LOS ANGELES _ With his criminal trial approaching, former L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca wants the case moved far from Los Angeles and is seeking to have the lead prosecutor disqualified.
At a hearing Monday afternoon, Baca's attorney, Nathan Hochman, was to try to persuade a judge to grant the requests _ over the objections of the U.S. attorney's office.
In court filings, Hochman has tried to make the case to U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson that media coverage of Baca's legal troubles will make it impossible to select an impartial jury in Los Angeles. And he has said that Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Fox should not be allowed to prosecute the former sheriff because, should the case go to trial, Hochman plans to call Fox as a witness.
Baca faces charges of obstruction of justice and lying to federal investigators that stem from the role he allegedly played in a 2011 plan to interfere with an FBI probe into widespread abuses by sheriff's deputies working in county jails.
Several subordinates, including former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, already have been convicted or pleaded guilty to taking part in the scheme to thwart the FBI _ which included hiding an inmate who was working as an agency informant and threatening to arrest the lead agent in the case.
In his filings, Hochman asked Anderson to move the trial to a different federal court district in California. Barring that, he asked for it to be moved to one of the satellite courthouses in Santa Ana or Riverside that are part of the Central District of California.
Hochman gave an account of the extensive media coverage of Baca's case, arguing that the amount of attention that the former sheriff has received _ and what he claimed was bias against Baca in the reporting _ had tainted any potential jury pool.
"The pervasiveness of the coverage and its prejudicial effect to Mr. Baca receiving a fair trial by an impartial jury free from outside influence cannot be overstated," Hochman wrote.
Fox has objected to the idea of a move, writing in a filing that Hochman had failed to make his case and fallen far short of the high legal bar a defendant must clear to win a change of venue.
In the fight over Fox himself, Hochman said that the head of the U.S. attorney's public corruption and civil rights division must be benched because he had participated in an interview of Baca. The former sheriff is accused of lying about his role in the obstruction plan during that interview, and Hochman said he plans to put Fox on the witness stand.
Prosecutors have resisted the bid to remove Fox, who has handled nearly all of the earlier cases arising from the jail investigations. One of his colleagues wrote in a filing that Hochman could question any of the several other people who were present for the interview.
"It is obvious that he does not intend to call ... Fox as a witness," Assistant U.S. Attorney Eddie Jauregui wrote. "Instead, defendant's filing is a thinly veiled attempt to remove from his case an experienced trial attorney who has led the successful prosecutions of defendant's co-conspirators."
The legal maneuverings are the latest twists in what has been an unusual case.
As prosecutors pursued their cases against lower-level sheriff's officials, Baca last year entered into a plea agreement.
Under the terms of the deal, Baca was to admit that he lied at the interview about his involvement in the obstruction plan. In exchange for his guilty plea, Baca, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, was to spend no more than six months in prison.
But Anderson derailed the deal, concluding the six-month sentence was too lenient for the 74-year-old who led the Sheriff's Department during a period when violent attacks by deputies on inmates were commonplace and covered up.
With Anderson signaling that he intended to hand down a stiff punishment, Baca opted to back out of the deal and take his chances at a high-stakes trial.
Earlier in October, Baca lost a bid to have Anderson removed from the case.
