Justice System Intimidates Vietnamese, State Panel Told : Hearing: A speaker suggests educating the immigrants about the legal system. The judicial committee is asked to advocate the hiring of minorities.

Vietnamese immigrants in Orange County often shun the court system, instead preferring to settle disputes among themselves by applying centuries-old systems of justice from their motherland, a judicial panel was told Saturday.

“A lot of Vietnamese people are afraid to come to court,” Thinh V. Doan, a Westminster attorney, said Saturday. “A lot of cruel criminal acts go unreported because (the Vietnamese) are afraid of retaliation, they’re afraid of the police and the courts. They get a subpoena and they get very scared.”

Doan was one of two Vietnamese speakers to address a public hearing of the Judicial Council Advisory Committee on Racial and Ethnic Bias.

Only about a dozen people attended the session at Rancho Santiago College, which was the last of 11 such hearings held statewide since February. Earlier in the week, participants packed two similar sessions in Los Angeles, forcing the committee to place time limits on speakers so that everyone could address the panel.

The attorney and Duc Hong, a Vietnamese translator at Municipal Court in Santa Ana, came to the hearing to serve as interpreters. They were asked to tell the panel about their experiences after no other Vietnamese participants showed up.

Hong said Vietnamese immigrants in Orange County “run away at the sight of police because police are associated with intimidation and torture back in Vietnam.”

At least 80% of the Vietnamese immigrants in Orange County came from small villages in their homeland, Hong said. “They set their own rules in the villages,” he said, adding that those practices have been transferred to Orange County.

“Do they feel that when they come to court they are forced to abandon their rules and to have their disputes resolved by rules they don’t understand?” asked Judge Reuben Ortega, a committee member and an associate justice of the 2nd Appellate District in Los Angeles.

“Most likely yes,” Hong replied.

Hong said the judicial system should use the schools to educate the immigrant community about the courts and urged the panel to advocate the hiring of minorities throughout the legal system.

Another speaker, Eddie J. Gage Jr. of Fullerton, made a similar suggestion.

Gage, who represented a group called Christians for African-American Unity and Self Expression, called for mandatory sentencing, “which stipulates that if you commit this crime you receive this sentence.”

“It takes (the sentencing) out of the judges’ hands,” Gage said.

He cited the case of a Korean grocer in Los Angeles who was convicted of manslaughter for shooting a 15-year-old black teen-ager and was sentenced to probation. The case outraged the black community. Gage said the grocer would have been sentenced to jail if mandatory sentences were required.

California Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas appointed the 28-member committee last year to look into the extent of racial and ethnic bias in California’s court system.

Retired state Supreme Court Justice John A. Arguelles, who is co-chair of the committee, said he was surprised by the low turnout Saturday. The Irvine resident said the panel wanted to allow community leaders to voice their complaints and suggestions about improving fairness in California courts before it presents its report to the chief justice.

Arguelles said the study was very relevant because “California is at the forefront of a social and demographical transformation.”

“By the year 2000, California will be a majority of minorities,” Arguelles said, pointing out that minorities comprised 36% of the population in Orange County and 60% in Los Angeles County.

“The country is looking to California for leadership on this issue,” he said.