Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry P. Fidler turned down requests by defense lawyers representing Sgts. Edward Ortiz and Brian Liddy and Officer Paul Harper to ban cameras from the courtroom.
3 Rampart cops plea innocent, May 15, 2000, NBC news (Los Angeles)
The judge also rejected the prosecutor’s request for an informal gag order.
Sgts. Edward Ortiz and Brian Liddy, and Officer Paul Harper are accused of conspiring to file a false police report and to commit perjury. All three have been relieved of duty.
Ortiz, 43, and Liddy, 38, also are charged with filing a false police report, and Harper, 33, is charged with perjury by declaration.
The three are charged in connection with the April 26, 1996, arrest of suspected 18th Street gang member Allan Lobos.
A criminal complaint filed April 24 alleged that Liddy “or an unidentified co-conspirator rubbed the gun on Allan Lobos’ fingers,” that Ortiz “falsified statements in his sergeant’s log” and that Harper “knowingly relied on the false arrest report in preparation for filing the probable cause determination.”
The three surrendered within hours of the charges being filed and were released after posting $75,000 bail. The charges were filed just two days before the statute of limitations ran out.
Ortiz’s attorney, Barry Levin, said last month that prosecutors wouldn’t have waited such a long time to press charges unless the case was “fraught with problems and holes.”
Prosecutors have “absolutely no evidence against any of the officers,” Levin said.
Harper’s lawyer, Joel Isaacson, said last month that he hoped the public would consider the source of the accusations – Lobos and disgraced former LAPD Officer Rafael Perez.
Lobos, whose weapons case was overturned earlier this year, remains behind bars for an unrelated murder.
Perez, now serving a five-year term, has been cooperating with investigators probing allegations of misconduct in his former CRASH unit in exchange for a reduced sentence for stealing about $1 million worth of cocaine from an LAPD evidence room.
Perez was involved in Lobos’ arrest and told investigators he believed a gun was planted on the suspect, according to a writ filed earlier this year by prosecutors to dismiss the case against him.
To date, more than 70 cases have been overturned because of suspected officer misconduct, and more than 20 officers have been fired, suspended, relieved of duty or have quit as a result of the scandal.
In a development related to today’s arraignment, a federal judge was expected today to overturn the conviction of a man believed to have been framed by Rampart Division officers in a weapons case – the first reversal of a federal case since the scandal broke.
