Justice Takes a Tortuous Route for Latino Man

For 15 years now, practically half his life, Gordon Castillo Hall has been fighting for justice, ever since he was wrongly convicted of murder back in 1978.

There have been few reporters or TV cameras to record the twists and turns, the joy and heartache, of his odyssey through the courts. Along the way, there have been allegations of an unfair judicial system and of scheming law enforcement officials suppressing evidence that could have cleared him.

Civil rights activists say L.A. County officials won’t apologize to Hall even though they know he was innocent.

To many Chicanos, this is their Rodney G. King case.

“The King case is the thing for African-Americans,” said lawyer Francisco A. Suarez, who has worked on Hall’s behalf since the early 1980s. “The Reginald Denny case is the same for many whites. And for Chicanos, this is our case.”

Hall’s lawyers understand the anger among African-Americans toward the criminal justice system after Stacey C. Koon and Laurence M. Powell got only 2 1/2 years in federal prison. After all, the court system didn’t do so well by Gordon Castillo Hall, either: He was jailed for three years, beginning at age 16, for something he didn’t do.

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Hall’s ordeal began on a February night in 1978, when he joined at least 30 other Duarte youngsters for a neighborhood birthday party. There was no trouble at the party but four blocks away, a 20-year-old man from Pomona, Jesse Ortiz, and his two brothers were shot by a gunman apparently cruising in the area. Ortiz died.

Sheriff’s deputies went looking for the killer. Word of the shooting reached those at the party and some, including Hall, fled. He was later found hiding in some bushes nearby. Hall, scared, told the deputies he had done nothing wrong.

Nonetheless, he was handcuffed and brought before Ortiz’s two brothers, who fingered him as the triggerman, although many of the party-goers said Hall was with them at the time.

Hall’s current lawyer, Hermez Moreno, said sheriff’s investigators should have known from the description of the gunman that Hall wasn’t their man. Witnesses said the assailant was 19 to 20 years old, between 5 feet, 7 inches and 5 feet, 8 inches with curly black hair. He also was said to be right-handed.

Hall, who was then 16, was only 5 feet, 1 inch, left-handed and had straight brown hair.

Still, Hall was charged and tried as an adult in Pasadena Superior Court a year after the shooting. Although there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, Hall was convicted after a seven-day trial. Inexplicably, none of the party-goers were called to testify. He was sentenced, at age 17, to life imprisonment.

In his case, there was no show-all videotape to rescue him. Just a rebel-rousing lawyer from East L.A. named Richard Cruz.

Cruz wondered why none of the party-goers had testified. He also asked why Hall was brought before the two brothers for identification when at least eight witnesses at the scene said he was not the gunman.

Then came the clincher. Ortiz’s brothers recanted their identification of him as the killer.

More than 3 1/2 years after his arrest, the state Supreme Court in 1981 overturned Hall’s conviction and freed him on the basis of Cruz’s successful arguments challenging the fairness of the trial and the competence of Hall’s first lawyer.

Out of prison, Hall sued the Sheriff’s Department and Los Angeles County, alleging false arrest and imprisonment. That case went to trial in 1987, but the judge dismissed the jury hearing the evidence and ruled from the bench against Hall. Undaunted, Hall and Cruz, his attorney, appealed to a state appellate court, which last year overturned the ruling and ordered a new trial.

In June, a jury awarded Hall $4.4 million in damages. But that money may remain out of his reach for some time to come. Last week, the county indicated that it was considering an appeal of the jury’s verdict, raising the possibility that the case could drag on for several more years.

These days, Hall could sure use a bigger bank account. He is partially paralyzed and cannot work because of wounds he suffered after an assailant shot him following a 1982 traffic accident, a crime unrelated to his case.

Meanwhile, Jesse Ortiz’s killer is still at large.

Hall, who was watching TV coverage of the King sentencing the other day, was shocked at the 2 1/2-year prison terms given to Koon and Powell. “I was thinking, ‘Is that the justice system?’ ” he recalled. “It just hurt. They did something wrong. King got beat up. They were on the tape.

“The sheriff’s deputies did something wrong to me . . . I had to go to court.”

Hall, now 31, is tired of waiting for justice and I don’t blame him.