Pubdate: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 Source: Washington Post (DC) Copyright: 2000 The Washington Post Company Contact: 1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071 Feedback: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ Bookmark: L.A. Rampart Scandal http://www.mapinc.org/rampart.htm JUDGE MAY OVERTURN OFFICERS' CONVICTIONS LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21 (Reuters) -- A judge who presided over the convictions of three Los Angeles police officers in the first trial stemming from the city's Rampart corruption scandal considered overturning the guilty verdicts today over claims of jury misconduct. After listening to arguments by defense lawyers and prosecutors for much of the morning, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Connor -- who has already declared herself "troubled" by the jury's findings -- said she would issue a ruling as early as Friday. A decision by Connor to grant a new trial for Sgts. Brian Liddy and Edward Ortiz and Officer Michael Buchanan could be seen as a major blow to prosecutors by legal experts and civil rights activists -- some of whom hailed the convictions as a turning point in the Rampart scandal. Liddy, Ortiz and Buchanan were convicted last month of fabricating charges that two gang members ran them down with a truck during a 1996 arrest. The jury found they had falsified police reports. But defense lawyers have challenged the verdicts, claiming that jurors misread the police reports, that the foreman was biased against the officers and that prosecutors made inadmissible remarks in their closing statements. Connor has been most troubled by the possibility that the jurors convicted Liddy, Ortiz and Buchanan because they believed the officers lied when they wrote on the police reports that they suffered "great bodily injury." Defense lawyers claim that entry was never made by the officers but appeared on the report through a computer glitch. They called the convictions a "travesty of justice." Prosecutors said the jury found at trial that the officers lied about the extent of their injuries, regardless of how the entry was made on the report. Deputy District Attorney Laura Laesecke told Connor that "overturning the verdicts would be the true travesty of justice." The Rampart scandal was unleashed in September 1999 when rogue officer Rafael Perez was arrested for stealing cocaine from an LAPD evidence locker and began detailing pervasive corruption in Rampart Station. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D