Trial and error

After reviewing court transcripts and secretly tape-recorded telephone conservations between grocery magnate George Torres and some of his friends — one a major drug dealer doing prison time — US District Judge Stephen V. Wilson had plenty of reasons to suspect Torres himself was a part, if not the leader, of the criminal activities of the others.
But in a stunning ruling made public on Sept. 21, Wilson wrote that, due largely to the failure of prosecutors to disclose evidence indicating that they and a rogue LAPD officer had threatened and bought off two key witnesses in exchange for incriminating evidence against the 52-year-old Numero Uno Market founder and others in what came to be called “The Torres Enterprise,” he had no choice but to throw out a jury’s guilty verdicts on 50 of 55 counts; convictions on conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering, tax evasion, mail and wire fraud, bribery and violations of labor and immigration laws.

Wilson had dismissed the most serious charges — alleged racketeering and murder for hire — in June. Held for nearly two years, Torres was released at that time on $1 million bail after federal prosecutors acknowledged they had learned that their drug-dealing witnesses had made statements on tape that might have cleared Torres.

Today, Torres is free, residing in Arcadia and awaiting his next trial, this time on the lesser charges of harboring illegal aliens, tax evasion and bribing a city of Los Angeles central area planning commissioner. A status conference is set for Nov. 30.

Formerly facing life in prison, Torres could now be looking at a much lighter penalty if eventually convicted, which appears doubtful after reading the 147-page ruling by Wilson.

The veteran judge found that there was never rock-solid evidence of Torres committing some of those crimes: alleged bribery on three permit applications, which former LA Central Area Planning Commissioner Steve Carmona never voted on and which were not approved; the harboring of illegal aliens, people who Torres allegedly provided with jobs at his markets; and violating the tax code, mostly by paying those people in cash.

In Wilson’s opinion, without the taint of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) allegations against Torres — or “spillover” prejudice, as Wilson called it — a fresh jury might reach different conclusions on those counts.
“While the evidence on these counts was otherwise sufficient, it was not so overwhelming that a subsequent trial would necessarily reach the same result,” the judge concluded.

Torres’ lawyer, Pasadena City Councilman Steve Madison, has advised his client to refrain from speaking with the press and to let him do the talking, which Madison did Monday.

“At some point, the prosecutors either knew information was being withheld or should have known that they were too trusting of this rogue cop, who was clearly shown breaking the rules,” said Madison, a former assistant US Attorney who was lauded by Wilson for his “independent diligence” in finding the evidence needed to impeach the testimony of convicted drug dealers Raul del Real and Derrick Smith, two key witnesses against Torres.

The cop Madison referred to, LAPD Sgt. Greg Kading, has been trying to link him to a number of killings, along with large-scale marijuana and cocaine distribution. But he’s also a cop who Wilson describes in his ruling as having “a reckless disregard for the truth.”

“The guilty verdicts have been erased, but the charges are still there,” said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office, “and we are preparing to retry Mr. Torres on those charges.”

Prosecutors and Kading wanted to put Torres behind bars for engineering the 1993 shooting death of Edward Carpel, who allegedly killed a Numero Uno security guard; the February 1994 drive-by shooting death of gangster Jose “Shorty” Maldonado, which was allegedly ordered by Torres after Maldonado tried to extort a Sopranos-style “tax” from one his 11 grocery stories; and the disappearance of his onetime right-hand man Ignacio Meza, who allegedly killed Maldonado and then stole more than $500,000 in cash from a Numero Uno warehouse in LA in 1998, an act which presumably resulted in his death.

In wiretapped conversations, one of the witnesses who Kading used, del Real, can be heard taking expletive-laced orders from Torres, according to the court document. Following his drug conviction, del Real was helped out by Kading, who in other recorded conversations promises to get del Real’s brother out from under a spousal abuse rap. Prosecutors further promised to allow del Real to keep his home, which would have been forfeited following his drug conviction, in exchange for testifying against Torres.

The other witness Kading worked with, convicted drug trafficker Derrick Smith, testified that he heard Torres direct Meza to “take care of” Maldonado. He stated that he helped Meza rob the safe at the Numero Uno warehouse a few months before Meza disappeared. As Madison later learned, Kading had promised to get Smith out of his 24-year prison sentence for drugs, an abuse cited in the judge’s ruling.

In one of their few disclosures prior to trial, prosecutors acknowledged that they were not going after Smith in connection with the death of Roderick Chapman, who, like Maldonado, was allegedly killed by Meza, according to the court document.

Smith, who was also promised “big money” by Kading for testifying, and del Real both believed they would be released from custody after cooperating, Wilson wrote.

Wilson noted that it is a prosecutor’s job to turn over to defense attorneys any evidence that might be exculpatory, which did not happen in this case. It is also their duty to know what their investigators are up to. Assistant US Attorney Timothy Searight could not be reached for comment.

Kading — according to a report in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune now the subject of an LAPD internal affairs investigation — also could not be reached. An LAPD spokeswoman declined to comment on the case, or forward information to Kading, or provide a number where he could be reached.

Torres sold most of his stores soon after being indicted in 2007, but retains ownership interest in two of them, Madison said. Torres’ brother Manuel Torres, deemed a member of the so-called “Torres Enterprise,” was also indicted on a racketeering count, but charges were dropped when Wilson ruled prosecutors didn’t have enough evidence to proceed.
“To the extent that the court finds that the prosecutors acted inappropriately in this case by failing to comply with court orders or otherwise neglecting their duties, the court will consider the possibility of sanctions,” Wilson wrote. “The court is disturbed by the government’s conduct in this case, especially with regard to how agents handled the key witnesses on the murder predicates.”

Mrozek points out that the case, like most RICO cases, was wide-ranging and complicated, involving several defendants, who were also friends and family members of Torres. Mrozek, who was unaware of Wilson’s threat to sanction prosecutors, did not elaborate on the judge’s ruling.

“Like I said, we are prepared to retry Mr. Torres. Now it’s an issue of exactly how we are going to do that,” he said.