Gates Ordered to Explain Why Prisoners Arrested on Warrants Are Being Released

The presiding judge of the Orange County Municipal Court on Monday gave Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates two weeks to explain why he should not be held in contempt of court for failing to jail men whom judges ordered arrested.

Gates appeared before Judge Gary P. Ryan in Central Municipal Court in Santa Ana in response to an order issued Friday by Ryan citing six men who appeared at the Orange County Jail after judges issued warrants for their arrests.

Rather than being booked and taken before a judge to have bail set, the men were freed after signing an agreement to appear in court on a specified date.

Variety of Charges

The six appeared at the jail between March 3 and March 24 after being arrested for not appearing in court for trial on a variety of earlier charges, including carrying a concealed weapon and theft.

Gates asked for and received two weeks to reply to Ryan’s order to explain why he should not be found in contempt for “intentionally and willfully ordering and directing your deputy sheriffs to cite and release the arrestees delivered into your custody under a warrant.”

County officials said the six cases listed apparently were chosen at random. Gates said two weeks ago that in a three-day period from March 6 through March 8, 163 men brought to the jail on warrants stemming from past charges were given citations and sent away.

Ryan also told Gates to explain how many beds exist in the county’s jail system, how many beds were empty on each of the days the six men were turned away from the main jail, and how the sheriff’s system of classifying inmates in low, medium or maximum security works.

Gates has conceded that “I’m breaking the law every day” by issuing citations and releasing men whom judges have ordered arrested but has said he had no choice if he expected to comply with federal court orders to keep the jail population down.

U.S. District Judge William P. Gray two years ago found Gates and the Orange County Board of Supervisors in contempt for not heeding his 1978 order to end overcrowding in the jail.

Gray fined the county, appointed a monitor of the sheriff’s efforts to cut the population at the main men’s jail in Santa Ana, and began reducing the number of inmates that could be housed in the facility.

Branch jails were expanded, prisoners charged in state and federal cases were sent to other jails, and new programs were begun to cut the jail population.

Nearly a year ago, still facing overcrowding problems, Gates began issuing citations to people arrested on minor crimes such as burglary. Last fall, with the jail still bulging, Gates began turning away even some inmates who had failed to appear in court earlier and for whom warrants had been issued for failing to appear in court.

“We are violating the law every day by not being able to book (people arrested for not answering) warrants and bench warrants issued by Municipal and Superior courts,” Gates said last week. “We do not have sufficient maximum-security beds.”

Predicted the Reaction

“These are people who have committed felonies,” the sheriff said then. “I give them a ticket, and they go out the door. They don’t show up in court, a judge issues another warrant, I give them another ticket and they go out the door again.”

Gates predicted Ryan’s reaction last Wednesday, when he said, “the local courts here are very close to holding me and the county in contempt” for not jailing people for whom warrants were issued.

But he has continually insisted that without the cite-and-release program, the jail would be overflowing and he would be in contempt of Gray’s order setting maximum numbers of inmates at the jail.