Defender’s Office Opposes Transferring Courts, Trials : Law: A petition will be filed to halt the plan to move the death-penalty cases of dozens of blacks and Latinos from the inner city to Van Nuys.

Saying that a defendant from South-Central Los Angeles cannot get a fair trial in the San Fernando Valley, the Los Angeles County public defender’s office said Monday that it will petition federal court to halt the proposed transfer of dozens of death-penalty trials from downtown to Van Nuys.

The program, proposed by Los Angeles Superior Court judges to relieve a backlog of 130 death-penalty cases, would permanently transfer four courtrooms from downtown to Van Nuys. It is expected to be approved today and to begin in December.

Under the program, dozens of inner city defendants who are black or Latino would be tried by jurors drawn from a pool that is mostly white and affluent, said Assistant Public Defender Michael P. Judge.

“It’s the equivalent of taking someone from Granada Hills or Encino and trying them in Compton,” Judge said.

The district attorney’s office also opposes the proposed transfer of four courtrooms from downtown to Van Nuys.

However, Judge Gary Klausner, who supervises criminal courts throughout the county, dismissed the concerns of prosecutors and defense attorneys and said he expects the transfer to be approved today by the court’s 18-member executive committee.

“We transfer cases around the county all the time” to take advantage of empty courtrooms, he said.

“If there is a legal problem with that, and I don’t think there is a problem, then it will be a problem with all the cases we have transferred.”

He predicted that “four months down the road, no one will remember this controversy.”

Under the judges’ plan, the downtown criminal courtrooms will be shifted, together with judges, bailiffs and clerks, to courtrooms being remodeled in Van Nuys Superior Court.

The new courtrooms will handle only death-penalty trials from throughout the county and other lengthy cases, Klausner said.

In an effort to dissuade the judges, the public defender’s office compiled statistics indicating that jury pools downtown and in Compton are 21% black and Van Nuys’ pool is 6% black.

Latinos comprise 16% of jurors downtown, 11% in Compton and 8% in Van Nuys.

Judge, second in command in the public defender’s office, said his office will appeal to federal court on the first case transferred to Van Nuys “that has all the elements that we would contest.”

He acknowledged that recent appeals court decisions have increased a judge’s flexibility in assigning cases to be tried in areas other than where the crime was committed.

“But as we read the law, that doesn’t mean they can just ship cases out to wherever they please,” Judge said.

He said defense attorneys do not quarrel with the present system of trying cases where a crime was committed.

John Lynch, operations director for the district attorney’s downtown branch, said his office views the transfer program as a “logistical nightmare for witnesses and attorneys who will face long travel times.”

Although both prosecutors and public defenders oppose it, Lynch said he had little hope that the transfer program would be dropped.