Superior Court Judges Sued Over Jail Overcrowding

The American Civil Liberties Union stepped up its decade-long campaign against Los Angeles County Jail overcrowding on Thursday by suing more than 100 Superior Court judges for allegedly violating state law by not disposing of criminal cases more expeditiously.

The ACLU is asking that the judges be ordered to more strictly adhere to state law requirements before granting continuances that delay pending criminal cases while the defendants are held in the county’s 10 overcrowded jails.

The class-action lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of an estimated 7,000 jail inmates who are awaiting trial in Los Angeles Superior Court. Some of the inmates have been in jail for a year or more.

‘We Can’t Wait’

“We’re doing this reluctantly,” ACLU staff attorney John Hagar said of the lawsuit. “We’ve attempted to work with the courts. But, quite frankly, we’ve gotten almost nowhere. We can’t wait anymore.”

But Los Angeles Superior Court Presiding Judge Richard P. Byrne characterized the suit as “a continuing effort by the ACLU to blame the Superior Court” for the crowded jail conditions.

“I believe there is very little correlation between the crowded jails and continuances,” Byrne said in a telephone interview from Monterey, where he was attending a California Judicial Council meeting.

No one disputes that the county’s jails are grossly overcrowded. The controversy is over the causes of that overcrowding and how to alleviate the situation.

The roots of the litigation go back to 1979, when the ACLU won a federal lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which operates the jails.

More recently, federal Judge William P. Gray, who presided over the trial of the 1979 suit, in May authorized the Sheriff’s Department to release as many prisoners as necessary to keep the jail population down, typically by releasing some inmates a few days before their formal release dates.

In all, the County Jail capacity is about 12,600. But there are about 23,000 being held at any time. A decade ago, the County Jail population was 8,000.

The ACLU has acknowledged that the Superior Courts have been overwhelmed by a near-doubling of felony cases--from 21,604 such criminal filings in fiscal year 1980-81 to 41,165 cases in 1986-87--as well as by a massive and growing backlog of civil cases.

And because state law requires that criminal cases receive precedent over civil matters, many civil cases now take five years to reach trial. That delay prompted the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. to sue the Superior Court in November, 1987, for allegedly failing to speedily process civil cases.

And in February, the ACLU similarly sued the Superior Court--on grounds that it was violating the civil rights of jail inmates by not disposing of their cases with sufficient swiftness.

State law gives criminal defendants the right to demand a trial within 60 days of their formally being charged with a crime, but 1,000 people now in county jails have been there for more than 180 days while awaiting trial, according to the latest ACLU lawsuit.

In its new lawsuit naming the 102 Superior Court judges, who handle criminal cases almost exclusively, the ACLU alleges that the judges have not implemented a state law designed to control delays by requiring judges to hold formal hearings before granting continuances.

Continuances result in as many as 2,000 jail inmates being shuttled daily from jail to courthouses throughout the county, where they often are told that their cases are to be postponed, often because of a lack of court personnel or other resources.

Penal Code Cited

The ACLU lawsuit said Penal Code Section 1050 requires that “a written notice shall be filed” whenever a criminal proceeding is continued and that, before granting a delay, a judge must “make a finding whether good cause has been shown.”

Further, the ACLU said, the code requires judges to justify such continuances by stating “on the record” facts that led to the granting of delays.

“The law is: You have to follow the technicalities,” Hagar said in an interview Thursday. Presiding Judge Byrne noted that each Superior Court judge is an independent judicial officer who has to “apply the law as he or she interprets it.” But he rejected the ACLU lawsuit’s contention that judges are not following the law.

“We’re making every effort to comply with the law,” he said. “But Mr. Hagar would have judges abdicate the exercising of their discretion on a case-by-case basis.