RIOT AFTERMATH : Governor Beats Deadline With Bill to Hold Suspects

Facing the release of thousands of alleged looters and other accused felons who could not be arraigned in time after their arrests in last week’s riots, the Legislature rushed through a bill Tuesday to give Los Angeles courts up to a week more to process the torrent of cases.

With a mass release of prisoners scheduled for midnight Tuesday, Gov. Pete Wilson signed the emergency legislation at 10:30 p.m. at Santa Monica Airport after it was flown to him while he was overseeing state operations relating to the civil unrest.

Wilson signed the bill on the hood of a State Police car that pulled up to the plane, and the vehicle then sped off to carry the document to Los Angeles for the climax of the legal drama.

In the last step needed to stop the prisoner release, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department was notified at 11:30 p.m. that California Chief Justice Malcolm Lucas had signed a judicial order waiving the normal 48-hour deadline for arraigning people arrested for felonies.

In a daylong race against the clock, the bill cleared the Legislature in slightly more than three hours and was put aboard a National Guard airplane to Santa Monica. The Assembly approved the measure, 62 to 0, and the Senate forwarded it to Wilson on a 33-0 vote.

“There was no alternative . . . (other than) watching as thousands of people were released,” said Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, who requested the bill along with other Los Angeles area law enforcement officials who were overwhelmed by the staggering volume of arrests--more than 13,000 in all, about half of those for felonies.

An estimated 2,500 of the prisoners, including suspected arsonists, could have been freed, Reiner said, adding: “We looked at that as a calamity.”

Although the entire Los Angeles County criminal justice system has been strained by the unprecedented number of arrests, most for looting or curfew violations, Reiner said the problem leading to the immediate crisis involved paperwork--specifically delays in getting Los Angeles police officers, who have been required to stay in the field, to complete and forward the forms needed to file charges in thousands of cases.

Current law requires that an accused felon be formally charged at an arraignment within 48 hours of arrest. The closure of the courts during the civil unrest effectively extended the deadline, but on Sunday the Sheriff’s Department alerted area law enforcement agencies that the releases would begin if arraignments were not completed by the end of Tuesday.

“If it’s not within the law, the people must be released,” said Deputy Larry Mead.

The emergency bill extended the arraignment deadline to seven working days for the Los Angeles suspects. Reiner, however, requested only an additional 48-hour waiver of the rule.

“In order to arraign,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), Assembly manager of the bill, “they need the police reports. And the cops are still in the streets, keeping the peace, and not at their desks doing paperwork.”

He said the bill “will keep L.A. a little bit safer as we rebuild.”

The measure, quickly patched together and inserted into a pending bill by Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), applies only to those arrested on felony charges in connection with the rioting, touched off last week by the verdicts in the beating of Rodney G. King.

“There’s only one thing worse than a bad verdict and that’s no verdict at all because of an incredibly overextended judicial system,” Roberti said.

The bill, which will expire June 1, does not change the two-day arraignment period for defendants arrested for felonies unrelated to the rioting.

Likewise, it would not apply to the thousands of people accused of curfew violations and other misdemeanors whose cases are being processed in mass arraignments. Reiner said he did not see a danger of mass release of misdemeanor defendants, however, because paperwork in those cases is “vastly simpler” and police were able to forward all their cases to the city attorney for filing.

In the wake of the riot arrests, the population of the Los Angeles County jail system has swelled to more than 26,000, a record--and higher than limits established by a federal court.

In an attempt to reduce crowding, sheriff’s officials on Monday instructed law enforcement agencies to “cite out” many misdemeanor suspects, meaning they are released on their own recognizance.

On Tuesday, Sheriff Sherman Block also released statistics giving for the first time a thumbnail sketch of the people his deputies arrested. Of 1,628 arrested on various riot charges by sheriff’s deputies, Block said, 810 are black, 728 Latino and 72 white. Eighteen are listed as “others.”

Block said 82% of those arrested by the Sheriff’s Department are between 16 and 35 years of age.

The city attorney’s office, which handles misdemeanors, through Tuesday had filed charges against 2,159 suspects, mostly for curfew violations or receiving stolen property. Four municipal courts in downtown Los Angeles were used for mass arraignments, along with others in San Fernando, Van Nuys, Hollywood, West Los Angeles and San Pedro.

Reiner’s office, meanwhile, has filed about 1,050 felony cases, mostly for burglary. But Reiner said his deputies may wind up filing several times that number.

“This bill is designed to make sure that the lawlessness in Los Angeles does not go unpunished,” said Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Lockyer noted that a speedy arraignment is intended as a protection for citizens “in ordinary circumstances so they cannot be held incommunicado by the police. But this is an exceptional circumstance.”

In midmorning telephone calls, Reiner began alerting legislative leaders of the unprecedented burden on the courts and the threatened release of accused felons. In a matter of only a few hours, Roberti, who is fighting for political survival in a San Fernando Valley special election, produced a measure to implement the arraignment change.

However, some skeptics questioned whether such a law was needed, indicating that prosecutors already have options at hand for rearresting those who would be released. Others wondered whether the constitutional due process rights of arrested people would be violated by a law that extended their arraignment.

But a legal adviser to the Legislature, who asked that he not be identified, said he believed the courts, in ruling on any due process questions, would give weight to the extraordinary toll of “death, injury and property damage” that occurred in the Los Angeles riots.

Ingram reported from Sacramento and Lieberman from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Jerry Gillam in Sacramento contributed to this story