Attorneys Huddle on Drywall Court Cases : Labor: Defendants refuse to plea bargain. Providing speedy trials on strike-related trespassing charges poses scheduling problem.

Attorneys and Municipal Court officials huddled Wednesday to decide how to handle nearly 100 arrested drywall workers who refused to waive their rights to a speedy trial, demanded their own individual attorneys and refused to plea bargain.

The drywall workers, who face trespassing charges, are creating a scheduling nightmare for the criminal courts system in the aftermath of one of the largest mass arrests in county history.

“Court costs for this will only escalate, and it could end up costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Carl C. Holmes, the county’s chief deputy public defender.

For most of the day, Holmes, Assistant Dist. Atty. Wallace J. Wade and Municipal Court Commissioner Kenneth Schwartz worked out details of how to handle the caseload. Huddled over court calendars, they painstakingly assigned courtrooms and court-appointed attorneys and attorneys from the public defender’s office for each of the estimated 100 defendants.

The unusual turn of events occurred after Wade walked into a courthouse corridor and asked dozens of drywall workers who had assembled for their pretrial hearings whether any of them was interested in pleading guilty.

“They said that because they had no lawyers . . . they were not interested in pleading guilty to anything,” Holmes said.

They also refused to waive their rights to a trial within 30 days or to accept any plea bargains with the district attorney’s office, said James S. Sweeney, one of the court-appointed attorneys. “They said they had a right to legal representation and wanted to be represented by individual attorneys.”

One defendant, Martin Aguilar, 20, who was charged with misdemeanor trespassing, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disturbing the peace. Aguilar’s case was closed after he promised the court not to trespass again, Wade said.

“There was no fine,” Wade said, “and he had already spent about five days in jail so he was allowed to leave.”

Wade acknowledged the scheduling difficulty for so many defendants and said it was the largest number of defendants from a mass arrest “that I’m aware of.”

County officials have estimated that costs to process the arrested drywall workers through the criminal justice system had reached almost $50,000 as of July 10. Now, with most of the defendants exercising their right to legal representation, court costs could skyrocket, Holmes said.

“Hey, I’m ready to go to trial right now,” said Pedro Segura, 37, of Fullerton. “That’s why I came down here to the court. I’m not guilty of anything and they want me to say I’m guilty? But all they said was come back July 21.”

Court officials set aside three dates, July 21, July 28 and Aug. 8, for trials for the drywall workers. The court has scheduled a pretrial hearing for July 20, essentially a mass meeting of defense attorneys who have been assigned to the cases. This will be the first time for many of the attorneys to review the evidence and meet their clients. Some will most likely need the help of interpreters, Holmes said.

“Many of these clients have not been able to speak to their attorneys because their attorneys don’t speak Spanish,” Holmes said. “It’s a Keystone Cop situation.”

In an interview in Spanish outside the courthouse, Federico Arriaga of Anaheim said he still does not know what he is charged with, although he was given a court document when he was released on his own recognizance a week ago.

“I call my attorney, but he can’t understand me,” Arriaga said. Pointing to the document, Arriaga said, “I don’t know what this means.”

More than 1,000 drywall workers who are predominantly Mexican immigrants walked off the job across Southern California on June 1, demanding higher wages and union representation.

On July 2, 153 striking drywall workers in Orange County were arrested by sheriff’s deputies after storming a construction site and allegedly forcing six non-striking construction workers to leave the site. Prosecutors later reduced the charges to trespassing and dropped charges altogether against more than 40 men.

After the arrests, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization officials took custody of 74 men but released 22 who produced valid documents.

INS officials said 25 of the striking drywall workers were deported to Mexico early Tuesday evening. The men elected to skip formal hearings and admitted that they were in the country illegally, the INS said. That way there is no formal record of their having been deported. Another 25 are fighting deportation, and two were released on their own recognizance, officials said.

Times staff writers Michael Flagg and Len Hall contributed to this report.