Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : COURTS : D.A.’s Plea-Bargain Rule Will Cost $6 Million, Judge Says

The ban on plea bargaining in judges’ chambers ordered by Dist. Atty. Cecil Hicks will cost the county more than $6 million this year, according to a letter sent to the Board of Supervisors by the county’s presiding Superior Court judge.

In an eight-page letter, hand-delivered Friday to each supervisor, Judge Harmon G. Scoville said that the workload created by Hicks’ policy has “far surpassed” what the court system can handle. The judge wrote that the court may need to hire 15 lawyers to act as judges, and to hold night sessions in order to ease the burden.

These and other “fairly drastic measures” are required in the next several months, Scoville said, in order to prevent judicial gridlock from freezing out of the court system citizens involved in non-criminal cases.

Hicks ordered his deputies to stop discussing felony plea bargains in judges’ chambers on Oct. 9. Because defense attorneys are reluctant to discuss plea bargains in open court, many more criminal cases have been scheduled for trial. Under state law, criminal cases take precedence over civil cases, and fewer courtrooms have been available for civil trials.

The district attorney’s policy, coupled with the growth of court business in the county, has “generated and sustained an explosion of criminal and civil litigation that has far surpassed the capacity of our current judicial resources, support staff and space,” Scoville said in the letter.

Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder praised the letter as “a good treatise on the subject, if not a launching pad for discussion.” She said it was a “well-thought-out clarion call” to deal with a problem that is essentially a “management matter.” The county does not have enough money to undertake the corrective measures outlined by Scoville, she said, “nor would Sacramento give it to us.”