Rich Man, Poor Man : He’s Awarded $4.8 Million--but It’s Unlikely He’ll Ever Collect Any of It

Charles F. Persico is a millionaire--on paper. But his pessimism that he will ever see most--if any--of a $4.8-million judgment awarded him last week in a federal civil rights case does not weigh heavily on him.

“I am probably the most fortunate misfortunate person you ever saw,” Persico said last week while sitting outside Impact House, a drug treatment center in Pasadena where he works as a counselor. “I don’t know if I should be grateful or hateful. But I’ve learned to let things go.”

It would be easy for Persico, 49, of Hacienda Heights to be bitter. The large sum of money he won Sept. 14 in U.S. District Court was a damage award for a 4 1/2-year stay in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Included in that sum is $2,000 for each of the 1,659 days he spent behind bars.

Though Persico was paid $150,000 by Los Angeles this summer in settlement of a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department for its handling of the case, the multimillion-dollar award he won last week was against four remaining defendants--the real killer and three others who Persico alleges were aware of his false imprisonment but did nothing to stop it.

One of the defendants is in prison. A second served a prison sentence, completed parole and his whereabouts are unknown. A third is an admitted killer who drives a bus for a living. The fourth is dead.

Persico’s lawyer acknowledges that while it is common for victims of false imprisonment to sue police, it is highly unusual to take the next step and sue those who were involved in the crime or allegedly knew about it.

“I’m pretty much a realist,” Persico said. “If anything, I might get enough to pay my phone bill.”

A former heroin addict who spent half his life incarcerated, Persico remains frustrated by a system he believes failed him as well as the murder victim.

“I know firsthand that the system makes mistakes,” he said. “Innocence is no virtue, affirmed by my own experience.”

Persico’s story is a sideshow to a larger, high-profile case involving William E. Leasure, a former police officer and convicted criminal once called by a county prosecutor the “most corrupt cop in L.A.” Leasure’s conviction in November, 1991, capped a complicated case involving hit men, double crosses, snitches, mistaken identity, wrongful prosecution and police corruption.

An LAPD traffic cop for 16 years, Leasure was arrested in 1986 for his alleged involvement in a yacht theft and fraud ring. He was later charged with arranging two murders for hire, including the 1980 killing for which Persico served a prison sentence.

After one mistrial last year, Leasure pleaded no contest to two counts of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. A key to his prosecution was the admitted triggerman, Dennis France, who was granted immunity in exchange for providing detailsabout the killings and implicating Leasure and others allegedly hired by him to arrange the hits.

Long before Leasure became a suspect in the May 29, 1980, shooting death of Ann Smith in a Highland Park beauty shop, LAPD detectives Neil Westbrook and Richard Crowe zeroed in on Persico after receiving an anonymous tip that he lived in the area and resembled a composite drawing of the murder suspect.

Persico, who had a long history of arrests for drugs and theft, was arrested and charged with the killing after two women who had been in the beauty shop--Smith’s mother and a customer--identified him as the gunman.

Though Persico proclaimed his innocence and had passed a lie detector test, he accepted an offer from the prosecution in mid-trial, pleading guilty to manslaughter. By that point, he had already been in jail for two years and knew he would serve a maximum of three more. If he had continued the trial and been convicted, he would have faced life in prison without parole.

Hardened by a life on the streets and in jails, Persico said he thought he had to take the offer--despite his innocence.

“I didn’t have a chance . . .” Persico said. “The deck was so stacked with eyewitness testimony. Rather than put my life on the roulette wheel, I took the deal.”

One of Persico’s current attorneys, Michael R. Mitchell, said it was a pragmatic choice made by a man already marked by the justice system.

“He thought, ‘With my record, I’m going to get convicted,’ ” Mitchell said last week.

A year after he was released from prison, Persico was ushered into a meeting at the district attorney’s office, secretly exonerated and released from parole. Because the investigation into Leasure’s crimes was still under way, the records were sealed. Persico did not know how or why he was exonerated until Leasure was charged in the Smith killing and a second homicide, a 1980 contract slaying of a businessman outside a Sherman Oaks bar.

Persico responded with a lawsuit against the now-retired detectives, Westbrook and Crowe. He also targeted Leasure, France, the people convicted of hiring them to commit the murders and several other associates who were allegedly aware in the early 1980s that Persico was serving a prison term for a crime he did not commit. The federal lawsuit alleged that they all deprived Persico of his right to a fair trial.

Most of the defendants in the case--including Leasure--were dismissed when they successfully argued that a one-year statute of limitations for Persico to make such claims had expired. Persico is appealing that ruling.

After the city settled with Persico, the remaining defendants were triggerman France; Paulette De Los Reyes, convicted of hiring Leasure and France in 1981 to kill her ex-husband; Robert D. Kuns, convicted in the yacht theft and fraud scheme involving Leasure, and Dennis Weinbaugh, convicted as the killer in a 1977 murder for which Leasure was a suspect but was never charged. Weinbaugh died in jail last year.

Mitchell, Persico’s attorney, said that when those four did not respond to the lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Harry L. Hupp ruled them in default and ordered them last week to pay Persico $3,832,000 in compensatory damages. Hupp ordered France to pay an additional $1 million in punitive damages.

A curiosity at last week’s hearing was the appearance of France. Mitchell said that France objected to the default ruling, but the judge ruled against him because he had previously failed to answer Persico’s lawsuit.

“How do you like that?” Mitchell said. “A hit man standing there free as a bird talking to a federal judge.”

Persico said that as they stood in the courtroom, the actual murderer whose crime Persico paid for even extended a hand to him. Persico said he was too stunned to do anything but shake it.

“I didn’t know what to say . . .” Persico recalled. “The fact that this is a person who took human life and didn’t pay anything . . . well, I just have to think there is a purpose for everything.”

France and the other defendant could not be located for comment.

Mitchell said he does not want to reveal his strategy for searching for the defendant’s assets in order to collect on his judgment. Winning parties usually seek liens on property and possessions.

Deputy Dist. Atty. James Koller, who prosecuted Leasure and the others involved in his fraud and murder schemes, said he doubts that Persico stands a chance of getting much more than the money the city has already paid him.

“He’s going to have a hard time collecting from these people,” Koller said. Defendants Kuns and De Los Reyes have been “making license plates, not money.”

There is still the principle of the victory, Persico said.

“If it makes them squirm a little bit . . .” he said. “Maybe that’s for the victims. The system sure didn’t work for them.”

Unmarried and childless, Persico has used what money he has won to buy a condominium and a 1954 pickup truck. “The first thing I did,” he said, “was buy a tombstone for my mother’s grave.”

Other than that, Persico is devoting his time to Impact House, where he went as a client nearly three years ago. Now he is a paid caseworker with an office and regular clients. Persico points to his own experience as an example of the road not to take.

“I had to go through what I went through to get where I am now,” he said. “I’ve been shot, stabbed and framed. Been a hard-core heroin addict. I’ve paid extreme prices for everything I’ve ever done--and not done.”

James Stillwell, executive director of Impact House, said Persico’s background gives him an immediate rapport with clients.

“He is well respected,” Stillwell said. “He doesn’t have a problem with credibility and trust. (Clients) know he came from where they came from. He is a character, but he also has the reputation of walking the way he talks.”

Persico said he has been off drugs for 28 months. But he still follows the recovering addict’s credo of taking one day at a time.

“Each morning I look in the mirror and say, fool, all you’ve got is one more chance to stay clean,” he said. “The future’s a mystery and yesterday’s history.”