Judge Grants Acquittal in Parcells Case : Courts: Ruling is issued before the defense made its case. Fired schools security chief was accused of filing a false police report on missing computer.

PASADENA —  Saying the prosecutor failed to prove her case, a judge has acquitted fired Pasadena schools security chief Charles W. Parcell of filing a false police report.

On Monday, the first court day after Pasadena City Prosecutor Tracy Webb rested her case, Alhambra Municipal Judge John L. Martinez granted a motion for acquittal made by the defense.

Parcell’s attorney, Terrence J. Bennett, argued last Friday that Webb had not proved that Parcell filed a false police report last summer in connection with a missing $1,800 computer owned by the Pasadena Unified School District. Parcell had entered a not guilty plea.

His client could not be found guilty, Bennett argued; as a police officer, he was just passing on information when he filed the report.

Martinez agreed and issued his ruling before the defense lawyer began presenting his case.

“It’s a decision that should have been made a long time ago,” Parcell, 54, said Tuesday. “Obviously, the judge was saying the prosecution should never have filed this case.”

“I regret the jury had to sit through three weeks of this and hear about charges that didn’t exist,” said Parcell, who was fired by the school board in March after the incident came to light.

Parcell said his prosecution was motivated by local politics and a dislike of his conservative views among the liberally minded city and school district leadership.

“It was political assassination,” he said Tuesday. “Together the city and school district spent over half a million dollars (in legal costs) to get me.”

Pasadena City Atty. Victor Kaleta has previously said that Parcell’s allegations are groundless and that the city prosecutor’s office acted in good faith in filing legal action against him. Schools Supt. Vera J. Vignes also has called the allegations “ridiculous.”

Webb said she was shocked by Martinez’s ruling. She expected the judge to dismiss Bennett’s routine motion.

“I’ve absolutely never known a judge to grant such a motion. Under the statute, I can’t appeal and can’t refile it,” she said of the case.

“The judge indicated . . . if it went to a jury, they would have found him not guilty,” the city prosecutor said. “The judge did not allow the system to work and let the jury decide.”

Webb said Tuesday that some of the jurors have contacted her to say they believe they should have been allowed to decide Parcell’s guilt or innocence.

The prosecutor said she called eight witnesses to the stand to substantiate the city’s claim that Parcell, in the summer of 1992, moved a computer from the district’s special education office to his security office with the permission of then-Associate Supt. Michael Klentschy. Both offices are in the district’s headquarters building on Hudson Avenue.

The witnesses, she said, testified that the security chief then hid the computer and filed a false police report on Sept. 3 of that year declaring that it had been stolen.

According to testimony, earlier, on Aug. 25, special education department staff members told police that they saw the computer in the security office after they had reported it missing to the security office.

Parcell said Tuesday that he believed the computer was missing when he “forwarded a true report” to Pasadena police from the district employees.

The computer was subsequently found by police in a trash bag in the security office.

The fired security chief, who said he spent $100,000 on his defense, said he has yet to decide whether to file a lawsuit against the city for conspiring to defame him. Parcell filed a claim against the city to that effect in April, a precursor to filing such a suit.

Parcell, who recently suffered a mild stroke, has appealed his March dismissal. That case, before a state administrative law judge in Los Angeles, was postponed until after the conclusion of the criminal trial.

Had he been convicted, Parcell would have faced a $500 fine or six months in jail.