HELLS ANGELS CRIMINAL CASE WILL COST CALIF. COUNTY MILLIONS

A criminal conspiracy case against 28 members and associates of the Hells
Angels might end up costing local taxpayers more than $6 million.

A Ventura County Grand Jury in February indicted Hells Angels leader George
Christie Jr. and 27 others after a three-year investigation. Fifteen of the
defendants, including Christie, face the most serious charges of conspiring
to sell drugs to school-age children.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Jeffrey Bennett, the lead prosecutor on the
case, dismissed the $6 million estimate but declined to give his own or to
comment on the case.

"There's no way for me to know how much this is going to cost," Bennett
said. "I don't think it's appropriate for me to speculate or guesstimate
the cost of this."

District Attorney Michael D. Bradbury also declined to comment on the case.
But his office already has spent $1 million on attorneys and investigators
and $300,000 for additional expenses such as expert witnesses, travel and
forensics, said Pete Pedroff, manager of its fiscal services unit.

Add an estimated $4.5 million the county might have to pay to defend the 12
people assigned court-appointed lawyers and other miscellaneous costs, and
the bill could top $6 million.

Attorney Earnest Bell, who represents defendant Joshua Adams, an airman
accused of stealing drugs from the military, estimated he will bill the
county for 3,000 hours spent preparing and taking the case to trial.

Court-appointed attorneys are paid a standard rate of $125 per hour. At
that rate, one attorney working 3,000 hours would cost the county $375,000.

Lawyers for all the conspiracy defendants can expect similar workloads,
said another attorney in the case, Richard Loftus. In the conspiracy case,
each attorney must review all 120,000 or so pages of evidence and hundreds
of audio and videotapes compiled against the defendants, Loftus said.

"Actually, I would think that's a conservative estimate," Loftus said of
the 3,000 hours.

If the figure is accurate, the county's bill for the 12 court-appointed
attorneys could reach $4.5 million.

In addition, the county must pay to provide copies of documents, video and
audiotapes to all the court-appointed attorneys, at a cost of about $120,000.

The county already paid $250,000 to provide defense attorneys with copies
of the Grand Jury transcripts.

And the figures do not include the costs of separate investigations
conducted by law enforcement agencies.

Another consideration is the courtroom costs of holding a
multiple-defendant trial expected to last six to nine months. If
prosecutors decide on a single trial, Loftus wonders where a court
proceeding involving 15 defendants and their attorneys would be held.

Bell said justice could have been served by trying the defendants on drug
charges without the conspiracy allegation. "Is there a more efficient,
economical way to resolve this case?" he said. "I just think this could
have been handled much more efficiently for a tenth of the cost."

Loftus, who represents defendant George Christie III, agreed. "It probably
could have been prosecuted differently, and a lot cheaper to the
taxpayers," he said. "I think there is probably a mountain of overkill in
this case."

Jody Armour, a professor at the University of Southern California law
school, said there are two advantages to charging defendants with
conspiracy in addition to drug charges.

"There's a political benefit. If you can characterize something as a
conspiracy, you can claim to be ridding society of an organized scourge,"
he said. "It's a little more glamorous than prosecuting your typical
street-corner drug peddlers. The legal benefit is that you may not have to
prove that the defendant was actually caught selling the drugs."

(Contact Andrea Cavanaugh of the Ventura County Star in California at
Andrea Cavanaugh's e-mail address is acavanaugh(at)inside).