LAPD SCANDAL FIZZLES LAST CHARGES DROPPED IN RAMPART CASE.

Byline: Staff and Wire Services

Prosecutors dropped charges Thursday against three officers accused of abuses in the Rampart Division, closing the book on what was once touted as the worst scandal in LAPD history but which in the end became scaled back to the Rafael Perez scandal.

The dismissal was the last gasp of a scandal that once involved the investigation of 82 incidents involving 50 officers and reversal of more than 100 convictions tainted by police misconduct.

But after five years of multiple investigations and lawsuit settlements that cost tens of millions of dollars, only Perez and his partner Nino Durden went to prison. Two other officers got county jail time and a fifth got probation.

Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and Loyola Law School professor, said either the Rampart scandal was ``overblown,'' or the cases proved too difficult to prosecute.

``I think it's a bit of each,'' Levenson said. ``It's an indication that not everything Perez said was prosecutable, and on the other hand, it's terribly difficult to prosecute police officers.

``From Rodney King on, jurors tend to give police officers the benefit of the doubt ... and prosecution witnesses tend to be people like gang members, not exactly sterling witnesses.''

Perez, who failed multiple lie detector tests, together with poor witnesses, statute-of-limitation problems and a political environment eager to put the scandal behind the city all may have contributed.

``It was a dirty case to begin with ... given the witness (problems), the political struggles. There weren't likely to be a lot of major prosecutions.''

Levenson said Rampart still leaves room for questions: ``Was it there were no cases to bring, or was it too tough to prove them?''

On Thursday, Deputy District Attorney Anne Ingalls told Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell that the prosecution was unable to retry Sgts. Brian Liddy and Edward Ortiz and former Officer Michael Buchanan, whose convictions four years ago were overturned and sent back for a new trial.

Kennedy-Powell then dismissed the charges.

``The case should have never been filed,'' said attorney Harland Braun, who represents Buchanan. ``The tremendous pressure of the Rampart scandal pushed the district attorney to file a case.''

A District Attorney's Office official, Janet Moore, said after years of lingering in appeals courts, the case was no longer viable.

``We really feel that a dismissal was in the best interest of justice,'' said Moore, director of the district attorney's Bureau of Specialized Prosecutions.

She said there were ``witness difficulties'' now that did not exist before. Some witnesses have vanished, some are incarcerated, and others ``have continued to engage in actions that could affect their credibility.''

In addition, she said, some witnesses have been compensated through resolution of civil suits, another matter jurors would consider in weighing credibility.

``We were not in as sound an evidentiary position as we were four years ago,'' Moore said. ``We took that reality and balanced it against positive outcomes. We did expose corruption in the LAPD, and they took corrective measures. There is extensive oversight now.''

A renegade officer, Perez sparked headlines by alleging that officers in an elite anti-gang unit beat, robbed, framed and sometimes shot innocent people in the city's tough Rampart neighborhood near downtown.

Perez spent months talking to investigators and making allegations of vast police wrongdoing.

But in the end, Perez himself emerged as the main culprit and many of his accusations against others were apparently undermined by his own lies. His ultimate lack of credibility made him all but useless as a witness against others.

Liddy, Ortiz and Buchanan were convicted by a jury in 2000 of conspiracy to obstruct justice for framing two gang members, but those convictions were overturned by the trial judge a month later because of jury misinterpretation of instructions.

Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Connor agreed with defense lawyers then that jurors improperly considered whether Liddy and Buchanan suffered great bodily injury, rather that whether they were hit by a truck carrying gang members in 1996, a situation that was likely to produce great bodily injury.

The District Attorney's Office appealed to the 2nd District Court of Appeal, but the three-justice panel rejected the prosecution request to reverse Connor's ruling. The California Supreme Court refused a prosecution request to review that decision.

The trio were accused of falsifying police reports stating that Buchanan and Liddy were hit by two gang members driving a truck in an alley as an excuse to arrest them.

The officers were the only members of the now-defunct Rampart station anti-gang unit to be tried on charges based on the allegations of Perez. Five officers, including Perez and his partner Durden, struck plea bargains and one of the co-defendants in the 2000 case, Paul Harper, was acquitted.

Perez and Durden are serving five-year prison sentences. Ethan Cohan was sentenced to a year in county jail after pleading guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice, filing a false police report and perjury.

Manuel Chavez pleaded no contest to assault by a public officer, and got 60 days in county jail and three years' probation.

Shawn Frederick Gomez pleaded no contest to filing a false police report and was sentenced to 400 hours of community service and placed on three years of formal probation.

Moore said Buchanan, 34, was fired by the Police Department. Liddy, 43, and Ortiz, 48, have internal disciplinary proceedings pending, she said.