Moore Gets Sentence of 33 Months

Former Compton Councilwoman Patricia Moore was sentenced Monday to 33 months in federal prison for extortion and income tax fraud, despite her lawyer’s repeated assertions that her constituents need her back.

Moore, who rose to local and even national prominence as a fiery critic of Los Angeles police abuses and a commentator on the 1992 riots, stood silently as U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall announced her decision.

The sentencing came after more than four months of delays. Moore’s attorneys sought several times to hold off on the hearing because they said Moore was too depressed to face punishment. The judge said she would recommend that Moore, 48, serve her prison term in Fort Worth at the Carswell federal institution, which has a medical center for women. She is to report to the facility by noon July 14.

Moore also will have to serve two years under supervised release, perform 2,000 hours of community service and pay a $700 assessment, the judge ruled.

The 33-month term, which will be reduced by about two weeks for time she spent in hospital custody during the trial, was more than the probation requested by Moore’s lawyers, but less than the 57-month term requested by federal prosecutors.

Moore, who was elected to a four-year council term that ended in 1993, was convicted in October on 13 counts of extortion and two counts of failure to file income tax returns. She was accused of taking $50,100 in bribes from Compton Energy Systems, which was seeking council permission to build a waste-to-energy conversion plant, and $12,334 from Compton Entertainment, which needed council approval to open a card casino. Prosecutors presented hundreds of hours of videotape and audiotape that captured Moore receiving payoffs of up to $10,000.

Both revered and reviled for her efforts to draw the spotlight and speak her mind on camera, Moore was subdued in court, clutching a small red Bible and whispering only a brief statement before the judge issued her sentence: “I’m just deeply hurt by this entire situation. I apologize for anything I’ve done wrong. I ask for your mercy.”

In delivering the sentence, Marshall said she had determined that Moore deserved less than the long term sought by prosecutors in part because she had accepted responsibility for her crimes. Moore initially pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with a federal probe of public corruption in Compton, but later withdrew her plea and requested a trial. The investigation also resulted in the 1995 conviction of former U.S. Rep. Walter R. Tucker III (D-Compton), who served as the city’s mayor before he was elected to Congress.

“She asked for a jury of her peers. She got that,” the judge said. As Marshall left the bench, she said to Moore, “Good luck to you.”

Moore said she will appeal the case, which she contends was based on a racist campaign by the FBI to ensnare black politicians. She said she was tricked into taking bribes by a government informant who masqueraded as a representative of Compton Energy Systems and then, she says, became her lover. The informant denied that they had an affair.

“In four years, the only corruption [investigators] found, they created,” Moore’s lawyer, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., told the judge before the sentence was announced. “There is no reason to take her from a community that needs her. It won’t do anyone a shred of good.”

Mesereau argued that the FBI “hoodwinked” Moore and the citizens of Compton by promising that the waste-to-energy plant would be run by blacks, and that it would provide scholarships to black students.

“Such an immoral operation has never been conducted in any other community in the United States,” he said.

But Special Assistant U.S. Atty. John M. Potter said the FBI investigation was launched in part because the agency had received several reports of corruption from residents of the city, not because of racial animus.

“They were crooks,” he said of Moore and Tucker. “They were crooked. They were taking payoffs from others.”

Potter said afterward that he was pleased with the sentence and that it proved that the investigation was not racially motivated.

Outside the courthouse, critics shouted at Moore, calling her “Pat the rat” as she waded into a crush of television cameras and reiterated her assertion that she had been set up.

Particularly vocal were relatives of Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old African American girl who was killed by a Korean-born grocer. When a judge sentenced the grocer to probation, Moore led a widely publicized effort to recall the judge. But then Moore declined to file the recall petitions with the county and refused to turn them over to the family.

“She used me, she used my family,” said Denise Harlins, the girl’s aunt. “She put another black eye on the city of Compton. I don’t think the people of Compton deserve a representative like her.”