The Rampart Scandal (1999-2001) as Paradigm- LA's Contemporary Urban History

.

.

"THE JUDGMENT WAS SET AND THE BOOKS WERE OPENED" Daniel 7:10

.

The Rampart (1999-2001) as the Paradigm-

LA's Contemporary Urban History

And Connor surely has a specific role in it.

.

It took me time to accept it, but the key to it all is in the Rampart and its aftermath, and before that - Shakur:

* 1991 - Rodney King beating and riots.

* 1992 - entrepreneur Peter Ueberroth led an effort to rebuild South Los Angeles after the 1992 riots that followed the acquittal of the officers who attacked King.

* 1994 - high-power attorney Warren Christopher headed a commission that investigated the beating of Rodney G. King by Los Angeles police officers.

* September 7, 1996 - Shakur shot

"Shakur was shot four times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, and died six days later of respiratory failure and cardiac arrest at the University Medical Center.[5]"

wikipedia

* 1997-98 - Charter Reform Commission

Attempts to restructure the power structure in Los Angeles.

From LATimes, Noam N. Levey July 31, 2004

* Jan 1999- Charter reform approved

Charter Reform Commission popular vote approval. His steady determination to craft a compromise was instrumental in enacting the first substantive change to the Los Angeles City Charter in 75 years, according to Kieffer and others.

From LATimes, Noam N. Levey July 31, 2004

*1999 - Beginning of rampart investigation
"Chemerinsky berated Riordan and then-Police Chief Bernard C. Parks for stonewalling investigations, at one point commenting, “There has been no way whatsoever in which Riordan has been a force for positive change in the Police Department.”

From LATimes, Noam N. Levey July 31, 2004

* 2000- Rampart Trial
Chemerinsky was called upon by the Los Angeles Police Protective League to prepare an analysis of the Police Department. produced a 154-page report – subsequently endorsed not just by the police union, but also by civil rights lawyers.

From LATimes, Noam N. Levey July 31, 2004

* 1998 - "code of Silence"

U.S. District Judge Letts is on the record regarding LAPD "Code of Silence"

LA Times

* 1999-2000 - Rampart investigation and trial
“Any analysis of the Rampart scandal must begin with an appreciation of the heinous nature of what the officers did. “
“…and judges must share responsibility when innocent people are convicted.”
“No single reform can be sufficient. Reform is not an event, but a process that will take many years to complete. The hope is that this crisis provides a unique opportunity for reform. This opportunity must not be squandered. This report is written with the strong belief that reform is possible and that future Ramparts can and must be prevented."
“No single reform can be sufficient. Reform is not an event, but a process that will take many years to complete. The hope is that this crisis provides a unique opportunity for reform. This opportunity must not be squandered. This report is written with the strong belief that reform is possible and that future Ramparts can and must be prevented.

Erwin Chemerinsky, 2000

* June 19, 2000 - Police Chief Bernard Parks Granddaughter shot

“ 2000- Loyola Law School Symposium

…judges tried and sentenced a staggering number of people for crimes they did not commit. How could so many participants in the criminal justice system have failed either to recognize or to instigate any meaningful scrutiny of such appalling and repeated perversions of justice?”
“…we felt a particular obligation to ensure that no aspect of the Los Angeles criminal justice system, including the lawyers and judges, escaped scrutiny. A law school, with its concern for all aspects of the justice system, is the obvious place for such an examination.”

David W. Burcham, and Catherine L. Fisk, Loyola Law School Symposium, Los Angeles, 2000

*September 2000 - Independent committe report

The Los Angeles Police Department’s deepest problem is an internal culture that not only gave rise to the Rampart corruption scandal, but also tolerated it, according to the author of a new, highly critical study of the LAPD.
Moreover, the report’s principal author says, the department’s culture–defined as its unwritten rules, codes, values and outlooks–must be changed before Los Angeles can expect meaningful police reform.
Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law professor at USC, undertook the analysis on behalf of the Police Protective League union, which sought an independent review of the LAPD’s internal Board of Inquiry report.

LA Times, Beth Shuster September 09, 2000

* December 22, 200o - Connor overrules jury verdict

"in a highly unusual move, Connor released a 19-page ruling in which
she wrote that the jury's verdict had been compromised by an apparent
misunderstanding of a common phrase of police slang, and that she had committed a "fatal error" by not recognizing the misunderstanding."

Twila Decker and Henry Weinstein, LA Times

* January 2001 -
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley announced Thursday that he will
appeal a judge's order throwing out convictions of three LAPD police officers
accused of framing gang members--keeping alive the first prosecution in an ongoing investigation into corruption at the LAPD.
"We believe Judge Connor erred in her ruling overturning the jury verdicts
convicting Sgts. [Edward] Ortiz and [Brian] Liddy and Officer [Michael] Buchanan," Cooley said in a short statement released with the notice of appeal.
The appeal could take up to a year for the state Court of Appeal to resolve,
according to legal experts who say it will be difficult for Cooley's office to win given that the judge has partly blamed herself for an error that led her to throw out the convictions.

Twila Decker and Henry Weinstein, LA Times

* 2001 - Business as usual
“Beyond Scandal: The Rampart Corruption Incident as 'Business-as-Usual' in LA”

Jason E. Whitehead, 2001

* 2002 - Mayor Hahn refuses to reappoint Police Chief Parks

* 2007 - Consent Decree

Evaluation

* July 12, 2007 - Zernik's 1st disqualification for a cause v. Connor

In reviewing Samaan v Zernik, one cannot skip the July 12, 2007 Disqualification for a cause. At that time Defendant Zernik knew nothing of Connor's role in the Rampart trial. And yet he filed a disqualification for a cause, based on analysis of her conduct in trial, and concluded that errors that she made, and which could appear to others as innocent, could not be such, simply because of statistical reasons. The errors defied randomness - they were clustered, and their effect is always the same - detrimental to Defendant. Random errors should be more evenly distributed in their effect.

Upon being served, and as if to prove the point, Connor erroneously ruled that the filing, disqualification for a cause per CCP §170.3, was in fact an untimely filing of a peremptory challenge per CCP §170.6, therefore struck.