A Los Angeles County judge ruled Wednesday that a corruption case against L.A. City Councilman Curren Price can move forward to trial, ensuring the misconduct scandal will hang over the veteran politician’s final year in office.
L.A. County Superior Court Judge Shelly Torrealba determined that prosecutors had provided enough evidence to move forward on four counts of voting on matters in which Price had a conflict of interest, four counts of embezzlement and four counts of perjury.
Price, who is set to leave the City Council after reaching his term limit at the end of the year, declined to comment after the hearing.
The councilman, who has represented South L.A. for more than a decade, was charged in June 2023. Prosecutors allege Price repeatedly voted to approve sales of land to developers or funding for agencies who had done business with his wife, Del Richardson, and her consulting company. Some of the votes involved funding and grants for the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the city housing authority.
Price, 75, is also accused of perjury for failing to include Richardson’s income on disclosure forms and embezzlement for including her on his city health insurance plan before they were legally married. He is due back in court in March, Torrealba said.
Richardson was named as a “suspect” in the district attorney’s office’s initial investigation in 2022, according to documents made public last year, but she was never charged with a crime. She has been among a group of Price’s supporters who have been in court for the past week. The two wore matching burgundy suits before Friday’s ruling.
Much of the weeklong proceeding centered around whether Price knew of potential conflicts of interest before casting votes, or intended to hide his financial stakes in them from the public. Two of Price’s former staffers — Delphi Smith and Marisa Alcaraz — took the stand to explain the process they used to flag problematic council votes for Price and insisted they made their best efforts to highlight agenda items linked to vendors or agencies who had worked with Richardson.
“If the Councilman voted on something that was a potential conflict, he did so without knowing,” Alcaraz testified Wednesday.
L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Casey Higgins, however, said Price is ultimately responsible for disclosing conflicts of interest and argued blaming his subordinates was not a defense to corruption charges.
“It’s not only hiding. It’s trying to create a wall around himself, to create this plausible deniability,” Higgins said. “It’s this ostrich with his head in the sand approach.”
Higgins said Alcaraz and Smith were “trying to jump in front of the bus” and that it was impossible to believe that Price had no knowledge of the conflicts. The dealings allegedly took place between 2019 and 2021 — after a 2019 Times investigation revealed he voted on decisions involving at least 10 companies in the same years they were listed as providing at least $10,000 in income to Richardson’s firm.
Price’s defense attorney, Michael Schafler, has argued there is no evidence that Price knew of the conflicts, and claimed payments to Richardson had no influence on Price’s voting decisions. All of the votes referenced in the criminal complaint passed with overwhelming support, and Price’s vote made no difference in the final result.
“There’s been no evidence presented that Mr. Price acted with any wrongful intent. No testimony from any witness … who said Mr. Price acted with willful intent,” Schafler said Wednesday. “I’ve never seen a public corruption case like that in my life.”
Some of Price’s City Council colleagues have said Price’s alleged crimes were tantamount to paperwork errors, and should have been handled by the city’s Ethics Commission.
While questioning former employees of Price and Richardson, Higgins sought to paint a more nefarious picture. He repeatedly scrutinized the way that Price’s staff and a former employee of Del Richardson & Associates compiled a list of the firm’s projects that could represent conflicts and communicated about them.
Much of the conflict information was placed on a flash drive and given to Smith in person by Martisa Garcia, an employee of Richardson, Higgins said. Updates to the file were then made over the phone, and not discussed via e-mail, according to Higgins. When Smith and Alcaraz discussed votes in which Price might have to recuse himself, they did so on personal phones rather than city-issued devices, according to evidence Higgins put forth.
Higgins suggested Price’s staff was trying to hide the conflicts of interest.
“Was the thumb drive used to avoid public records requests?” Higgins asked Alcaraz, who curtly replied “No.”
Generally speaking, California Public Records Act requests for an elected official’s communications will only capture what is contained on government devices, not personal phones or e-mails. A spokeswoman for Price, Angelina Valenica, said there was no “intent to avoid PRA requirements” on the part of Price’s staff.
“The Councilmember was not involved in the handling, transport or storage of this information,” she said. “He relied on and trusted his staff to handle the matter appropriately and to seek guidance as necessary.”
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