Washed It!

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca directed detectives to launch a criminal investigation outside his agency’s jurisdiction on behalf of a well-connected supporter who has given the sheriff political contributions and expensive gifts, a Times investigation has found.

The sheriff’s investigation targeted a tenant who was embroiled in a rental dispute with Ezat Delijani, a longtime Baca political donor. The sheriff assigned his detectives to the case after Beverly Hills police had concluded that Delijani’s allegations did not amount to a crime.

In an interview, Baca downplayed his personal involvement in opening the probe last year. He said the Beverly Hills business magnate received no preferential treatment.

Sheriff’s Department records, however, show that Baca sent a handwritten note to his then-chief of detectives requesting the investigation. Additionally, records reveal that detectives referred to the case as a “Sheriff Baca Special Request” and gave it a “rush” status, generally reserved for high-priority or time-sensitive cases, including homicides.

According to records, the Beverly Hills Police Department had determined that Delijani’s dispute was a civil matter and did not merit a criminal investigation. After sheriff’s detectives concluded their four-month investigation, they submitted their findings to prosecutors, who declined to file criminal charges, citing insufficient evidence. Baca said the incursion into the Beverly Hills department’s jurisdiction was necessary because the allegations of lease forgery were “too complicated” for the local police force.

Officials at the Beverly Hills Police Department, which handles hundreds of forgery cases every year, dismissed that explanation.

“I’m trying not to say anything that sounds inflammatory,” said Beverly Hills Police Sgt. Shan Davis when told of Baca’s comment about the case being too difficult for them. “That’s not a fair characterization.”

Law enforcement experts said it is highly unusual for one police agency to launch an investigation in another agency’s jurisdiction without being invited in.

Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of law and police studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said the case “smacks of the worst kind of special treatment.”

“It’s incumbent on the sheriff to explain why this case merited this kind of intensive resource allocation,” said O’Donnell, a former New York City police officer. “Not only is it a terrible thing for public perception, it has a very devastating impact internally for the rank and file who swear an oath to protect people equally.”

At the center of the sheriff’s investigation was a 2008 dispute between Delijani and his tenant, a pharmacist named Afshin Nassir. According to records, Nassir requested that Delijani reimburse him for tenant improvements and for rent he had paid while those improvements were being made. Nassir alleged that he was entitled to payment according to his lease; Delijani claimed he wasn’t.

After Delijani refused to reimburse Nassir, lawyers from both sides got involved — and Delijani alleged the lease that Nassir produced had been forged. Both parties sued.

During a deposition, Delijani said he took his complaint to the Sheriff’s Department.

“Do you know the name of the person you spoke to?” asked an attorney for Nassir, according to a transcript.

“Sheriff Lee Baca,” Delijani replied.

Delijani said he told Baca about the lease dispute during a meeting related to an award the businessman was receiving. Baca, he recalled, said “you must report such a crime. You must do it.’”

At some point, the Delijani family went to the Beverly Hills police with the tenant complaint. After officials there determined that the matter did not merit a criminal investigation, Delijani’s son sent an e-mail to Baca’s assistant.

“Hi Susie, Hope you’re well,” Delijani’s son, Shahram, wrote. “Can you please let the Sheriff know that I spoke to … Beverly Hills Police Department and they informed me that they will not investigate the case. Thank you.”

On a printout of that e-mail, a handwritten note from Baca urges action from Chief Willie Miller, who at the time oversaw the Sheriff Department’s detectives division.

Baca ordered criminal probe outside jurisdiction on behalf of political donor

The Supreme Court intervened again Monday in a lawsuit against a former George W. Bush administration official, agreeing to decide whether former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft is entirely shielded from claims that he misused the law to arrest terrorism suspects under false pretenses.

Obama administration lawyers appealed on Ashcroft’s behalf and asserted that it would “severely damage law enforcement” if the nation’s top law enforcement official could be held liable for abusing his authority.

In the last five years, civil libertarians have tried, without much success, to sue former Bush administration officials for overstepping the law. These suits have run into a series of procedural barriers. For example, those who accused the government of wiretapping their phones without a search warrant had their cases thrown out of court on grounds they could not prove they had been wiretapped. Others who said they were wrongly arrested and tortured had their claims dismissed when the government invoked the “state secrets” privilege.

Last year, the Supreme Court shielded Ashcroft from being sued by Muslim immigrants in the New York area who said they were arrested and abused in jail after the 9/11 attacks, even though they had no involvement in a terrorism plot. In a 5-4 decision, the high court ruled that the suit against Ashcroft must be dismissed because the plaintiffs could not prove he ordered them to be abused.

The new case arose when Lavoni Kidd, a former football star at the University of Idaho, was arrested and shackled at Washington’s Dulles International Airport in March 2003. He was not taken into custody because he was suspected of a crime, but because he was a supposed “material witness” in another case.

Federal law permits the government in special situations to hold someone as a “material witness” in a pending case. Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union accused Ashcroft of a “gross abuse” of this authority. They say he misused the law to arrest innocent people, even when the government lacked the required “probable cause.”

After the 9/11 attacks Ashcroft announced he would use all the legal authority at his disposal to capture terrorists. Hundreds of Muslim men were arrested and held on immigration charges. That option was not available in Kidd’s case because he is a U.S. citizen.

He had converted to Islam in college and changed him name to Abdullah Al-Kidd. He had cooperated with the FBI after the 9/11 attacks and answered questions about another Muslim man in Idaho who was under investigation in connection with his website.

Several months had elapsed since Kidd had heard from the FBI, but when he bought a round-trip ticket to travel to Saudi Arabia, where he had a study scholarship, the FBI moved to have him arrested. An FBI agent wrongly told a magistrate that Kidd had bought a one-way first-class ticket. The magistrate ordered Kidd arrested and held as a witness. A few days later, then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III testified in Congress and mentioned Kidd’s “arrest” as one of the bureau’s recent successes.

Kidd was strip-searched repeatedly and shackled for more than two weeks in a high-security cell where the lights were kept on, according to his complaint. He was then released, but his passport was taken. In 2005, Kidd sued Ashcroft and other officials, contending they had violated his constitutional rights by arresting him without probable cause.

Ashcroft moved to dismiss the suit, arguing that as the nation’s chief prosecutor, he was absolutely immune from such claims. But a federal judge in Idaho and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to dismiss the suit. Judge Milan Smith said it was “repugnant to the Constitution” for the government to say it “has the power to arrest and detain or restrict American citizens for months on end, in sometimes primitive conditions, not because they have committed a crime, but merely because the government wants to investigate them for possible wrongdoing.”

This ruling, if allowed to stand, would have allowed the case against Ashcroft to proceed toward a trial.

But Acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal appealed to the high court and argued that top prosecutors should be shielded from answering such allegations. “Absolute immunity applies regardless of the prosecutor’s intent,” he said.

The justices announced they will hear the case of Ashcroft vs. Al-Kidd early next year and decide whether the doctrine of prosecutorial immunity requires that the suit be dismissed. New Justice Elena Kagan said she would stay out of the case.

david.savage@latimes.com

Supreme Court to hear civil liberties suit against John Ashcroft

In the latest twist to the seesawing fortunes of three Americans held in an Iranian prison, a prosecutor now says one of them can leave jail — provided she puts up half a million dollars bail.

Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jaffar Dowlatabadi told reporters Sunday that bail had been set at the equivalent of $500,000 for Sarah E. Shourd, according to the semi-official Iranian Labor News Agency.

The 32-year-old woman was arrested last year along with Americans Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer along the Iran-Iraq border during what relatives of the detainees call an ill-fated hiking trip. None have been formally charged, though Iranian officials have accused them of espionage.

But Dowlatabadi said an “indictment of charges against the three accused has been issued and their cases are ready to be submitted to the court.”

He also said the “order of arrest for the other two American nationals … has been extended.”

The lawyer for the three Americans, Massoud Shafiqi, said he was upbeat about Shourd’s release. He said he had contacted his client’s family and informed the Swiss embassy, which hosts the U.S. interests section in Iran in the absence of formal relations between Washington and Tehran, “so that they can take the necessary measures,” according to the Iranian Students News Agency.

Iranian officials under the authority of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had days earlier said Shourd would be released Saturday morning but, in a stark illustration of Iran’s domestic political infighting, backtracked after the powerful judiciary said the investigation of her case had not been completed.

Dowlatabadi did not say whether Shourd, who has reportedly complained of medical problems to her family, would be allowed to leave the country if she’s freed. He referred to the case of Clotilde Reiss, the French lecturer arrested in Iran last year and accused of espionage who was eventually released from Evin but barred from leaving the country for months.

The hikers’ continued detention has further strained relations between Iran and the U.S., which accuses Tehran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program and undermining peace efforts in the Middle East.

daragahi@latimes.com
American jailed in Iran can leave, for a price

A federal appeals court decided Monday to put same-sex marriage in California on hold at least until December, interrupting the wedding plans of scores of gay couples who were hoping to exchange vows later this week.

The brief order by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals prevents an early showdown on the marriage question at the U.S. Supreme Court. Challengers of the marriage ban said they would not appeal Monday’s order.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker decided Aug. 4 that Proposition 8 violated the U.S. Constitution and later ordered gay marriage to resume at 5 p.m. Wednesday unless a higher court intervened. The panel’s decision gave no explanation for staying Walker’s order directing the state to once again allow same-sex couples to marry.

The panel said the court would hear the Proposition 8 challenge on an expedited basis and hold arguments the week of Dec. 6. Another panel of three judges is expected to rule on the appeal.