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Prosecutor's fire makes her either loved or loathed

This story originally appeared May 31, 2005

By JESSICA LOGAN, Californian staff writer
e-mail: jlogan@bakersfield.com | Thursday, Feb 15 2007 6:49 PM

Last Updated: Thursday, Feb 15 2007 6:49 PM

Deputy District Attorney Lisa Green is one of those kind of people -- either you love her or you hate her.

Crime victims love her. Her bosses and co-workers love her.

Defense attorneys -- well they don't use the word hate, but few have kind words for her.

Green sits in the front row of the courtroom facing forward, posture stick-straight. Her suit is crisp and well-tailored. Her short dark hair is tidy despite its curly nature. She doesn't greet defense attorney Kevin Little when he enters the courtroom.

"I don't count very many defense attorneys among my friends," Green said.

They have been working together, as opposing counsel, on the Vincent Brothers case for more than a year. Brothers is accused of killing five family members in July 2003 in one of the bloodiest homicides in Bakersfield history.

When you ask most defense attorneys about Green, they chuckle. What do they think about her? No comment. What can they say on the record? She's aggressive.

Anything else? Very aggressive.

"You have to be aggressive. You have to believe 100 percent, based on the evidence and in your heart that the guy is guilty. If you don't believe in your case, jurors are not going to," Green said in a previous article.

Green, 47, has a long history of putting murderers in prison for a very long time. But in recent years she has transitioned to an administrative job overseeing the homicide and sexual crimes unit -- this means more time in the office and less time in court prosecuting cases.

But Green, who's married with three children, still takes on an occasional criminal case to "keep her hand in."

Most recently Green took on the case of Vincent Brothers.

He is accused of killing his three children, Marques, Lyndsey and Marshall, his 6-week-old baby; wife Joanie Harper and mother-in-law Earnestine Harper.

In many ways, this is the case that Green has been preparing for her whole career.

Green carved a niche prosecuting those who attack women and children, and is one of the few prosecutors in the office who have tried a capital murder case.

From going after a woman for poisoning her baby because she allowed it to ingest her drug-tainted breast milk, to breaking new grounds prosecuting the first case of rape based on DNA evidence in Kern County, Green has long been the champion of women and children.

Green has a reputation as a tough litigator who will do what it takes to win. She has been slammed more than once by appeals courts for her courtroom tactics, but District Attorney Ed Jagels considers her one of his best attorneys, and her commitment to her work is questioned by none.

Those close to Green say she has a soft heart, but those who face her in court see no such sentiment.

She has fought Brothers' attorney Kevin Little every step of the way in his quest to get a second attorney appointed by the court to represent Brothers.

She said Brothers has no right to a second attorney because her office does not officially decide if defendants will face the death penalty until after the preliminary hearing, even though Jagels called this a capital case before Brothers ever went to court.

Aggressive tactics won her a string of high-profile trials during her 20-plus years with the department.

Having been involved in more than 100 trials, Green landed the coveted spot as supervisor over the homicide and sex crimes unit in 2001.

Over the years, Green has won the hearts of the victims and their families. They flood her office with flowers and gifts so often that Jagels had to institute a gift policy to give Green a courteous way to decline extravagant gestures.

This kindheartedness extends to her colleagues, too.

When her longtime friend Colette Humphrey left the prosecutor's office to become a judge, Green admitted to crying her eyes out.

"She's a pussycat," Jagels said.

But some have felt victimized themselves by her aggressive tactics.

She recently prosecuted John Stoll, a man who spent 19 years behind bars on child abuse charges.

Four of his accusers came forward and said they were not molested as children.

But Stoll's son continued to say that he had been molested. Green said she didn't want to abandon him.

To that end, she grilled the four adults who said they were coerced into giving false statements as children.

"I felt like I was being prosecuted," said Edward Sampley, one of the four people who recanted the story he gave as a child. After the hearing, "she went out there on national television and called me a liar. It was a really bad moment for me. It was a personal attack ... I felt really violated from that."

The hearing was taxing on Green. She said she wasn't used to going up against several attorneys at one time and asked one of Stoll's attorneys, Justin Brooks, not to sit by her. In a moment of frustration, she slammed her hands on her table.

Stoll was eventually released.

Brooks was cautious to give a comment about Green, but he did offer one bit of advice to any attorney going up against her.

"You've got to know your stuff or she'll embarrass you any way she can," Brooks said. "You can't be afraid, you can't be intimidated by her."

Green is well-versed in murder cases.

She has prosecuted four capital murder defendants, but only one is on death row.

For as successful as Green has been in her career, she has also been the target of blistering criticism from the court of appeals and grumbling digs from defense attorneys.

In 2001, the appeals court reversed a murder case of Green's because she testified during the trial in an attempt to impeach one of her own witnesses.

The appeals court slammed her for violating a law that has roots in Roman law.

Green shot back that the law may have had its roots in Roman law, but not in California law.

"They didn't apply current California law," Green said at the time. "I've testified before. It's rare, but there's nothing that prohibits it."

Jagels said that at the time California law was not clear, and after this published opinion the issue was clarified.

Sharon Dolovich, a professor of legal ethics at the UCLA School of Law, said the attorneys need no case law to spell this out -- it is a given that prosecutors shouldn't testify in their own cases.

"The problem is if you imagine this prosecutor has all the power and authority and legitimacy of the government," Dolovich said. "One of the reasons a person gets up and testifies is so the jury can get a credibility determination. If you put the prosecutor on the stand, she's the government's attorney, she is trading on the legitimacy of the government. It almost takes advantage of her position."

Shades of this situation have come up in the Brothers case.

Green has already testified at two hearings concerning the Brothers case and the defense has said they want to call her as a witness at trial because they say she participated in coercing a witness's testimony.

Green was also stung by the 5th District Court of Appeals in the case of Offord Rollins IV, a well-known athlete, convicted in 1992 of murdering his former girlfriend.

The conviction was overturned on appeal for juror misconduct. But the appellate court also zinged Green.

The judges criticized Green for questioning witnesses about Rollins' sexual activities because they weren't relevant to the killing and for giving closing arguments that weren't founded on evidence.

A retrial with another prosecutor ended in a hung jury and a third trial was not sought.

In a strange twist, Earnestine Harper was one of Rollins' biggest public supporters. She raised money for his legal defense and tried to increase awareness about the case.

She said this was an example of law enforcement going after one person and ignoring other potential suspects. "There was a time when I was extremely weak and isolated and Miss Earnestine Harper spoke to me," Rollins said in a previous interview. "She told me it's when you're at your weakest you find your greatest strength."

Rollins' first attorney, Timothy Lemucchi, accused Green of racism during that case.

Green flatly dismissed these allegations, but her husband was so enraged by the disparaging remarks against his wife on a radio program he called in and slammed her attackers.

Green's husband has always been her champion.

"We've been married for 20 years and she's still the most fascinating woman I've ever met," Jeff Green said.

She gets home most nights by 5 p.m. to spend time with the children and takes time to volunteer at their schools -- she picks her work back up later in the evening.

The Greens met at the University of San Diego School of Law and he followed her out to the prosecutor's office in Kern County after graduation in the early 1980s. Green's mother suggested she use her degree in criminal justice from Fresno State to become an attorney instead of a cop as she planned.

Jeff Green has since become an attorney for one of the biggest carrot growers in the nation, but he has kept his hand in politics. Jagels said this kind of attention makes Lisa Green uneasy at times.

But Lisa and Jeff Green didn't shy away from politics when they threw a party for those who helped with their friend Judge Michael Bush's campaign. Bush is now presiding over the Brothers case.

Like Kevin Little and Brothers himself, Green was born in New York. She is still devoted to the Buffalo Bills.

She is an avid sports fan and a loving mother, by all accounts. But Green has made putting murderers away her life's work.

"I don't have any trauma in my past," Green said when asked why she is so driven. "I don't like losing. I don't like to lose. It's as simple as that ... The stakes are so high on this job. Losing means allowing somebody out on the street who may hurt somebody else."