Unrest Cases Swamp Courts : Sentencing: Prosecutors criticize a judge in Van Nuys, saying his 10-day terms for curfew violators are too lenient.

San Fernando Valley courts were swamped Monday by the cases of nearly 600 people charged with looting, robbery and curfew violation during the King beating riots, setting off a dispute among court officials over how strictly to punish the curfew violators.

Prosecutors, public defenders and a court commissioner got into a rancorous quarrel at Van Nuys Municipal Court, where nearly 300 people jailed on suspicion of violating Los Angeles’ dawn-to-dusk curfew were arraigned.

Prosecutors charged that Commissioner John Ladner--who acts as a judge in misdemeanor cases--was imposing overly lenient sentences for curfew violation, which carries a penalty of up to one year in jail. Prosecutors routinely asked for 30-day sentences, but Ladner usually imposed 10-day terms.

Deputy City Atty. Sharon Siskel said defendants given 10 days “will be back out there with police still trying to get a handle on the situation.”

But the public defender’s office argued that even 10 days in jail for curfew violation was much more than is normally handed out for comparable transgressions, such as loitering or public drunkenness, in non-riot situations. Usually, defendants in such cases are sentenced to the time they have been in jail since their arrest, credited with that time served and thus freed immediately, court officials said.

Defense attorneys also complained that police had enforced the curfew only in low-income, minority areas, with the result that most defendants were Latino, with some blacks also charged.

In an interview, Ladner, who was disqualified Friday from handling curfew cases downtown after officials from the city attorney’s office challenged him for imposing what they considered lenient sentences, attacked prosecutors for pressuring him to hand out stiffer sentences.

“Why have me up here at all?” he asked.

“Maybe the prosecutor should just sentence these people. . . . I don’t believe in blanket sentences. I think each case should be considered individually. A lot of these people have no prior record and they were out there doing no harm.”

The curfew proclaimed by Mayor Tom Bradley on Thursday prohibited anyone from being out in public at night except police, firefighters and other public safety officials. It made no other exceptions.

Police Capt. Patrick McKinley, assistant director of operations for the Valley, said most of those charged with violating the curfew were from minority neighborhoods because “that’s where the riot occurred. Those are the areas we are patrolling. The riot didn’t occur in Porter Ranch.”

Public defenders said Monday that only a handful of those charged with violating the curfew pleaded not guilty because the curfew law allowed no exceptions.

Most of the defendants cannot afford to post even the $250 bail required for release before arraignment, defense attorneys said. And bail for defendants who plead not guilty and request a trial is raised to $8,000 or more, public defenders said. Most defendants would thus remain in jail awaiting trial for up to three weeks--almost certainly longer than their sentences if they pleaded guilty.

By comparison, the processing of felony cases went smoothly.

At the Van Nuys Courthouse, court officials worked into the evening processing 63 people charged with riot-connected felonies. At San Fernando Municipal Court, about 20 people were charged with felonies. Almost all face up to three years for commercial burglary, the violation that covers looting.

Most were jailed in lieu of $10,000 bail, twice the usual amount for that offense, because “of the extra danger to the community from rioting,” said Margaret Barreto-Morehouse, assistant head deputy district attorney at Van Nuys.

Virtually all pleaded not guilty and were scheduled for preliminary hearings in about one month, court officials said.

The cases that flooded Valley courts Monday were the tail end of a deluge that began Thursday, police said. McKinley said late Monday that 1,307 people had been arrested in the Valley in the riots.

He said 447 were charged with felonies and 860 with misdemeanors, of which nearly 500 were for curfew violation. Some 200 curfew cases were handled at the San Fernando Courthouse, where most defendants were also given 10-day sentences.

McKinley said police did not arrest anyone for violating the curfew “if they had a legitimate purpose” for being out at night.

He said that most of those charged had been loitering and that no police supervisor would have approved a curfew arrest “of someone going to work.”

But Deputy Public Defender Denise K. Daniels said most of her clients charged with being out at night “were just good citizens out for an important purpose. Let’s attack real criminals. Why are we wasting taxpayer dollars on these people?”

Times staff writer Julio Moran contributed to this story.