Bench Crusaders : 3 Judges’ Hollywood Cleanup Efforts Criticized, Hailed

The mandate from the community was to clean up the streets of Hollywood, and the job went to three of the toughest Municipal Court judges in Los Angeles.

Elsewhere in the county, prostitutes and their customers rarely are sentenced to jail on a first offense. The usual penalty is a $150 fine.

In Hollywood, however, the norm for first-time prostitute convictions became a five-day sentence and three days in jail for their customers.

The judges--ex-cop Harold N. Crowder and former state prosecutors Sandy R. Kriegler and Michael Nash--began their crusade two years ago when the Hollywood Municipal Courthouse first opened for business.

The results since then have been dramatic. Many of the prostitutes who once roamed Hollywood have been run out of the area, and overall street crime has dropped 17%, the biggest percentage drop in the city.

“Two years ago, you’d see a couple hundred prostitutes on the streets here. It wasn’t unusual to find a dozen hookers on one corner actually fighting over a trick,” said Capt. Robert Taylor, commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood Division.

“Today you’d be hard-pressed to find a dozen,” Taylor added. “The new courthouse and those judges in particular have accomplished what nobody else could. Without them we’d still be like dogs chasing our own tails.”

According to some public defenders and other defense lawyers, however, there has been a hidden price to the Hollywood cleanup.

The criticism they voice is that Hollywood’s judges have put too much emphasis on harshness and too little on the basic rights of the rag-tag parade of street people and minor criminals who most often appear before them.

“Jail sentences are given out in almost every case,” attorney Leslie Abramson said. “There’s more jail in minor cases than I have ever seen in any municipal court, and far too many people are kept in custody while awaiting trials.”

Prostitution is only one of the crimes prosecuted at the Hollywood courthouse, the lawyers noted. Other misdemeanor crimes range from minor drug and theft charges to such other violations as trespassing on the Hollywood sign and possession of an open beer can in public.

Jail has been the common remedy for almost every offense, according to many lawyers. In addition, the Hollywood judges have developed a reputation for using probation violations and tardiness to court as tools in persuading defendants to plead guilty.

“A fourth to half of the people here show up late to court. One of the biggest problems for us has been the (city attorney’s) practice of charging them with willful failure to appear,” said Richard Millard, a public defender for 20 years.

“Anyplace else they get admonished,” Millard said. “Here they are placed in custody, and a second charge has been routinely added carrying a possible 180 days of additional jail time. I think it’s been used as a tool to get people to plead guilty, and I don’t think there’s any doubt that’s a denial of basic rights.

“We’re not talking about the Night Stalker here,” added Millard, who was named supervising public defender in Hollywood in October. “A lot of these crimes amount to spitting on the sidewalk, but they are punished more severely than some felonies in other courthouses.”

Kriegler, 37, a former deputy state attorney general who is supervising judge in Hollywood, had just disposed of an open container case involving a man arrested for allegedly holding an open beer can on a Hollywood side street.

The defendant, who represented himself, had arrived in court several hours late, telling the judge that he had taken his time walking to Hollywood from Echo Park because it was raining.

He was not guilty of the beer can violation, the man protested. But he conceded he was obviously guilty of being late to court. After a brief discussion, Kriegler dismissed the original charge, but ordered the man placed on a year’s probation for tardiness.

“This man simply decided he would come to court late,” Kriegler said in his chambers. “I get to work on time, and so does everybody else here. Why not the defendants? I’m going to run my courtroom in an orderly fashion. It was appropriate to hold him accountable as far as I’m concerned. Maybe it would be appropriate for other judges, too.”

Kriegler was appointed to the Municipal Court in 1985 by Gov. George Deukmejian as were Nash, 39, another former deputy attorney general, and Crowder, 62, who was once a member of a famous LAPD robbery unit called the Hat Squad.

All three judges expressed surprise last week at criticism from Millard and other defense lawyers, denying that they have used the willful failure to appear statute to force defendants into guilty pleas and disputing other criticisms that they have a low regard for the rights of defendants.

“I’m disturbed that anyone would suggest we are doing anything improper here,” said Crowder during a break in his daily calendar of cases. “The last thing I want to do is give the appearance of railroading anyone, especially somebody who represents himself. I always tell them up front (if) they are going to be doing some time and that they have the right to a lawyer.

“We look at every case on an individual basis, and we don’t automatically hand out jail time around here in every instance. Sometimes that’s not necessary. We’ve recently been working on getting a community services program set up here as an alternative to jail when called for. We’ll be doing that with the Parks Department and city maintenance.”

Nash, one of the prosecutors in the Hillside Strangler case, dismissed the uproar over the tardiness issue and made it clear that if he wanted to coerce defendants into guilty pleas he could do so without the help of any additional charges.

“We still issue bench warrants and remand defendants who are late into custody, at least while they are hearing their rights,” Nash said. “That’s what the club is--the fact that someone may be in custody. It really doesn’t make any difference if there is an additional charge.

“Millard’s thing is that people are so irresponsible here that we shouldn’t be tough on them. I can appreciate that, but if we didn’t punish people for their irresponsibility, we wouldn’t need courts. People tell us we’re tough here. That’s fine with me. People are free to say whatever they wish. It doesn’t change the way I operate.”

As a Times reporter observed them over a period of several days, the judges conscientiously reminded defendants of their right to public defenders, handed down several sentences of straight probation and presided over their courtrooms with an almost friendly attitude toward some of the accused criminals appearing before them.

At the same time, the courthouse policy on being late to court was suddenly softened after Millard confronted Timothy A. Hogan, supervising deputy city attorney in Hollywood, with a previously overlooked section of state law saying unrelated charges in criminal cases must be filed as separate complaints, which would take more time than past procedures.

Hogan told The Times that he plans to stop filing any new charges against defendants who show up late in court on the same day of their scheduled appearance and will “probably” use new complaints in other cases where defendants deliberately try to evade a court appearance and appear only after being arrested on a bench warrant.

The previous policy of routinely filing failure-to-appear charges against all latecomers was started shortly after the courthouse opened when it became clear to the city attorney’s office that the Hollywood judges would be receptive to such a tactic, Hogan said.

“It was part of the strategy to keep the courtrooms flowing smoothly,” he said. “We don’t act together with the judges, and it’s not designed as a tool to use in obtaining guilty pleas. But it does have the practical effect of speeding up dispositions.”

Hogan, an admirer of the three Hollywood judges, said he believes they run a model courthouse.

“They are the toughest in the whole city,” he said. “I’ve seen them all. I don’t know anybody who’s tougher.”

In the neighborhoods surrounding the Hollywood courthouse, the debate over the niceties of the law takes second place to the fact that crime is down and most of the prostitutes have disappeared.

“The community was drowning in the prostitution problem,” said Erika Scarano, the Hollywood resident who led the crusade for the courthouse. “Hollywood had essentially become a red light district. The community was dying very fast.”

The same judicial practices that upset Millard and some other defense lawyers delight Scarano and many other Hollywood civic leaders.

“It was like an open-door policy before the courthouse was built,” she said. “The prostitutes would pay their fine and be back out in the street. They can’t play their games with the judges we have now. I think they are three of the finest in the city.”

Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman, the politician most responsible for the construction of the $6.6-million courthouse, also supports the judges.

“I think they are doing an excellent job,” he said. “Street crime is down considerably, and I’ve heard nothing but praise about the courthouse.”

The LAPD’s Taylor said he believes the impact of Hollywood’s tough judicial trio has been greater than anyone expected.

“I’m a cop, and I’m suspicious,” he said. “I don’t think the politicians really believed the new courthouse would help.

“They needed Judge Crowder. He was the first supervising judge here, and he used to walk a foot beat in Hollywood. He was the guy with the gray hair who provided the leadership for the younger judges. I think he was aware of the unhappiness the community felt and knew the positive things that could be done.”

Taylor said the courthouse and the judges who run it are largely responsible for the drop in crime in Hollywood in the last year.

“We had the largest decrease in crime in the entire city,” Taylor said. “Statistically there is an 86% decrease is prostitute-related crimes. For example, we had 10 prostitute-related murders a year a few years ago. That was down to two last year. I give the court a lot of credit for that decrease.”

Millard is aware of the strong community support for the judges and accepts that his is a minority view.

“I know tough judges are the thing now,” he said. “Today’s dictum is throw the key away. I just don’t think it’s fair. There’s a different standard of justice here than in the rest of Los Angeles.

“Crime is probably down--but at what cost? “