CA State Bar Wants Former LA City Attorney Punished

Former Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich suppressed important evidence and allowed a witness to give false testimony in a 1985 murder case, which led a federal judge to throw out the death penalty conviction in that case last year. Now, the State Bar of California will seek to impose disciplinary action, which could include disbarment, suspension, or other sanctions. The case concerns Barry Williams, a South L.A. gang member, accused of killing Jerome Dunn in 1982. Trutanich was a member of the hardcore gang unit of the L.A. County district attorney’s office at the time of the case, and after securing a guilty verdict he used the case in campaigns for elected office. The disciplinary notice says Trutanich knowingly or negligently failed to provide defense attorneys with the contact information and identity of a second eyewitness to the crime. During a 2015 hearing on the case, Trutanich denied that he misled the jury or suppressed evidence during the case. “I’m sure as hell not going to my grave and meeting my maker having hid information in a death penalty case,” Trutanich told the Los Angeles Times last year. “Never happened. Never happened. No. Not me.”