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The System: Deals, Deadlines, Few Trials

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Times Staff Writer

At 8 o’clock in the morning the single-file line grows to 52 people waiting to shuffle past the sheriff’s security checkpoint and into the monolithic stone courthouse. More arrive by the minute. Except for an infant too young to know the paralytic effect of dread on one’s spirits and the occasional beep-beep of the metal detector, the aging lobby is hushed. Conversations pass in murmurs or, often, through tense glances or the squeeze of hands.

It is a Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court in Norwalk.

There is nothing particularly special about this Monday. Not for the larger megalopolis anyway. It is special only for those who have an appointment with The System. For them, today could mean the difference between going home or going to prison, between hope or no hope at all.

Ramiro Cisneros arrived at the courthouse half an hour ago. In a windowless, institutional office with just two framed photographs to suggest permanency, he thumbs once more through the day’s manila files.

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Cisneros embodies one of the oldest tenets of American society: You can be so poor that you have no place to live, so poor that you must wear cast-off clothes and beg for food. But you cannot be so poor that you have to fend for yourself in the face of the law.

Cisneros is a public defender, a 37-year-old native of the Philippines, a graduate of UCLA and Southwestern Law School, a man with his heart in the clouds of idealism and his thoughts down in the daily rough-and-tumble.

When people reach bottom, when they’re broke and in trouble, when they’ve got rap sheets for resumes, Cisneros, or someone like him in the public defender’s office, might be the only person in the world who will go to bat for them.

This week, Cisneros has agreed to be our guide to daily life in the courthouse.

The clock reaches 8:30, he gathers a stack of file folders under his arm and nods. “OK, let’s go.”

*

Sixth floor, Department S: A compact man with a wrestler’s build and a burr haircut, Cisneros lets himself in through a side door.

The prosecution owns the north half of the double-long wood conference table, more or less in the center of the courtroom; Cisneros and other defense attorneys occupy the south.

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During the half hour until court convenes at 9, Cisneros reads a fresh probation report on one of his clients. Not much there to help his case.

He talks things over briefly with his counterpart, Paul Minnetian, the deputy district attorney assigned to Department S. Then he nods to the bailiff who produces a key to a door at the far corner of the courtroom and allows Cisneros inside.

There, a small floor space looks into a larger hallway-shaped room. Bars and wire grating separate the two, a membrane between the world of the free and the realm of the caged. This is the courtroom lockup, home to a dozen prisoners this day. Inside, men wearing jail jumpsuits are sprawled on benches and lying on the floor. They were awakened at the Central Jail downtown long before sunrise.

“They are herded like cattle, up at 3 or 4 in the morning,” Cisneros says. “Then they have to make decisions that may affect the rest of their lives. You can imagine how stressful it is.”

Cisneros calls out the name of his client. A lanky young man with a hawk-like face and a crew cut rises and approaches. Cisneros explains what is going to happen when his case is called. He spoke with this client once before via teleconference.

This is their first face-to-face meeting.

Right now, it is relatively quiet in the lockup. But that’s not always the case.

Sometimes two or three attorneys are trying to talk to clients simultaneously while the jailhouse lawyers among the inmates listen and join in. “Don’t take that deal!” “Don’t trust him!”

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Being tough in jail is a survival strategy. The accused has more than one thing to consider. He must, of course, think of the long term, whether to accept a plea bargain -- a few years in prison instead of a trial and a possible sentence many times as long. But he must also weigh how his decision will go down in jail tonight. Will he be branded as weak by admitting his crime?

For the moment, the defendant must quickly size up this public defender in the blue-black suit:

Is he the Man, wearing another face, or is he for me?

Can I hold out for better? Or will I be slapped with worse?

Let’s be candid. The men in this lockup, many of them anyway, are not known for their good judgment. Or for their luck, either.

As a condition to sharing background information and their informal impressions of cases, courtroom attorneys asked that the names of victims, defendants and witnesses in those cases not be published. The Times agreed to this request.

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Norwalk is an anomaly among Los Angeles courthouses. The criminal cases here are all felonies. Lesser crimes, misdemeanors, are tried in feeder courts in surrounding cities: Downey, Bellflower, Whittier. The more serious cases, those that carry potential prison terms, are funneled here after arraignment and preliminary hearings in outlying courts.

In the last six months, the numbers of felony filings in this part of the county have ranged from just under 1,000 in February to more than 3,400 in July.

At 9:10, Judge Larry S. Knupp puts down his coffee mug, slips on his robe and steps up to his chair overlooking Department S.

A bulky man, jowly and balding, Knupp, 66, wears a dour game face, practiced during half a lifetime on the bench. His mouth arcs sharply downward in what appears to be an exaggerated scowl. By reputation, he is one of the most patient judges in the courthouse.

After an arrest, California’s judicial system is a march of many incremental steps: arraignments, preliminary hearings, early disposition hearings, investigations, reports, motions and pretrial conferences.

Much of it is reduced to writing, placed in the files and entered on the court calendar according to a series of deadlines that are supposed to make good on the constitutional guarantees of swift justice.

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Only afterward will the accused stand trial. Rarely does it get that far.

In Norwalk, by the count of the district attorney’s office, 97.2% of felony cases are settled in advance of a trial -- usually as part of the daily ritual here called “running the calendar.”

This is ground-level justice, community justice -- the other side of the coin from the epic cases that make headlines.

This week, Ramiro Cisneros, Paul Minnetian and a battery of other lawyers, public and private, will run the calendar in Knupp’s Department S.

*

Today’s 23 cases are called, not in sequential order, but randomly according to when lawyers can assemble themselves and get prepared.

Typically, this is neither a smooth nor timely matter. The traffic of counsel is brisk in and out of the lockup. Half a dozen conversations are underway at once in the courtroom itself. The bailiff’s phone is ringing.

Because he does not have scheduled appearances in other courtrooms, Cisneros is ready and gives a go-ahead for his first case. The file he picks from the stack in front of him is orange -- indicating that the accused already has a “strike” under the state’s three-strikes law. A strike raises the stakes many-fold for the accused.

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The bailiff disappears into the locked side room and after a few moments returns with the hawk-faced man wearing a baggy royal-blue jumpsuit, his hands cuffed behind his back. The man’s expression gives nothing away, or maybe it is meant to suggest menace. He is led to a chair next to Cisneros, where he sits like a man who is no stranger to handcuffs.

In a deep voice, but at a pace almost as fast as the caveats at the end of a pharmaceutical commercial, Knupp acknowledges for the written record the presence of the defendant, his attorney, the prosecutor. He recites the case number and the reason for the hearing: a pretrial conference.

Knupp fixes his eyes on Cisneros. If there is to be a deal in this case, it is most likely to occur at a hearing such as this.

The accused, who lives in Bellflower, is charged with possession of methamphetamine. He has a record that includes a prior violent felony -- a strike under the state’s three-strikes law -- and another conviction for meth, the drug that remains the scourge of the age.

If this case were to go to trial and he were convicted, he could face 10 years in prison: every summer, Thanksgiving, New Year’s and birthday until 2016 behind bars, 3,650 days. Minus the jail time he is serving while awaiting an outcome.

A life of crime is a life of numbers. The district attorney has offered him 32 months in exchange for a guilty plea -- lopping nearly three-quarters of the potential punishment. The accused turned down the offer once. This is his second chance.

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Cisneros requests more time and a “prior pack,” the detailed file on the defendant’s previous felony strike.

The public defender doesn’t explain himself, but it is understood that he wants to prepare a “Romero motion,” asking the judge to use his discretion and eliminate the prior strike from consideration in this case.

It’s a longshot, but necessary to give the accused every consideration. If the motion is successful, the standard plea offer would be 16 months.

The judge grants more time and the case is “trailed” forward to a later date.

Minnetian speaks to the accused. Actually under the rules of law, he cannot directly address the defendant, so he aims his words at the judge with the intention of making his point on the record: “Your honor, I can understand Mr. Cisneros’ desire to dot all the I’s and cross all the Ts, but the offer is not going to get better than 32 months.” After the next hearing, Minnetian adds, “the offer is gone.”

*

Two of the file folders in Cisneros’ stack are crimes that may not be crimes.

The public defender is going to argue that the men have been wrongly charged. In each of the separate cases, he has filed “995” motions, named for the corresponding section of the penal code.

A 995 motion asks for dismissal because prosecutors “did not prove what they had to prove” during preliminary stages of the case. That is, the district attorney had failed to show that a crime had been committed or that the named suspect may have committed it.

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One case is called. A Los Angeles man with a limp, defeated air about him is ushered out of the lockup. Like all prisoners, he is handcuffed and wears a jumpsuit. Cisneros whispers briefly to him.

The judge recites his ritual word-burst to commence the hearing. He allows that he has read Cisneros’ motion. He has read the probation report on the accused. He nods to the prosecutor, and suddenly it’s over.

“Motion granted. Case dismissed.” The judge plops the file in front of his clerk and indicates that he is ready to move on. The man is no longer facing 16 months to four years in prison.

Later in the day, the inmate will be returned to jail and then released if there are no outstanding warrants.

To a courtroom observer, the event is bewildering.

Cisneros explains: The man made a series of angry phone calls to a girlfriend. One of them left the woman feeling threatened. She called the police. The man had a record and was arrested for “criminal threat.” She testified at the preliminary hearing and the defendant was held over for trial. Because of his rap sheet, prosecutors elevated the charge from a misdemeanor to a felony.

When the file reached Norwalk, Cisneros was assigned the case. He read the transcript, the law and precedents. He didn’t think the threat was specific or inflammatory enough to meet the legal definition of a crime. His motion said so, and the judge agreed. The district attorney did not argue.

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A large share of the cases that pass through the daily justice system are not whodunits. Like this one, they are questions of law: At what point does an angry phone call become a crime?

The penal code requires the threat of bodily harm to be “unequivocal, unconditional, immediate and specific” for it to be a crime.

Sometimes in real life, the penal code is as squishy as a soup sandwich.

*

Cisneros’ next case is easier still. In fact, it’s cut and dried. Except for one thing: The accused hasn’t shown up. He is a “miss out.” He’s being held in jail but somehow avoided the courthouse muster. This is the second time he overlooked a chance to walk free. The case trails to tomorrow.

Today’s calendar concluded, Cisneros returns to his office. He will remain on call to represent those who might be arrested on bench warrants in other cases. He must annotate and update the files on today’s actions. Meanwhile, tomorrow’s calendar has to be prepared. And cases for later in the week too.

He has an upcoming arraignment on a grisly and tragic first-degree murder case. There is a young man who pursued a flirtatious relationship on MySpace.com and now faces a rape charge. Cisneros thinks he smells a procedural coverup by deputies in another case. There is a sentencing in a frightening extortion trial.

And the colleague who shares his office can hardly wait to get before a judge in the case of the one-eyed man who didn’t do it.

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The week is just beginning.

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john.balzar@latimes.com

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Ground-Level Justice

Today

Going to bat for those who have hit bottom.

Tuesday

Should the judicial system lock up a man if he hasn’t broken the law?

Wednesday

A retrial and a sweet victory for the public defender’s office.

Thursday

An extortionist is sentenced and a drug user returns to jail.

Friday

The case of the one-eyed man comes to a conclusion.

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