D.A. accuses Rebecca Grossman of 'illegal conduct' from jail, her legal team of jury tampering
Prosecutors want Rebecca Grossman's access to jailhouse phones cut off after they say she encouraged illegal conduct and her team attempted to tamper with jurors who convicted her of double murder.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Ryan Gould and his colleague Jamie Castro filed a motion Monday that detailed several jailhouse calls Grossman had with her daughter and husband since her Feb. 23 conviction for killing two young brothers in a crosswalk while speeding on a residential Westlake Village street.
According to court documents, Grossman told her daughter, Alexis, to make public a deputy-worn body-camera video that had been sealed by the judge and to direct another person to talk to the judge about a new trial. She also encouraged tracking down witnesses to get them to say their testimony was directed.
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The jury last month found Grossman, 60, guilty of two counts of murder, two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter and one count of hit and run in the 2020 deaths of Mark and Jacob Iskander, ages 11 and 8. She faces 34 years to life in prison at sentencing.
Gould and Castro wrote that two jurors have reported that three others on the jury were contacted by Paul Stuckey, a private investigator, despite the judge's sealing jurors' personal information.
"This investigator did not properly identify himself, rather stating he was a 'private investigator for the family,' " prosecutors wrote in the motion filed Monday. Stuckey does not work for the Iskanders or the prosecution, but rather for Grossman, the prosecutors said.
The prosecutors said the only way the investigator could have found the jurors is if he had access to their personal information, which was sealed by Judge Joseph Brandolino, as is procedure in California after a verdict. The defense may petition the court for a juror's identity if a compelling interest is shown, but that has not been done in this case, the filing stated.
"The only ways in which the defense could have obtained this personal juror identification information was either by photographing the jury list that was presented to counsel during jury selection or copying the names down off this same list," prosecutors wrote. "The defense is actively attempting to engage in jury tampering ... and illegally in possession of jury personal identifying information."
The prosecutors are asking the court for all such information to be returned.
They also asked the judge to bar Grossman from contacting the Iskanders. Nancy and Karim Iskander, the parents of the boys Grossman is convicted of killing, informed prosecutors they received a letter from her on March 13.
Read more: Rebecca Grossman trial goes to jury with central question: Murderer or scapegoat?
They also want Brandolino to move Grossman to a part of the jail system with no access to phones or visitors, except for her attorneys, and where her mail is checked.
"While in custody, the defendant immediately began using her phone privileges to engage in wholly improper conduct or potentially illegal conduct. These calls include admissions to violating the court protective order regarding the disclosure of evidence on the internet and to the press," Gould and Castro said in the filing.
"These recorded phone calls also document numerous potential criminal conspiracies, such as requests to disclose more protected discovery, discussion of various attempts to interfere with witnesses and their testimony and attempts to influence his honor in regards to sentencing."
Phone calls made from people incarcerated at Twin Towers jail, where Grossman is being held, and other L.A. lockups are recorded by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
In a conversation on Feb. 23, the day of Grossman's conviction, she told her daughter: "I want you to unblock the videos."
Alexis Grossman replies, "I will."
Dr. Peter Grossman, Rebecca Grossman's husband, then interjects: "Everything you want us to put out, honey, let us know. We're going to put it all out."
To which, Grossman replies: "I want you to put everything out."
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Prosecutors allege the exchange refers to body-camera footage from a sheriff's deputy at the scene in the aftermath of the crash. The video was on a webpage associated with Grossman's defense but removed after prosecutors informed the judge, who sealed all evidence not shown at trial.
Gould also alleges that Grossman told her husband to reach out to a Fox 11 news reporter to whom they sent the video. "Talk to her about, is she going to play that?" Grossman said in a Feb. 24 conversation.
Peter Grossman replied: "Rebecca, you know, we wrote this. I don't want you to say anything on the phone right now."
She asked, "Why? It's the truth."
As the jury deliberated last month, the judge issued a warning to Grossman about violating a court order by disclosing the video or making public any evidence that he had sealed and jurors had not seen. Prosecutors had asked Grossman be remanded to jail for her actions at the time.
Read more: Defense in Grossman murder trial keeps ex-Dodger Scott Erickson the center of attention
In another jailhouse conversation, Grossman spoke to her husband about a board member of the Grossman Burn Center, where he is the medical director. That doctor's patient Susan Manners was one of three witnesses who testified at trial she had seen Grossman's white Mercedes SUV strike one of the boys in the crosswalk. On the phone call, Grossman lamented that her husband's colleague had not influenced Manners' testimony.
She also separately told her husband to have a man she identified as Tom call the judge to see about getting a new trial.
In a Feb. 24 conversation with her daughter, Grossman said, "If we can get witnesses to come forward and say they were told to say things, this can get us a new trial." She encouraged her daughter to find and talk to a witness who was never called by the defense attorneys and who, according to their opening statements, saw a black car — not a white one — strike the boys.
"We have to get a real story out there about everything behind us and everything that wasn't done and all the things that were hidden from the jury and how the media influenced the entire trial and how they were releasing all this stuff to the media, just to make me look like a monster and that we know that the jurors were influenced by it," Grossman said.
Her 19-year-old daughter replied: "I'm going to do everything for you, Mom. Everything. And so is Dad."
Read more: Liquor, Valium, speed and recklessness: The D.A.'s case against Rebecca Grossman
Grossman told her daughter: "I was so in shock to have all 12 jurors [convict]. These were the worst jurors. I knew they were bad jurors. That whole jury selection thing didn't work for us at all. They weren't on my side from the beginning. I just knew it."
She continued: "Every single witness has a different story. How could there not [have] been reasonable doubt?"
The following day, Feb. 25, in a recorded conversation with her husband, Grossman brought up her then-boyfriend, Scott Erickson, whose Black Mercedes SUV she had followed through the crosswalk on Triunfo Canyon Road when she hit the brothers.
"You should call Scott Erickson and tell him to get on a video and that he needs to confess," she said, echoing her defense team's theme at trial.
Calling his wife a sacrificial lamb, Peter Grossman said: "I know he needs to confess, but right now, I can't even talk about the case. But that guy needs to [know] you're in jail for him, and it drives me crazy."
"Tell him to [make] a video and confess," Grossman told her husband. "I have a family."
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
