O.C. Sheriff Cleared of Contempt Conviction : Jail crowding: A Superior Court judge reverses all counts against Gates levied in a Municipal Court.

A Superior Court judge Thursday reversed a contempt-of-court conviction against Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates, overturning all 17 counts against him and voiding a jail sentence handed down last month.

In announcing her ruling, Judge Eileen C. Moore said Municipal Court Presiding Judge Richard W. Stanford Jr. erred when he found Gates in contempt for illegally releasing 17 prisoners in order to relieve jail overcrowding.

Moore held that the Municipal Court was wrong to punish Gates for releasing the prisoners when he was trying to comply with a federal mandate to ease overcrowding in the county’s main jail.

“It appears that the respondent Municipal Court has not shown that Sheriff Gates had the requisite elements of contempt, those elements being the ability to comply and a willful, intentional disobedience of a court order,” Moore said.

Gates, who was not in court for the ruling, said later that he was glad to have “a thorn in our side removed.”

“I’m pleased that the facts and evidence supported us and that Judge Moore ruled in our favor,” the sheriff said. “The system is doing all it can at this point to deal with the number of inmates we have, and I’m glad the judge recognized that.”

Moore’s ruling provides at least temporary respite for the sheriff, who had faced 30 days in jail and a $17,000 fine unless the county could produce a plan to end the early release of jail inmates by Nov. 1.

The ruling also removes pressure on county supervisors: In order to keep their sheriff out of jail, the supervisors had been considering a plan to rush completion of a jail expansion in the city of Orange.

That option would have forced the supervisors to dig into their emergency reserves or even lay off workers to pay for the accelerated construction and early staffing of the jail expansion, which is scheduled to open in January. But Thursday’s ruling allows the board extra time to complete the first phase of the expansion at the Theo Lacy Branch Jail and heads off the need to lay off workers.

“We’re still going to move vigorously to deal with our overcrowding problems, but this is a relief,” Supervisor Thomas F. Riley said. “Today has been very pleasant news. I always felt that it was a miscarriage of justice to sentence the sheriff.”

Supervisor Roger R. Stanton agreed, saying that “the only thing that this (case accomplished was an unnecessary expenditure of county funds.”

Stanton, Riley and other county officials said the Theo Lacy expansion would be ready for use in January as originally scheduled. Sticking to that original course is expected to save the county at least $1 million, money that Board of Supervisors Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez said was “badly needed in these difficult fiscal times.”

Judge Stanford was unavailable for comment on the ruling, but the lawyer who represented the Municipal Court judges in the case, Philip D. Kohn said his reaction was “one of obvious disappointment.” Kohn said he and Stanford discussed the issue Thursday afternoon but had not yet decided how to proceed.

“Judge Stanford needs to decide whether to let the matter lie or to let the court of appeal review the matter,” Kohn said.

That decision would not be made until next week at the earliest, he added, noting that Stanford would probably want to review the trial transcripts before determining whether to pursue the appeal.

Members of the Board of Supervisors urged the judge to drop the matter.

“I would hope that he wouldn’t waste more taxpayer money on an appeal,” Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder said. “This has gone far enough.”

In their arguments to Judge Moore, attorneys for the county maintained that overcrowding forced Gates to violate state law by releasing certain prisoners early, even though they should have been kept in custody because of the nature of their offenses. Suspects charged with violent crimes or providing false identification, for instance, cannot be cited and released.

Kohn countered that while he did not believe that Gates enjoyed releasing the prisoners, state law required them to be held and their releases constituted a deliberate violation of that law--and therefore contempt of court.

But Kohn conceded that the judge did not agree.

“She seemed to believe that he acted reasonably under the circumstances,” he said, “that he did not have the ability to comply.”

A key to the county’s argument was the notion that Gates acted in order to comply with a federal court order limiting the population of the Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana.

The federal order limits the inmate population only at that jail, but the sheriff has imposed a voluntary cap on the other four jails in order to keep the county from being subjected to further lawsuits because of overcrowding at those facilities. Even with that self-imposed cap, the jail system typically holds more than 4,400 prisoners in a system built to house 3,203.

Another 850 prisoners are released prematurely every week to make room for more serious offenders. Roughly 30,000 inmates have gone free early--some on reduced sentences, others who are cited and released pending their appearance in court--during the past five years.

Holding more prisoners in the jails would have kept Gates out of trouble with the Municipal Court judges, the county lawyers said, but that action could have created problems with the federal judge by violating the constitutional rights of inmates.

Lawyers for county inmates have pledged to go to the federal court if Gates overcrowds the county jails in order to halt the release programs.

“He’s caught between the constitutional and human decency requirements of running a jail that is not overcrowded . . . and the very real financial problems with expanding the jail system,” said Thomas C. Agin, the deputy county counsel who represented Gates.

Although Thursday’s ruling buys the county time to proceed with its jail expansion plans at Theo Lacy, it does not end the government’s long-term overcrowding problems. Officials said they intend to try to reduce overcrowding even without the pressure created by Judge Stanford’s ruling against Gates.

“We have not been standing still,” Vasquez said. “We will continue to pursue all our options and alternatives in our quest to address this issue.”

Gates, who has praised the supervisors for their jail-expansion efforts while at the same time urging them to construct a massive new jail in Gypsum Canyon, echoed Vasquez’s remarks.

“I don’t believe that there’s anybody in the county system that thinks we can just sit on our hands,” Gates said. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”