D.A. Challenges Work Furlough Sentences : Punishment: Prosecutor asks that two drunk drivers be resentenced in test of judges’ right to send convicts to private centers.

For the first time, the district attorney’s office has formally challenged the right of judges in San Diego County to sentence convicts to private work furlough centers.

Taking issue with the placement this year of two convicted drunk drivers in private facilities in San Diego and El Cajon for 60-day sentences each, Deputy Dist. Atty. Dana C. Greisen has asked Superior Court Judge James A. Malkus to vacate the convicts’ terms and resentence them to 60 days each in County Jail.

Superior Court Judge Robert E. May has scheduled a hearing on the matter for Sept. 16, which is the first time the legality of work furlough placements will be argued in San Diego County.

Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller has long opposed placements in private work furlough facilities, which accept low-risk criminals who must be employed and pay for their own room and board.

Although he believes the centers are illegal because they are not under contract to the county and has ordered his attorneys to oppose placement to any facility, Miller had never legally fought sentencing to private work furlough.

Proponents of the centers say that they are crucial to help ease jail crowding, and that without them convicts would be set free instead.

Greisen said he took the initiative to challenge the sentences of two drunk drivers because he believes the law clearly does not allow their entry into work furlough. Miller says he supports the action.

In one of the cases, a 25-year-old El Cajon man was arrested in March by the California Highway Patrol for going about 100 m.p.h. on Interstate 8.

Duane Eugene Snipes had a blood alcohol level of 0.11 and eventually pleaded guilty to driving under the influence, and admitted to driving recklessly and at excessive speeds, prosecutors allege. The legal limit is 0.08.

Snipes was sentenced to 60 days in an El Cajon work furlough center.

In the second case, Brian Mark Worley, 29, of Escondido, was charged in March with driving on California 94 while drunk. He was going in excess of 95 m.p.h. and had a blood alcohol level of 0.12. Worley was sentenced to 60 days at Mid City Work Furlough in San Diego.

Charges of excessive speed and reckless driving during a drunk driving arrest warrant a mandatory sentence in County Jail, Greisen argued.

But, in both cases, Municipal Judges Lantz Lewis and Christine Koch Goldsmith, citing a 1991 state law, said private work furlough could be substituted for jail time.

“That’s an over-broad ruling,” Greisen said, adding in his court brief that the state law is designed to allow a defendant credit toward mandatory jail time by residing in a private work furlough facility, not keep a convict out of jail outright.

The law was created, he said, because of an unrelated problem with state funding for parole supervision and should not be used as a substitute for jail time.

Greisen also cited a 1990 state attorney general’s opinion that says the state trial court has no authority to place convicts into private work furlough without a county contract.

Following a series of articles this year in The Times, which reported that private work furlough facilities operate with no law enforcement supervision and minimal screening of convicts, the county Board of Supervisors ordered stricter scrutiny of the businesses.

The county staff is negotiating a contract with former San Diego Charger Ernest H. Wright, who operates an 87-bed facility in Logan Heights and has received city approval for 438 beds in Sorrento Valley. If an agreement is reached, county supervisors want staff to ask state court judges to limit their referrals to the county-supervised facility.

So far, Wright has balked at the money the county wants to supervise the facility, but the two parties are still negotiating.

While that occurs, Greisen of the district attorney’s office said he wants a legal ruling once and for all over whether judges can continue to sentence convicts to private work furlough.

“Everytime we object to these placements in court, a judge tells me to argue my case and file a motion,” Greisen said. “I just got sick of arguing this without backing it up so I filed (one).”

The two drunk-driving defendants in the case are free pending the Sept. 16 hearing, which is to include a representative each from the county counsel’s office, the state attorney general’s office, the public defender’s office and Mid City Work Furlough.

In opposing the district attorney’s motion, deputy public defender Jeffrey E. Thoma argued that both Municipal Court judges were within their rights to place both defendants in private work furlough.