Superior Court Expected to End Highly Praised Night Program : Justice: Presiding officer says there are now more courtrooms than judges. Backers of evening sessions say a shortage of space for criminal trials is imminent.

The Los Angeles Superior Court is expected to close its three night courts Dec. 1, despite rave reviews from prosecutors, public defenders and participating judges.

Presiding Judge Ricardo A. Torres said the evening sessions are no longer necessary because there are now more courtrooms than judges as a result of an extensive countywide court-building program. The system now has 532 jurists and 593 courtrooms for its civil and criminal cases.

Torres expects the court’s 17-member executive committee to approve his plan next week.

But night court proponents point to a finding in a recently released report on the five-year-old night court pilot project. The report states that a shortage of criminal courtrooms is imminent because of a burgeoning criminal caseload. The central district, which includes the downtown Criminal Courts Building, will be short 26 criminal courtrooms by fiscal year 1995, according to the report.

The 381-page report, prepared in May but not made public until this month, recommends that the county develop a contingency plan for an expanded night court system to be used when criminal court space is otherwise unavailable downtown. The report was commissioned by the Board of Supervisors.

Under the pilot project to be abolished, three Superior Court courtrooms are split into early morning and evening sessions, with the first shift beginning at 7 a.m. and the second starting at 2:30 p.m.

Prosecutors and public defenders say the split system has worked very well. “It has been a tremendous success,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert F. Jordan, acting head deputy for night court. “It obviously makes more complete use of county facilities.”

“I personally am discouraged to see it close,” said Assistant Public Defender David Meyer. “It was an extremely effective program of the kind that government needs to have more of.”

According to the report to the supervisors, which was prepared by the Harvey M. Rose Accountancy Corp. of San Francisco, participating “judicial officers are supportive and feel that the program is effective.”

But Torres, a longstanding opponent of night court, cited the same report to demonstrate that night courts are less efficient than regular courts. He also said the courts’ usefulness is limited because they are assigned simple felonies rather than the complex cases that take much longer to try.

“We’ve never liked night court,” he said. “Professionals don’t want to work at night.”

The report concludes that the experimental courts were 4.9% less productive than a control group of courts surveyed during the same period, often because there are no backup cases to hear if a matter settles instead of going to trial. Over a 50-year period, it would cost the county $18.2 million less to build a new court facility than to continue operating at night, the report states.

But the report says the gap could be narrowed considerably if night courts became more productive.

The Superior Court’s decision will have no bearing on the Los Angeles Municipal Court’s night court program, which will continue “for the foreseeable future,” Presiding Judge Karl W. Jaeger said through a spokeswoman. The Municipal Court operates one arraignment and two preliminary hearing courts at night.

In another unpopular development, Torres has announced plans to reassign some death penalty cases from the Criminal Courts Building to Van Nuys, where four courtrooms are under construction. He said the night court caseload will be moved into courtrooms that are now being devoted to those lengthy cases.

Torres said the transfer is justified because of the current backlog of 140 capital cases. “It’s my obligation to get those cases moving,” he said.

Deputy Public Defender Charles Gessler, coordinator of his office’s capital cases, complained that the shift to the Valley will harm black and Latino defendants, who are likely to face juries made up predominantly of affluent, white surburbanites. “You are in effect taking the colonists from the colonies and trying them in England,” he said.

Gessler said he would not mind trying the cases in Van Nuys if jurors could be selected from a downtown jury pool. “I frankly don’t care where they try them, but I care very much where the jurors come from,” he said.