INMATE FREED IN RAMPART SCANDAL FILES LAWSUIT

Courts: Russell Newman, jailed for seven years, says officers planted drugs
and a gun on him.

A Los Angeles man whose drug conviction was overturned after he spent more
than seven years in jail, on Tuesday filed the latest lawsuit growing out of
the Los Angeles Police Department's ongoing scandal.

Russell E. Newman, 42, charges that the city of Los Angeles violated his
civil rights when former LAPD Officer Rafael Perez and other officers in the
department's anti-gang unit allegedly framed him in 1991 on charges of
selling cocaine.

Newman's lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, did not
specify a dollar amount for his damages, but his attorneys alleged that he
is owed at least $1 million for each year he spent in prison.

Newman said he was leaving a liquor store in Hollywood on the evening of
Dec. 11, 1991, when he was arrested by Perez and Officers Troy Gaitan and
Anthony Lopez from the LAPD anti-gang unit.

In the lawsuit, Newman charges that Perez and the other officers planted a
gun and cocaine on him.

Newman was charged and convicted of selling drugs on the basis of the
officers' testimony, according to the suit. He was sentenced to 12 years in
Pelican Bay State Prison and served seven years and four months. While he
was in prison, Newman said, guards beat him severely, making it difficult
for him to walk, even with a cane. Newman's attorneys say that he is
considering a suit against the state for the beating.

From prison, Newman said, he routinely wrote to state and local officials,
professing his innocence. But he said no one responded.

Perez, who is acting as an informant as part of a plea bargain on cocaine
theft charges, has since testified that he and other Rampart Division
officers were involved in filing false police reports, perjury and evidence
planting. Perez arrested Newman several years before the officer began to
work at the Rampart police station.

Two months after Newman was paroled in March 2000, a Superior Court judge
vacated his conviction and those of five other people whose cases were
tainted by allegations of police misconduct.

Newman's attorneys, Gregory Moreno, Luis Carrillo, Danilo Becerra and
Arnoldo Casillas, say they also filed claims against the city of Los Angeles
on Tuesday on behalf of 25 other victims of police corruption and their
family members.