Victims, Officials Kick Off Initiative to Speed Up Trials

Ambitious politicians and angry crime victims teamed up Thursday for the kickoff of what could be a noteworthy ballot initiative campaign to speed up criminal trials in California.

Ridiculing a system that took three years to bring Night Stalker suspect Richard Ramirez to trial, the victims and their supporters stood in the courtyard of the main County Jail, within earshot of prisoners, and predicted that this far-reaching measure would cut delays of years into just weeks and shorten the agony of those who have endured a crime.

“We are going to change the law in order to change the odds in favor of the citizen and not the criminal,” said U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson, Republican candidate for governor. He is the foremost office-seeker behind the proposition.

Other backers of the signature-gathering drive include prominent police, other Republican politicians and a couple of law-and-order Democrats.

Chief Sponsors

The chief sponsors are a group of crime victims and prosecutors who first banded together in 1986 in the campaign that brought down controversial state Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and two other Supreme Court liberals.

With Bird gone, Kern County Dist. Atty. Ed Jagels said, the group asked itself, “ . . . what are we going to need to undo the damage and bring California’s criminal justice system back onto the mainstream?”

The result is a proposed overhaul in the state Constitution that begins with a declaration that courts are to afford the accused the same rights as defendants under federal law but nothing more.

The measure would revive the indictment powers of grand juries. Preliminary hearings, which now can last for months, would be shortened and victims spared having to attend. Prosecutors complain that preliminary hearings often become full-blown trials.

Significant Changes

Other significant changes would require judges, not lawyers, to conduct questioning of prospective jurors. Time limits would be imposed on the work of court appointed defense lawyers. And more cases would be consolidated for trial.

The measure would eliminate a controversial Bird court precedent holding that criminals are liable for the death penalty only for crimes in which they set out to kill someone, rather than crimes that escalate to murder while in progress.

Finally, additional penalties would be imposed on criminals who tortured their victims--a provision to prevent future release of criminals such as the notorious Larry Singleton. He was the man who raped a young woman in California, chopped off her arms and was released after serving less than eight years of a 14-year prison sentence.

Backfire Warning

Defense attorneys are among those who will contest the proposition.

Gerald F. Uelmen, dean of the University of Santa Clara School of Law and spokesman for the defense lawyers group California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, warned that the provisions designed to speed up justice would backfire and clog courts with many more criminal trials.

Uelmen explained this is because California’s criminal justice system has evolved into one where 95% of felony cases are settled before trial thanks to provisions of law and precedent that the proposition would eliminate. California would be left looking more like the federal system, where five times the percentage of felonies are sent to full trial, he said.

“This is courting disaster. We handle 10 times as many felony cases with only 1 1/2 as many judges as the federal system,” Uelmen said.

Sponsors of the proposition now must collect 650,000 signatures in the next 5 1/2 months to qualify the measure for a spot on the June, 1990, ballot.

One tool they have are the likes of the 50 or so crime victims and their families who attended Thursday’s kickoff. Wearing yellow ribbons, some quietly nodded as the court delays were castigated. Some held each other. Others sobbed. Together, the scene demonstrated not just the emotion of the victim but the growing political sophistication of the victim movement.

“All of us have had a very costly education. Not an education that we wanted; not an education that we deserved. But believe me, we understand the court system,” said Collene Thompson Campbell. Her son, Scott, was killed in 1982. Then in 1988, her brother, racing promoter Mickey Thompson, was slain along with his wife, Trudy.

Long History

“At the time of their death, they were working on this very initiative. In fact, the petitions were in the car where they were assassinated,” she continued.

In fact, this proposal has been kicking around for years. Twice previously, sponsors have filed for petitions, but never successfully gathered enough signatures to qualify it for the ballot. They blamed lack of money.

What is different this time is that Wilson has thrown his support, prestige, fund-raising potential and even some manpower behind the effort. Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, a Democratic candidate for state attorney general, and state Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), one of the Legislature’s strongest law-and-order figures, have also endorsed the measure.