Deputy D.A. Named Outstanding Prosecutor

Deputy Dist. Atty. John D. Conley enjoys the excitement of courtroom trials most of all. But it was his work as a top administrator that won him praise from superiors and, on Thursday, the title of outstanding prosecutor bestowed by the California District Attorney’s Assn.

Conley, 46, has had a year of successful prosecutions and management assignments, according to Orange County Dist. Atty. Cecil Hicks, who nominated him. “In every assignment, he has done a superb job,” Hicks said.

Conley was honored by the 1,700-member District Attorney’s Assn. at a banquet Thursday night at the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel in Costa Mesa.

His award was the third for an Orange County deputy district attorney. In prior years, Assistant Dist. Atty. Michael Capizzi and Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan Brown have both been selected outstanding prosecutors statewide.

Conley, one of 180 deputies, has been with the district attorney’s office for 16 years. He has successfully prosecuted a number of significant cases, including that of Thomas Francis Edwards, who was convicted of the 1981 murder of a 12-year-old girl in the Cleveland National Forest, and the case of Virl Earles, the operator of a power boat that collided with a buoy and left five people dead in 1984.

Yet his work as a supervisor earns him the most acclaim.

Conley created the district attorney’s sexual assault unit after a number of criminal assault cases began flooding the office in 1983. He introduced the idea of assigning a sexual assault prosecutor and an investigator to each criminal case permanently in that section, a process known as vertical prosecution.

He supervised the district attorney’s West Court Division from August, 1984, through March, 1986. During that period, Hicks noted, Conley also prosecuted Earles, which involved one of the more complex boating cases in recent years.

Earles admitted during trial that he had collided with a buoy while traveling at least 30 m.p.h. inside Anaheim Bay, which has a speed limit of 5 m.p.h.

And although blood tests on Earles showed a 0.11 reading, slightly above the state’s minimum requirement for presumption of drunk driving, it was ruled inadmissible by a Municipal Court judge, who said that the test had been illegally administered by police.

The jury deadlocked 9 to 3 in favor of acquittal on a charge of manslaughter. But Conley decided to retry Earles and won a conviction, which is being appealed.

“Here we had very few cases where we seek to retry defendants after a jury has deadlocked 9 to 3 for acquittal,” Hicks said. “But John retried that case and won a conviction. And he did all of this while supervising the entire West Court (Division).”

Since March, 1986, Conley has been assigned to head the district attorney’s Juvenile Court Division in Orange.

He was so successful at it that when it came time to set up a new anti-gang unit, he wasn’t even asked to run it--it was just assumed that he would.

“For the last three months, John has been starting up the gang unit here in Orange County and also supervising the Juvenile Court deputies. He’s been doing double duty,” said Priscilla Cloud, a deputy district attorney at Juvenile Court.

With Hicks and Supervisor Roger R. Stanton lobbying the Board of Supervisors for support, Conley drafted a proposal seeking $450,000 to create the anti-gang unit--the first in the district attorney’s office.

The new unit, approved by the board in March, includes six deputy district attorneys, five investigators and three clerks.

Part of the proposal also called for a county gang task force of representatives from schools, community organizations and law enforcement.

“The gang problem in Orange County is very real,” Conley said. “Statistics are increasing and the homicide rate now for gang-related crimes is about one a month.”

Innocent victims, those who sustained gunshot wounds or fatal injuries usually from gang-related drive-by shootings, are the most difficult to forget, Conley said.

He cites Los Angeles police statistics, which indicate that up to 60% of victims of gang-related crime there are not members of gangs. “That’s one of the important points I’ve been trying to make. It’s not just bad guys killing bad guys out here. There are a lot of innocent victims getting hurt or dying.

“Not only did we have an 82-year-old Buena Park woman accidentally die in a drive-by shooting, but we have had a 57-year-old Santa Ana man die last fall and also two others.

“To succeed in having a safe Orange County and prohibit us from having another Los Angeles down here, we have to address the gang problem now,” Conley stressed.