D.A. Transfers Menendez Prosecutor

David Conn, who successfully prosecuted Lyle and Erik Menendez for murder but then had a public falling-out with Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, is being transferred to Norwalk.

Conn, 46, an 18-year veteran of the prosecutor’s office, said Friday he was notified recently that he will be moving from the elite major crimes division, located at headquarters in the Criminal Courts Building downtown, to suburban Norwalk, where he will be an ordinary trial deputy.

The transfer is effective Feb. 3.

“It’s a routine assignment,” said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office.

Conn, however, said he neither solicited nor wanted a transfer, and expressed concern that the move might trigger more transfers that would land him in an office even farther away from downtown--such as Lancaster.

“This may very well be the first step to the next step, which is to put me on the road somewhere,” Conn said Friday, adding, “I’m never going to try a big case again.”

Conn is widely considered one of Los Angeles’ best prosecutors. During his career, he has successfully handled a series of high-profile trials.

He prosecuted Bill Bradford, an amateur photographer, for the 1984 strangling murders of two young models. In 1988, Bradford was sent to death row.

In 1990 and 1991, Conn prosecuted the Cotton Club case, winning several convictions in the murder of entertainment impresario Roy Radin. And in March, Conn won first-degree murder convictions against the Menendez brothers in the 1989 shotgun slayings of their parents. The jury’s verdict was delivered just days before the primary election, and helped mute criticism that under Garcetti the office could not win the big case.

Conn briefly worked on the O.J. Simpson double-murder case at the grand jury stage.

In March, in the wake of the Menendez verdicts, Garcetti said of Conn: “This is a man who has really defined excellence through his professional performance.”

Six weeks later, after Conn had admitted in an interview that he “wouldn’t mind” one day being Los Angeles County district attorney, Conn was passed over for promotion and removed as acting head deputy of the major crimes unit.

Garcetti said he wasn’t threatened by Conn’s skills and rising star. Instead, he said Conn was an “extraordinary trial lawyer” but had not demonstrated other skills that would put him on a management track.

Conn said he was humiliated. He went on to back John Lynch--who heads the Norwalk office--in November’s district attorney’s election, and became an outspoken Garcetti critic.

He also languished professionally. Since June, he said, management has assigned him to two active cases. One, he said, involved allegations of firecrackers sent through the mail; the other, allegations that sunglasses were bought with a bad credit card.

“Gil says David Conn is an extraordinary lawyer but not ready for management,” Conn said Friday. “Now look at what’s happening to the extraordinary lawyer. They give me these two cases and then they kick me out of the unit.”

He paused, then added: “Then they wonder: Why can’t the district attorney’s office win the big case?”