Prosecutors want Rebecca Grossman's access to jail phones cut off after saying she encouraged illegal behavior and that her team tried to manipulate jurors who convicted her of double murder.
Deputy District. Lawyer. Ryan Gould and his colleague Jamie Castro filed a motion Monday detailing several jailhouse calls Grossman had with his daughter and her husband since his Feb. 23 conviction for killing two young brothers in a crosswalk while speeding. speed limit on a residential street in Westlake Village.
According to court documents, Grossman told his daughter, Alexis, to release video from the officer's body camera that had been sealed by the judge and to order another person to talk to the judge about a new trial. He also encouraged locating witnesses to say that his testimony was directed.
Last month, the jury 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. in prison at the time of sentencing.
Gould and Castro wrote that two jurors reported that Paul Stuckey, a private investigator, contacted three other jurors, even though the judge sealed the jurors' personal information.
“This investigator did not properly identify himself, but rather stated that he was a 'private family investigator,'” prosecutors wrote in the motion filed Monday. Stuckey works not for the Iskanders or the prosecutor's office, but for Grossman, prosecutors said.
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 the procedure in California after a verdict. The defense can ask the court for a juror's identity if a compelling interest is demonstrated, but that has not been done in this case, according to the document.
“The only ways the defense could have obtained this personal identifying information from the jury was by photographing the jury list that was presented to counsel during jury selection or by copying the names from this same list,” prosecutors wrote. “The defense is actively attempting to engage in jury tampering … and illegally possessing personally identifiable juror information.”
Prosecutors ask the court to return all that information to them.
They also asked the judge to prohibit Grossman from contacting the Iskanders. Nancy and Karim Iskander, the parents of the children Grossman is convicted of killing, informed prosecutors that they received a letter from her on March 13.
They also want Brandolino to move Grossman to a part of the prison system with no access to phones or visitors except his lawyers, and where his mail is monitored.
“While in custody, the defendant immediately began using her telephone privileges to engage in wholly inappropriate or potentially illegal conduct. These calls include confessions of violating the court's protective order regarding the release 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 discoveries, discussions of various attempts to interfere with witnesses and their testimonies, and attempts to influence their honor regarding sentencing.”
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department records phone calls made by people incarcerated at the Twin Towers Jail, where Grossman is held, and other jails in Los Angeles.
In a conversation on Feb. 23, the day of Grossman's sentencing, she told her daughter, “I want you to unlock the videos.”
Alexis Grossman responds: “I will.”
Dr. Peter Grossman, Rebecca Grossman’s husband, then chimes in: “Anything you want us to post, honey, let us know. “We're going to turn it all off.”
To which Grossman replies, “I want you to turn everything off.”
Prosecutors allege the exchange concerns body camera footage of a sheriff's deputy at the scene after the crash. The video was on a website associated with Grossman's defense, but was removed after prosecutors informed the judge, who sealed all evidence that was not shown at trial.
Gould also alleges that Grossman told her husband to contact a Fox 11 news reporter to whom the video was sent. “Talk to her about whether he's going to play that.” Grossman said in a Feb. 24 conversation.
Peter Grossman responded: “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 warned Grossman about violating a court order by releasing the video or making public any evidence he had sealed and that jurors had not seen. Prosecutors had asked that Grossman be sent to prison for her actions at the time.
In another jailhouse conversation, Grossman spoke with her husband about a board member at 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 that she had seen Grossman's white Mercedes SUV hit one of the children in the crosswalk. In the phone call, Grossman expressed regret that her husband's colleague had not influenced Manners' testimony.
She also separately told her husband to have a man she identifies as Tom call the judge to see if a new trial could be held.
In a conversation with his daughter on February 24, Grossman said, “If we can get witnesses to come forward and say that they were told to say things, this can give us a new trial.” He encouraged his daughter to find and talk to a witness who was never called by the defense and who, according to his initial statements, saw a black car, not a white one, hit the children.
“We have to publish a real story about everything that is behind us and everything that was not done and all the things that were hidden from the jury and how the media influenced the whole trial and how they were revealing all this material to the media . , just to make me look like a monster and let us know that the jurors were influenced by that,” Grossman said.
Her 19-year-old daughter responded: “I'm going to do everything for you, Mom. All. And dad too.”
Grossman told his daughter: “I was very surprised that the 12 jurors [convict]. These were the worst jurors. She knew they were bad jurors. That whole jury selection thing didn't work out for us at all. They weren't on my side from the beginning. “I just knew it.”
He continued: “Each witness has a different story. How could there not be [have] Have there been reasonable doubts?
The next day, Feb. 25, in a recorded conversation with her husband, Grossman mentioned 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 take video and that he needs to confess,” he said, echoing his defense team's theme at trial.
Peter Grossman, who called his wife a sacrificial lamb, said: “I know she needs to confess, but right now I can't even talk about the case. But that guy needs [know] “You’re in jail for him and that drives me crazy.”
“Tell her [make] a video and confess,” Grossman told her husband. “I have a family.”
