Court to Hear Dispute Between Deputy and D.A.

VENTURA —  Five months after fatally shooting a drunken intruder in the back at a neighbor’s house, Senior Deputy Steven Lengyel will have his day in court.

But unlike a criminal trial, today’s hearing will not seek to rule whether Lengyel intentionally killed Jack Dale Sexton in Port Hueneme on Super Bowl Sunday.

Lengyel’s own department has already cleared him of any wrongdoing in the Jan. 26 shooting and sent him back to work.

Instead, lawyers will argue over whether Lengyel should be forced to reveal to prosecutors what happened, and possibly give up his constitutional rights.

Prosecutors will demand that Lengyel--the only eyewitness to the fatal scuffle with Sexton--give them the transcripts of confidential statements the deputy made to sheriff’s internal affairs investigators about the shooting.

Attorneys for Ventura County Sheriff Larry Carpenter, Lengyel and the deputies’ union will argue that no one can force the eight-year veteran to give up his 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

And the precedent-setting outcome could set the tone for any future cooperation between Ventura County deputies and the district attorney’s office.

“It’s an adversarial hearing, but it’s not a lawsuit and [the parties] are not seeking anything other than the court’s assistance and guidance in their interpretation” of the law, says Alan E. Wisotsky, attorney for the Sheriff’s Department. “It really deals with the privacy rights of peace officers versus the district attorney’s right to seek the truth.”

The legal quarrel centers on a little-known law that makes peace officers more legally vulnerable than any other Californian.

Penal Code Section 832.7 requires officers to answer questions from their department’s internal investigators--even if such interviews might incriminate them--or risk losing their jobs.

The law also grants officers a sort of immunity from prosecution: It forbids prosecutors from ever using the interviews as evidence against the officers at trial.

The district attorney routinely investigates officer-involved shootings, and sometimes asks for such confidential transcripts.

In the past, the department turned over such records at the district attorney’s request--with a caveat attached quoting the law that forbids the records to be made public or used to generate any criminal charges.

The Ventura County Deputy Sheriffs Assn. has disagreed with the practice in the past, said Sgt. David Williams, union president.

And when the Lengyel request came in, the union chose to fight the practice “because we are becoming much more knowledgeable, much more protective of the officers’ rights,” he said.

Besides, he said, the district attorney’s office has not decided whether it intends to prosecute Lengyel in the shooting.

“The problem comes in when it is the individual officer that is the suspect whose compelled statements are being sought,” said Bill Hadden, counsel for the Ventura County Deputy Sheriffs Assn.

“It just raises a big specter of Big Brother watching you,” Hadden said. “These [deputies] are guys who go to their department thinking they’re making statements that are protected, statements they wouldn’t have to make if they weren’t public employees.”

*

But lawyers for the district attorney and for Sexton’s family say the quest for truth should outweigh Lengyel’s rights in this case.

“It’d be like knowing that there is a hole someplace out there that contains the treasure,” said Richard Loy, attorney for Sexton’s family, who will be watching today’s hearing closely. “And [you are] getting closer and closer to that hole, finding where the hole is, seeing the hole and not being able to look into it.”

The family has hired private investigators to learn more about the shooting that claimed Sexton’s life, Loy said. “But there’s only one bit of information that’s important here, and that’s the information that’s being denied us.”

Lengyel’s attorneys have said he does not oppose giving his interview transcript to prosecutors, because he believes he said nothing incriminating.

But this is a rare case: Lengyel is apparently the only surviving witness, the only one who can say what happened.

This much, according to police, is known:

Lengyel was off duty at home that night.

His 81-year-old neighbor rushed screaming to his house and asked for help.

Lillian Folk told Lengyel that a man--later identified as Sexton--had banged on her window and yelled at her.

Police and sheriff’s investigators later learned that Sexton, 26, had been drinking heavily that night at a Super Bowl party until he picked a fight with another guest and left.

Sexton jumped into his black Volkswagen Jetta and sped down 5th Street with his lights off until he screeched to a stop at a dead end. There, he threw the car into reverse and accidentally backed it into a ditch.

Sexton got out and walked to the Ray Prueter Library, where he allegedly tried to kick in the back door. Then he crossed a drainage ditch, jumped a chain-link fence and wandered into Folk’s backyard, where he banged on her door, police said.

After Folk ran out her front door to fetch Lengyel, Sexton climbed over her back fence, broke open a locked gate and walked into another yard, police said. He knocked on the front door of that home, and a woman answered, but she told police she closed the door immediately when she saw him.

Meanwhile, Lengyel and neighbor Jon Van Tilburg peered into Folk’s house. Believing Sexton had already gone, they ventured inside.

Sexton then walked in the open front door, through the living room and into the kitchen, where he encountered the two men, police said.

Police said Sexton hit Van Tilburg without provocation.

At some point in the next few seconds, police said--as Van Tilburg was looking away--Lengyel fired his .45-caliber service pistol at Sexton, hitting him in the right middle part of his back.

Sexton apparently ran outside and down the sidewalk until he either collapsed or was tackled in a driveway. He died a short time later.

Police and sheriff’s officials later said Sexton had been drunk, combative and acting irrationally during the incident. Authorities have never said whether he was armed.

But they stopped short of saying why Lengyel shot him.

That information might be found in Lengyel’s transcript, which remains under seal, locked away in a drawer in the sheriff’s custody, Wisotsky said

The district attorney has little else to go on but photographs, tissue samples, measurements and coroner’s notes--hardly an account of what happened that night between Lengyel and Sexton.

*

Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, first and foremost, wants Lengyel’s transcripts so his office can make a complete public report on Sexton’s death, said his attorney, Glen M. Reiser.

“The independent forensic information is completely inconclusive: where the shooter was standing, what the victim and shooter were doing at the time of the shooting, whether there was any communication between the shooter and the victim,” Reiser said.

“There are so many unanswered questions, all of which could theoretically be answered by the deputy’s statement,” he said.

But the sheriff’s office is adamant.

“Why sweat it?” Wisotsky, attorney for the Sheriff’s Department, asked rhetorically. “Why do they want it? You can’t do anything with it.”

Williams, the union president, added: “Why should it be any difference if it’s a cop or a well-meaning neighbor who rescues a neighbor and shoots somebody? Should the cop lose his constitutional rights simply because he’s a cop?”