Drywallers Won’t Face Felony Charges

The Orange County district attorney Monday dropped felony charges of conspiracy to kidnap against 148 striking drywall workers, dozens of whom remained in jail on a lesser charge or were being held to face possible deportation proceedings as illegal immigrants.

The workers were arrested en masse Thursday morning in Mission Viejo after a drywall company called sheriff’s deputies and said the men had rushed onto a housing tract, punched holes in drywall and abducted workers.

But prosecutors decided Monday that there was insufficient evidence to tie anyone to the alleged kidnaping. They offered to let the men go free if they would plead guilty to trespass.

None accepted the deal.

“I thought it was a very fair offer,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Wallace J. Wade said. “I’m surprised they didn’t take it.”

Vicky Briley, a deputy public defender, also expressed surprise: “I would think these men would have taken the offer of walking free and joining their families. That’s a very big carrot.”

Many of those who pleaded not guilty were later asked to post $10,000 bail. As a result, court officials said, they may spend as long as another month in jail awaiting trial. Others were being held for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The squat gray concrete courthouse in Laguna Niguel was a scene of bedlam much of the day Monday as two dozen wives of jailed drywallers raced anxiously from one courtroom to another to learn the fate of their husbands. Some pushed small children in strollers. Some families have more than a dozen relatives in jail.

Because they could not afford to hire their own attorneys, all of the workers were represented by public defenders and private attorneys appointed by the court.

Several defense attorneys complained that the workers were being victimized for their labor actions.

A five-figure bail for a misdemeanor is “abusive and excessive,” said Chief Deputy Public Defender Carl C. Holmes, who pointed out that a third of the people who commit misdemeanors in Orange County receive tickets and are released.

Holmes said the public defenders will ask a Superior Court judge to reduce the bail.

The Municipal Court, where all criminal suspects are formally charged, held an unusual night session to handle the cases. By 9 p.m. Monday, all but two dozen of the men had been arraigned, and hearings were set to continue into the night so the court would be able to handle a busy calendar on Tuesday, prosecutor Wade said.

Municipal Court Judge Ronald P. Kreber set bail for those who refused to plead guilty to trespass. Some who pleaded not guilty--particularly those who had clean records--were released without bail; others had their bails set lower.

Municipal Court Judge Arthur G. Koelle was also hearing cases. In the afternoon, a third judge, Commissioner Kenneth Schwartz, joined them.

The men were brought from jail in groups of 10 to wait in a holding cell in the Laguna Niguel courthouse. Many of the men stood in turn to tell Kreber in Spanish: “I am innocent.”

Kreber said he set bail at $10,000 because “the court believes the defendants may go right back to the same activity.”

Defense attorneys also criticized the amount of attention the INS is paying the cases, calling it unusual for that agency to take an interest in misdemeanor complaints.

The day after the men were arrested, the INS had identified 88 as illegal immigrants, and the agency later said it would probably deport them even if they are found not guilty of trespass. Both the INS and the Sheriff’s Department called that treatment routine, saying the INS screens all arrests at the jail.

An INS spokesman also said the agency so far lacks any “substantially reliable” information to press federal charges against employers who may have hired the men and that it has no plans to investigate the employers.

“I anticipate that will change, that I will start getting telephone calls coming into this office or in the Orange County office identifying contractor violations,” said John Brechtel of the INS Los Angeles office.

Some drywall contractors have been accused of paying employees in cash and drugs and of failing to make workers’ income tax and workers compensation payments, according to employees, other drywall companies and state tax officials.

Striking drywall workers, most of whom are Mexican immigrants, walked off construction sites from Ventura County to the Mexican border five weeks ago, demanding an increase to wages they say average $300 for a 60-hour week.

There may be as many as 4,000 drywall hangers in Southern California. But perhaps fewer than 1,000 have been picketing and--according to police and builders--occasionally sneaking onto housing tracts to punch holes in drywall and to intimidate workers.

The drywallers have shut down dozens of housing tracts in Orange, San Diego, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Los Angeles and Ventura counties, where drywall companies say they pay slightly higher wages and where the strikers are not as well-organized, have been less affected.

Drywall is nailed onto the wooden frame of a structure to form its inner walls. The business was unionized until the early 1980s and paid good wages, in some cases approximately twice what workers are making now.

Some of the men who have walked off their jobs were among those hired 10 years ago at lower wages by the home builders and the drywall companies in order to break the union.

There have been sporadic arrests around Southern California in the past three weeks. But last week’s mass arrest was the largest in memory in Orange County.

According to sheriff’s deputies, it was precipitated when about 100 men raced onto a Brighton Homes construction site about 7 a.m. Thursday at the corner of Oso Viejo and La Paz Road in Mission Viejo. They drove off shortly after.

Sheriff’s deputies caught up with a 14-truck-and-car caravan a few minutes later. The six men allegedly abducted were released unharmed. Deputies arrested the 148 men and they also detained two juveniles. Later that day, top Sheriff’s Department officials decided to charge the men with felony conspiracy to commit kidnaping, a spokesman said.

The decision by the district attorney’s office Monday to drop the kidnap charges appeared to catch the Sheriff’s Department off guard. The department defended its handling of the incident in a statement released Monday afternoon. That statement said the arrests had been “a tremendous drain” on the staff and resources. The arrests, the statement said, were made “to protect the safety of the people and property involved. . . . We still stand behind those decisions.”

However, Deputy Dist. Atty. Wade said that “most of the crime reports I’ve seen don’t indicate a felony was committed by people who can be identified.”

So Wade--in return for the workers’ guilty plea to trespass--offered in court to release the men with a sentence of time served; a year’s informal probation without a probation officer, and a promise not to trespass again.

Again Monday, as they had during the weekend, supporters of the arrested men showed up in force at the courthouse and later at Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange. About 80 men, women and children marched in support of the jailed drywall workers. The loud but peaceful demonstration was held on a sidewalk outside the jail. No arrests were made.

Shouting “We want justice!,” the demonstrators also chanted in Spanish that “the people united never will be defeated.”

One demonstrator, Mario Reyes, 49, of Anaheim, said that those protesting wanted the jailed drywall workers to know “they are not alone; the community is with them.”

Nancy Vasquez, 13, of Fullerton, whose father, Antonio Vasquez, was arrested Thursday, said: “We’re just fighting for justice. We want the job site bosses to pay for what we work for.”

Among those at the courthouse was Maria Navarro, 23, who gave birth to her second child--a boy--three weeks ago, in the midst of the strike. The water was supposed to be shut off in her Buena Park home Monday; meanwhile she waited for a glimpse of her husband, Raul.

“It’s not fair,” she said. “He just wants to work.”

Jesus Gomez, a striking drywaller who acted as a spokesman for the group, said the men not in jail Monday were continuing to picket a few job sites around the region.

“This isn’t going to stop us,” Gomez said. “We’re still going to picket.”

Times staff writer Len Hall contributed to this report.