Fourteen years ago, I received an unforgettable telephone call:
“Officer Baker?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m Charlton Heston.”
My heart jumped – Moses was on the line!
“I heard about your case,” he began, “and after some checking with friends around town and in the LAPD, I have come to the conclusion that you were screwed… I have instructed my lawyers to provide for you any assistance that you may need to appeal your case.”
MY CASE stemmed from false charges filed against me after I questioned the legitimacy of criminal charges brought against police officers whose brutality was required by then-Mayor Tom Bradley’s civilian Police Commission. Although I had no excessive force complaints or history, I was criminally charged with beating a pedestrian during an arrest (no injuries) weeks after publishing a Daily News op-ed about the LAPD’s brutal use-of-force policies.
It’s hard to explain what being wrongly convicted is like. There’s no easy way to tell prospective employers that I was convicted - but it was a bum rap. They don’t care. The LAPD fired me despite their knowledge of my innocence, leaving me with two children, a mortgage, and few prospects. So when Charlton Heston called me on that spring day in 1994, he lifted my spirits in ways that no one else could.
A few months later, the Superior Court reversed my conviction and cited Judge Veronica McBeth and prosecutor David Sotelo for judicial and prosecutorial misconduct. But instead of being disbarred like Mike Nifong, Sotelo was rewarded with an appointment to the Superior Court Bench. (His affiliation with Warren Christopher and La Raza continues today.)
I returned to the LAPD in 1994 and retired in 2000.
Today, I spend my days writing, mentoring, and helping other wrongly accused defendants. My kids are grown and married, and I am happy, healthy and honored to live within a mile of the Heston’s home.
Charlton Heston, who marched with Martin Luther King before Democrats hijacked his dream, was deeply concerned about civil rights issues. One reporter wrote:
In late years, Heston drew as much publicity for his crusades as for his performances. In addition to his NRA work, he campaigned for Republican presidential and congressional candidates and against affirmative action. He resigned from Actors Equity, claiming the union’s refusal to allow a white actor to play a Eurasian role in “Miss Saigon” was “obscenely racist.”
He attacked CNN’s telecasts from Baghdad as “sowing doubts” about the allied effort in the 1990-91 Gulf War. At a Time Warner stockholders meeting, he castigated the company for releasing an Ice-T album that purportedly encouraged cop killing.
Heston wrote in “In the Arena” that he was proud of what he did “though now I’ll surely never be offered another film by Warners, nor get a good review in Time. On the other hand, I doubt I’ll get a traffic ticket very soon.”
He would not and did not.
As good as my life it today, a day does not pass when I don’t thank God and Heston for his hand when I needed him. God blessed him, his friends, family, and his community with love, grace, virtue, and courage that so many in Hollywood abhor today.
Goodbye, my friend. I pray that you find your well-deserved place in Heaven.
