry Development Corp. and its president, Cody Cluff, with a series of raids from Hollywood Boulevard to Pittsburgh.

Investigators were seeking evidence to determine whether Cluff and the EIDC, which coordinates city and county film permitting, had misused corporate funds on lavish expenses and political contributions to elected officials on its governing board. Cluff, who has not been charged, recently stepped down from his post with the EIDC.

The Los Angeles federal court, too, was highlighted this year by numerous indictments against a variety of public officials, law enforcement officers and corporate executives.

The most sensational case was filed in November against Carson Mayor Daryl Sweeney and three other present or former City Council members accused of extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars from waste haulers and other firms seeking municipal contracts. Also indicted were three waste-hauling executives and two alleged middlemen.

Former Los Angeles police officers Rafael Perez and Nino Durden, central figures in the LAPD’s Rampart corruption scandal, were sentenced in federal court to prison terms after pleading guilty to violating the civil rights of suspected gang members by fabricating evidence against them.

A high-profile defendant awaiting trial in a federal case, Irv Rubin, died in November after leaping over a jail balcony at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, according to the FBI. Rubin, the firebrand national leader of the Jewish Defense League, was awaiting trial for allegedly plotting to bomb a Culver City mosque.

In a Los Angeles civil courtroom, a jury awarded a record $28 billion in punitive damages against Philip Morris Cos. in a case brought by a longtime smoker with lung and liver cancer. The trial judge later reduced the award to $28 million.

The Pledge of Allegiance decision was not the only major appellate decision in the state this year.

The California Supreme Court ruled in August that criminal defendants in court should no longer be forced to wear stun belts, which can discharge debilitating electric shocks, unless there is no less onerous alternative. The state high court also protected medical marijuana users in a ruling that required prosecutors to dismiss charges if a patient has evidence of a doctor’s approval.

The U.S. 9th Circuit struck down two long sentences imposed under California’s three-strikes law, saying that a 25-years-to-life term for petty theft constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The question of the validity of California’s three-strikes law is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, stemming from a decision that a 50-years-to-life sentence for stealing children’s videos had been grossly disproportionate to the offense.

The 9th Circuit also overturned several death sentences and upheld California’s assault weapons control act, ruling that individuals have no constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

And the court ruled that inmates have no constitutional right to impregnate their wives by mailing sperm from a prison.

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Times staff writers Maura Dolan, Henry Weinstein, Richard Winton, Jean Guccione, Andrew Blankstein, Steve Berry, Christine Hanley and David Rosenzweig contributed to this report.