Judge ‘Tampered’ With Case Documents, Complaint Says

Last November, Jose John Lopez found himself in Municipal Court in Santa Ana, Division 203, facing three misdemeanor charges of abusing his live-in girlfriend.

Lopez, 22, of Orange, who is poor and was unemployed at the time, said he watched, bewildered, as Municipal Judge Claude E. Whitney worked his way through a stack of case files, devoting less than a minute to each defendant. It seemed like everyone was being shipped off to jail, Lopez recalled.

When it was Lopez’s turn, the judge refused to hear his defense, Lopez said. He was never told he had a constitutional right to speak with a court-appointed attorney--in effect leaving Lopez to act as his own legal advocate, he said.

“I tried to tell him that my girlfriend didn’t want (to press) charges against me,” Lopez said during an interview. “But he didn’t want to hear it.”

Fearful that contesting the charges could get him a stiffer sentence, Lopez pleaded guilty to injuring his live-in girlfriend and was sentenced to 60 days in jail. He was never told that he might have been eligible for a domestic-dispute program that would have placed him in counseling instead of jail.

Lopez is one of seven impoverished individuals who joined the Orange County public defender’s office in claiming that Whitney denied them their constitutional right to an attorney. In Lopez’s case, the public defenders also claim more serious violations.

The complaint says Whitney “tampered” with court documents to show that Lopez pleaded guilty to a charge of failing to pay a fine stemming from an arrest for driving without a license and speeding. The public defenders say that Lopez, in fact, only pleaded guilty to violating probation on an earlier charge.

The court records “now reflect something that never happened,” according to the complaint.

The complaint has been filed with the state Commission on Judicial Performance, the body that handles allegations of judicial misconduct. The commission has the ability to take disciplinary action against judges, ranging from a private admonishment to removal from the bench.

Officials at the Orange County Municipal Court clerk’s office say they are reviewing cases in which complaints arose, and believe that some innocent clerical errors may have taken place. Whitney declined to comment.

Judge James M. Brooks, presiding judge of Central Municipal Court in Santa Ana, has agreed to allow Lopez and six other men and women named in the complaint to withdraw their earlier pleas.

Lopez said he is still confused about the events that took place in Whitney’s courtroom on Nov. 5, 1992.

“I was so nervous in court. It all happened so fast--I still don’t know what happened,” said Lopez, who said his jail stint cost him his job at a supermarket. “The judge didn’t have time for us, it was just one by one, boom, jail.”

Lopez said he was never notified that he had a right to speak with a court-appointed attorney if he could not afford private counsel. He said he asked to be sentenced to counseling instead of jail, but the judge refused.

“He told me to go get counseling on my own time,” Lopez said. “I wish I had had an attorney with me (during the case). I didn’t know what was going on.”

Lopez said he is glad that the public defenders have taken up his case. He said he wants to be sure that the charge is removed from his record. But that won’t make up for the time he had to spend in jail, he said.

“I want it off my record, but I had to go to jail for this,” Lopez said.