War of the Woods : Maverick Prosecutor Feuds With Veteran Plumas County Officials

The mountain county of Plumas, land of lumber and wintertime woodsmoke, has endured plenty of nasty political feuds. But none, say the locals whose roots run deepest here, has echoed through the forests as has the bitter war under way today.

At the eye of the storm is Dist. Atty. Michael Crane, who won election in 1990 despite having been fired from his job as a prosecutor. A feisty newcomer to Plumas County, Crane campaigned as an outsider and vowed to free the district attorney’s office from those he said were improperly influencing the administration of justice.

Veteran county officials, accustomed to warm relations with the chief prosecutor, have not taken kindly to Crane, whose maverick behavior has ranged from suing the Board of Supervisors to persistently challenging judges he accuses of bias. Crane’s conduct has been so “disruptive,” his numerous critics say, that it has all but paralyzed law enforcement in the impoverished Sierra Nevada territory.

“This feud is the talk of the town, that’s for sure,” said Michael Jackson, an attorney in Quincy, the county seat. “Everybody is paranoid. People are acting vindictive. Gradually, they’re all losing sight of what we’re supposedly here to do, which is provide justice for the people of this county.”

Until recently, the 20,000 residents of Plumas County have merely watched the spectacle from the fringe, content to grumble in the coffee shops and pen letters to the editor urging the warring factions to grow up and work things out.

But now a recall is afoot, launched by two citizens who call Crane, 54, a troublemaker and who believe that the flap has mushroomed beyond exasperating to intolerable. One, a fire chief named Joe Turner, said he resolved to recall Crane after serving jury duty, an experience that led him to conclude that the Plumas County judicial system “obviously isn’t working right.”

“Things have fallen apart,” Turner and Dorothy Young wrote in a notice announcing their recall campaign. “Criminals are going unprosecuted while the district attorney sits in his office imagining plots against him.”

This latest salvo, it seems, has only strengthened Crane’s resolve to fight. An ex-Marine and one-time Oakland police officer, Crane feels cornered, persecuted and says he is madder than ever.

“They want me to take a hike, to get lost, but it won’t work,” the bespectacled district attorney said in an interview. “They’ve got the wrong guy for that. I’m not leaving.”

As near as anyone can remember, all the fuss began two years ago when Crane--then a deputy in the Plumas County prosecutors’ office--bought a military-style wristwatch from a mail-order firm. When the $39.95 watch arrived, Crane concluded that it was not in a “solid stainless steel case” as the advertisement promised, but made of “base metal” instead. Furious, Crane decided to prosecute the mail-order company for false advertising.

Crane argued that such a lawsuit would benefit other county residents who might get suckered in by the wristwatch ad. But county supervisors disagreed, concluding that Crane would be using a public office for personal gain in pursuing the case. In April, 1990, they fired him, listing the watch affair--as well as insubordination, unprofessional conduct and misuse of power--as a factor.

Despite his fate, the wily Crane landed on his feet, winning election as district attorney just two months after his termination--with 60% of the 6,412 votes cast. Crane ousted old-timer Tom Buckwalter, whom he had accused of drinking on the job and wearing juju beads to ward off evil spirits. Buckwalter could not be reached for comment.

Campaigning as an outsider with no political debts to pay, Crane--who moved to Quincy from San Diego four years ago--pledged to break what he called an “almost suffocating connection” between the district attorney’s office and the Sheriff’s Department.

That, declares Crane today, is precisely what he has done.

“When I took over here, there were people from the Sheriff’s Department, the Board of Supervisors, the probation department and other agencies dictating the operations of this office,” said Crane, who earns $54,000 a year as district attorney. “It was like the Deep South in the late ‘40s--corruption, favoritism and all that. Other people were orchestrating the activities of the D.A., and I mean big things like deciding who gets charged and who doesn’t.

“My goal was to get rid of that unhealthy influence and regain independence for this office.”

By all accounts, his crusade has spawned an ugly climate of mistrust in a place whose stunning natural beauty seems more suited to peace and communal harmony. At the old county courthouse, an edifice that dominates downtown Quincy and houses most local government workers, threats and accusations fly daily; mistrust is on everyone’s mind.

There are rumors about some protagonists wearing bulletproof vests, and allegations by Crane that a plainclothes sheriff’s deputy swerved his car and nearly struck his wife.

“It’s ugly,” said Tom Wright, associate editor of the Feather River Bulletin in Quincy. “There have been plenty of headlines for us.”

Though political, the dispute does not seem to stem from ideological differences. Rather, all sides seem to agree, it is simply a case of how the prosecutor of Plumas County ought to do business.

Crane said his efforts to enforce the law have been hindered by a campaign of “retaliation” waged by county officials who view him as a threat to “their personal power.” As evidence, he said the Sheriff’s Department will not supply his attorneys with evidence for prosecutions, forcing him to file time-consuming court motions to obtain the information.

And county supervisors, Crane contended, “refuse to give me sufficient funds to run this office properly.” As a result, Crane--who has a staff of just two full-time lawyers--last month issued an unusual statewide appeal for attorneys willing to work for him as prosecutors. There was just one catch--the lawyers would have to work for free. (Four have been interviewed for jobs, Crane said.)

The district attorney has his supporters, and they see Crane as a white knight who is sorely needed in an isolated county run by what one longtime resident called a “bad-old-boy network.”

“The man is very well qualified and they’re not letting him do his job,” said Jean Walters, who owns a beauty shop in Blairsden and served on the county grand jury last year. “It’s harassment what they’re doing to him, and I’ll tell you, it’s a real bad scene for the whole community.”

Crane’s critics concede that the feud is bad news for Plumas County, but they place the blame squarely on the district attorney. Crane, they argue, is paranoid, seeing conspiracy where none exists. His management of the district attorney’s office, many say, has alienated virtually every county agency linked to the criminal justice system--fracturing relationships that are key to a smooth-running process.

“In his effort to make his office independent, he has basically eliminated communication with our department, and that is causing a lot of problems,” said Sheriff Donald Stoy. “We aren’t consulted or notified when cases are filed. We aren’t allowed to sit in on trials as investigating officers. We don’t talk with each other on search warrants and seizures. There is no cooperation or coordination--nothing.”

Probation officers are unhappy because they say Crane has denied them access to files they need to make sentencing recommendations--files customarily made available in many counties. As a result, the officers must go through a cumbersome process to gather the documents through other means.

At the Department of Social Services, investigators gripe that Crane has refused to prosecute more than a dozen clear cases of welfare fraud--an allegation the district attorney refused to discuss.

Stoy also has a beef about a scarcity of prosecutions. He submitted 954 cases for prosecution in 1991, and Crane filed charges in “only a little over half of them,” Stoy said, noting that the rate of filing was down 30% from the previous year. Crane accused Stoy of “manipulating the figures” and said he only prosecutes cases with sufficient evidence for a conviction.

Crane also has won the enmity of judges on the county’s Justice Court. Last fall, he filed 71 motions to disqualify two of them, Garrett Olney and Alan Thieler, alleging that they were biased against the prosecution. The state Judicial Council upheld the five motions against Thieler but rejected the 66 targeting Olney.

Although Crane portrays his battle as one against corruption and excessive government coziness, many in the legal and political Establishment here wonder. “It seems,” said one attorney who did not want to be identified, “that he wants to be at war with all of us.”

County supervisors, struggling to guide a region that is heavily reliant on a declining lumber industry, were reluctant to discuss Crane and the ruckus revolving around him. That is because he has filed a suit against the board in federal court, alleging that supervisors violated his civil rights by eliminating an investigator from his staff.

“I will say one thing, and that is that these difficulties are putting a terrible strain on our judicial system,” Supervisor Joyce Scroggs said. “We’ve had our share of flare-ups here in Plumas County, but nothing that has lasted this long, nothing that has shaken the public’s confidence in government the way this has.”