Dist. Atty. Urged to Void 3,000 O.C. Guilty Pleas

The American Civil Liberties Union, charging that the district attorney’s office must share the blame for the “railroading” of poor defendants in Orange County, asked prosecutors Wednesday to throw out nearly 3,000 guilty pleas accepted by a judge who allegedly deprived suspects of their constitutional rights.

The extraordinary request grew out of recent allegations that a Municipal Court judge systematically denied lawyers to many indigent defendants, producing frequent guilty pleas by threatening to prolong their cases while they waited in jail.

Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi, claiming that the ACLU was merely “grandstanding” to win public attention, said the demand that he request dismissal of thousands of convictions was “misdirected.”

The exchange marked the latest round in a flurry of allegations that began with a formal complaint by the Orange County public defender’s office to the state about Judge Claude E. Whitney’s conduct during arraignments in his Santa Ana courtroom between last July and December.

That complaint, first publicly disclosed in The Times last month, led to a December agreement between the public defender and the Municipal Court system, ensuring that anyone who had entered a guilty plea in Whitney’s court can now withdraw it.

But the ACLU’s Orange County chapter, in a letter to the district attorney Wednesday, said authorities must do more, by moving aggressively “to restore confidence in our courts” in the wake of the allegations.

Instead of merely allowing defendants to petition for a new hearing, the ACLU urged the district attorney to dismiss all guilty and no-contest pleas among an estimated 3,000 to 3,500 defendants who appeared before Whitney. A court official said that could amount to 80% of the total.

Robert B. Kuhel, administrative officer for Central Orange County Municipal Court in Santa Ana, said it is unlikely that anyone sentenced by Whitney as late as December still remains in jail. Typical misdemeanor sentences in Whitney’s court ranged from five days to one month. The judge last heard arraignments in December.

All the cases in question involve defendants who were in custody in Whitney’s courtroom for misdemeanor charges ranging from drug and traffic offenses to domestic disputes.

The state Commission on Judicial Performance, a watchdog agency that probes charges of judicial misconduct, is reviewing the public defender’s allegations.

Whitney could not be reached for comment Wednesday. His boss, Presiding Central Municipal Court Judge James M. Brooks, refused to discuss the ACLU request. Brooks has previously denied any systematic wrongdoing by Whitney at arraignments, insisting that the public defender has raised the charges in an effort to undermine Whitney’s stiff sentencing policies.

The ACLU, however, said its sweeping request was justified by allegations that Whitney had regularly failed to offer defendants the right to an attorney before they entered their pleas. In addition, the public defender and the ACLU said, Whitney sometimes ordered public defenders not to confer with defendants, even locking them out of his courtroom.

The public defender has also alleged that Whitney denied people the right to bail hearings, failed to provide Spanish-speaking interpreters to aid defendants and sentenced to jail some people eligible for diversion programs outside of jail.

“The ACLU believes that the district attorney must bear some of the burden of responsibility for the denial of justice to these defendants. . . . (Prosecutors) had a duty to see that proper procedures were followed,” wrote Corona del Mar attorney Patricia Herzog and retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Paul Egly, writing for the ACLU’s local chapter.

“The picture of Orange County justice, railroading indigent defendants through the municipal courts without the advice and counsel they were entitled to under the constitutions of the United States and the State of California, is not a pretty one,” the letter said. “An action by you, such as the one suggested above, would do much to restore confidence in our courts.”

Herzog said the Orange County ACLU has never made a legal request as sweeping as the one Wednesday, and Egly acknowledged that a review of several thousand cases would certainly be a huge undertaking. But for many defendants, Egly said, the harm has gone beyond the stigma of a guilty plea.

“A guilty plea has many implications--large financial penalties or fines, and it goes on (a defendant’s) record,” Egly said.

If the district attorney’s office rejects the ACLU’s request, the organization would consider filing a lawsuit to force the issue, Herzog said.

“There is no question that the district attorney is obligated to see that justice is done as well as prosecutions,” said Dick Herman, a private attorney who works on ACLU-related matters. “The district attorney’s historical policy of ignoring constitutional rights in this county is certainly partially responsible for this abuse at the hands of the system.”

But Capizzi rejected claims that his office should have guarded against the possibility of judicial abuse by Whitney, saying that there is rarely a prosecutor present at misdemeanor arraignments. His office usually becomes involved directly in such cases only after an arraignment, Capizzi said.

The district attorney said he was also bothered that the ACLU released its letter to the press on the same day that it reached his office.

“I’m singularly unimpressed with people who communicate with us and the press” at the same time, he said. “Their motives are immediately suspect. . . . This is a transparent attempt to woo the press.”

Capizzi said he was “not used to getting letters that ask us to look into thousands of cases and set them aside.” While the prosecutor would not say how he will respond to the ACLU’s letter, he contended that “the request has been misdirected” because it should have gone to the public defender instead.

But Butler, the public defender, said he believes that the request was properly made of the district attorney because prosecutors were present during court proceedings. Butler said prosecutors have case files and records from the disputed cases, while the public defender’s office does not.

Capizzi “has to decide whether there is some duty or obligation to proceed,” Butler said.

Butler declined to comment on the specific elements of the ACLU request, but he did agree with the civil liberties group’s concerns about the impact that the allegations have had on the local courts.

“The integrity of the system is somewhat tenuous,” Butler said.

Times staff writers Dan Weikel and Mark I. Pinsky contributed to this report.