Court Official Defends Overcharging Practice

A South Gate Municipal Court commissioner, under indictment for overcharging the county for defending indigents while a private attorney, told the Los Angeles County Grand Jury that he found nothing wrong with billing for more time than he actually worked.

“That was my modus. That was the way I did it,” Commissioner J. Francis Spelman testified last January, according to the transcript of grand jury proceedings made public Monday.

Spelman was indicted on grand theft charges Feb. 20, along with John R. Hopson, the presiding judge of the South Gate Municipal Court. Both have been suspended with pay and are due back in Los Angeles Superior Court on April 5. Spelman has pleaded not guilty. Hopson has not yet formally entered a plea.

Hopson frequently appointed Spelman to represent impoverished defendants in his court when Spelman was practicing as a private attorney. Such court-appointed attorneys bill the county for their services.

Spelman was appointed a court commissioner in early 1983. Commissioners, in effect, function as judges.

According to the transcript, the grand jury returned the indictment despite a recommendation to the contrary by Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Healey, who presented the case. Healey told the 22 grand jurors that he did not believe the district attorney’s office could prove that either Hopson or Spelman had the specific intent to commit a crime.

Nevertheless, Healey, in the grand jury proceedings, said of Hopson and Spelman, “I think these guys in South Gate, in essence, think that they are the Lords of Creation and fully entitled to take whatever they want. And that’s what they do.”

A county audit released nearly two years ago concluded that between July, 1981, and June, 1983, Spelman, then a private attorney, over billed the county for $10,165 worth of hours. During that period, he received $37,170 from the county for representing indigent defendants.

On 11 occasions, the auditors concluded, Spelman billed the county twice for a single court appearance, usually when he handled two cases for the same client. On 17 occasions, Spelman billed for more than eight hours of work in a single day. For example, Spelman submitted bills, and was paid, for 24 hours of work on May, 5, 1982, according to the audit.

Nearly all of the questioned billings arose in cases in which Spelman had been appointed by Hopson and in which Hopson had signed Spelman’s billing sheets.

Shared Patrol Car

The two men met as Los Angeles police officers in 1949, the judge told the grand jury, when they were assigned to share a patrol car.

In his testimony, Spelman said that he on occasion consciously billed the county for more hours than he actually spent in court or working outside the courtroom.

Once, for example, Spelman said, he billed the county for 10 hours of court work, even though he appeared in court for only five hours.

Spelman told the grand jurors that the billing was justified because he handled two cases for the same defendant during that five-hour period. He said he billed for five hours of work under each of two separate case numbers.

“In private practice, when I took a case, if a man was arrested on this day, and while he was out on bail . . . he was arrested (again), on that case, you don’t think for a moment that I’m going to let him have that one for free, do you?” Spelman testified.

Likewise, Spelman said, he once spent a total of seven hours in a courthouse representing two defendants on two different cases and billed each defendant for seven hours, or a total of 14 hours of work on the same day. The county picked up the tab.

But Spelman said that no one ever suggested that such practices are improper.

“If, after I had handled the first two or three, and they came to me, they said, ‘Hey this is wrong the way you did it,’ I’d say, ‘What do you mean wrong?’

“I’d say, ‘You want me to do two cases for the price of one? I won’t do that.’ ”

Hopson testified that he did not personally verify all the billing statements that were submitted by Spelman.

“I leave that to my clerk,” Hopson said. “The minute that they catch any over-billing or double billing, the lawyer is called immediately.”

Hopson said he believes that some of the questioned billings submitted by Spelman contained simple mistakes. “It’s a plain--yeah, boo-boo is what it is,” the judge said.

The judge also suggested to the grand jurors that the office of the county auditor-controller singled out Spelman because judges in South Gate had been reluctant to adopt the auditor’s recommendations for changing the system for appointing attorneys for poor defendants.