Judge Outraged by Parking Ticket : Juror Has Day in Court: Charges Dropped

Judge Jack K. Mandel didn’t hesitate earlier this year to jail a juror who showed up late in the courtroom.

On Friday, Mandel didn’t hesitate to interrupt a jury’s deliberations to let another juror explain why the $17-parking ticket he had received while hurrying to make it to court on time was unfair.

Ronald C. Fritter Jr. stepped out of deliberations in Mandel’s Superior Court case and sought some justice for himself.

It Happened on a Rainy Day . . .

Fritter said he has tried to park in spaces assigned to jurors on a lot at Civic Center Drive near the County Courthouse in Santa Ana.

But on Sept. 24, on a day when the lot was full, rain was falling and he was concerned about being late to court, Fritter was ticketed for leaving his car outside a marked space in the lot.

“I pulled into a spot and ran through the rain up to the courtroom,” Fritter said Friday. The parking slots weren’t well marked, he said.

On Friday, after Mandel heard about Fritter’s problem, he excused the juror so he could report to a Municipal Court, where a judge, after hearing Fritter’s complaint, sent a bailiff to inspect the parking lot. When the bailiff confirmed the marking problem, the municipal judge dropped the parking charges.

Fritter was satisfied--the ticket would have cost $17--but Mandel was not.

“I was outraged,” Mandel said on hearing of the ticket. “I consider it a personal affront and an affront to the jury system.

“I want my jurors to be thinking about the case they have to decide--not muttering or angry when they’ve just gotten a parking ticket.”

Mandel and his brethren on the Superior Court bench have made waves this year with a get-tough attitude toward jurors who fail to show up on time. A number have been disciplined for tardiness, and Mandel jailed one recalcitrant juror for two days for not appearing on time.

It wasn’t the first time a judge went to bat over a parking ticket for failure to park within the stripes on the juror lot.

In April, Superior Court Judge David G. Sills sent his personal check for $51 to pay for parking tickets that three of his jurors had received for failing to park within the straight, narrow, and apparently hazy lines on the lot, said Alan Slater, executive officer of the court.

Lot Said to Be Poorly Marked

Sills, in a letter to Ryan, has said he could not “in good conscience” permit the jurors to pay for the tickets themselves.

“As you can see from the tickets,” Sills wrote, “their autos were parked in the jury lot but outside a striped place in one of the poorest striped lots in Southern California. One of my staff who parks there tells me you could not even see the stripes that morning.”

Charges against those three jurors were dropped.

Slater said the court and the City of Santa Ana have had discussions about the parking shortage.