Newhall Becomes Latest Court to Limit File Access : Information: Three judges have issued a rule to keep names and addresses of crime victims, witnesses secret.

The red-tiled Newhall Municipal Court in suburban Valencia is the sort of quiet place where speeders sheepishly come to pay penance and condominium owners go to trial over the gardening bill.

It’s an unlikely venue for the latest skirmish over the public’s right to an open courthouse, a test triggered by an unforeseen consequence of the ballot success spawned by the emerging victims’ rights movement.

Citing the far-reaching provisions of Proposition 115, the state’s sweeping 1990 anti-crime initiative, the three judges at the Newhall court have issued a formal rule limiting public--and media--access to arrest reports in the open files. The intent is to keep secret the names, addresses and phone numbers in the reports of crime victims and witnesses.

Some other Los Angeles-area Municipal Courts, from the huge downtown-based court to the remote Antelope Municipal Court in the high desert, have adopted similar policies. Orange County Municipal Courts have recently begun limiting access to the reports too.

Legal scholars are critical, saying any such rules run afoul of California tradition and the state’s public records laws--which deem court files and police reports open to the press and public.

“If I were sitting where the press was sitting, I’d be concerned,” said Alan S. Rosenfield, presiding judge of the Newhall court. “But where I sit, this is not a problem.”

There has not yet been any widespread legal challenge to the rules. News organizations, including The Times, have been protesting in individual cases. And, Glen A. Smith, senior staff counsel for The Times, said, “We’re planning to take further legal steps.”

The overriding reason for concern, according to experts in the laws on court access, is that court records in California historically have been public records--even those that contain arrest reports.

Typically, a Municipal Court file begins with a complaint and an arrest report. The complaint, filed by prosecutors, names the person charged with a crime and sets forth a bare-bones version of the alleged law violation.

In Municipal Court, that law could be anything from trespass to homicide. Municipal Court judges preside over the trials of lesser cases, such as trespass. In more serious cases, such as a homicide, a Municipal Court judge sets bail and decides whether to send the case on to Superior Court for a trial. The arrest report, supplied by the police who made the arrest, goes into far more elaborate detail, telling what happened, who was involved and who saw what happened. Judges said they use it to calculate the severity of a crime for purposes of setting bail.

For news reporters, arrest reports often provide the first overview of a developing criminal case, including a suspect’s earliest statements about a crime and police findings at a crime scene. Without them, the public would learn only what authorities want it to know about police action and crimes.

It’s quite proper for judges to have a real concern for protecting the victims of and witnesses to crime, said Michelle Kahn, a San Francisco lawyer and First Amendment specialist. But, she said, that does not justify the far-reaching step of a blanket rule barring access to court files.

“This is an overreaction--but it’s to a real problem,” she said.

Dubbed the Crime Victims Justice Reform Act, Proposition 115 became law in June, 1990, with 57% of the vote. It included a series of provisions aimed at limiting the procedural rights of criminal defendants and at reducing delays in the criminal justice system.

Under the new law, which has been upheld by the state Supreme Court, prosecutors and defense lawyers must trade information about a case before it goes to trial, including the names, addresses and phone numbers of the witnesses to and victims of a crime.

The law goes on to say specifically that a defense lawyer may not, however, share those names, numbers or addresses with a client. The point is to ensure that a criminal defendant may not then rely on that information to harass or harm anyone.

That information, however, is readily available in the arrest reports routinely contained in criminal court files. To fix that discrepancy, the judges at the Newhall court decided last summer to seal those reports in the files, relying on the “apparent intent” of the new law to protect victims and witnesses.

In issuing the rule, the three Newhall judges relied on a ruling issued in April, 1992, by the Los Angeles County counsel’s office. Deputies there said Proposition 115 requires personal information about victims or witnesses in court files to be sealed.

The Newhall judges are well aware that court files traditionally have been open, said Rosenfield, the court’s presiding judge. But it’s been equally clear in recent years, he said, that there is a new variable in the equation, that victims have defined rights.

With Proposition 115 so specific about secrecy, Rosenfield said, it didn’t seem to make sense to allow court clerks to hand over information that lawyers suddenly could not disclose.

The rule bars the public, the press and even a criminal defendant representing himself from access to the reports in the court files. A news reporter or a defendant representing himself may, however, make a special appeal to a judge for the files.

Rosenfield said he could remember one such hearing over the past few months.

The flaw with such a rule, critics said, is that it fails to take into account the full weight of the First Amendment and of the state’s public records laws.

Since court records are public records, the only way to restrict public access is through an exception specifically closing off specific records, said Terry Francke, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition in Sacramento.

Proposition 115 offered no exception for arrest reports in court files. Yet the Newhall judges figured it did. That, Francke said, is not good enough.

Besides, Francke said, the state’s public records laws make it quite clear that law enforcement agencies must disclose the name, age and address of crime victims--except in certain cases, such as the victim of a sexual assault, or if an investigation is ongoing.

In the usual case, once recorded on a police report, the name, age and address automatically become public record, Francke said. A court clerk lacks the authority to then seal it, he said.

There’s yet another complication: different courts handle the issue quite differently, with a wide range of formal rules, informal policies and uneven procedures. Appeals courts usually frown on such unequal treatment.

The formal rule issued by the judges last summer at the Newhall court, which serves the Santa Clarita Valley, has the same effect as court rules approved by the state Legislature.

The Los Angeles Municipal Court--which serves the various Municipal Courts in Los Angeles, including in the San Fernando Valley--also bars public access to the arrest reports in the files. Again, a judge may permit an end-around the rule.

But the Los Angeles rule was issued by court administrators, not judges, which gives it slightly less legal force--though, practically speaking, the same effect at the courthouse counter.

It’s a formal court rule at the Antelope Municipal Court. There, the public must still request a hearing. But news reporters known to the judges--it’s a small court--can skip the hearing and ask for copies, at 57 cents per page.

Those copies, however, are “sanitized,” meaning witness information is blanked out, Court Administrator Janice Caler said.

The Rio Hondo Municipal Court in El Monte permits public and press access, said Judge Rudolph Diaz, the current chairman of the Municipal Court Presiding Judges Assn. “We certainly don’t want and don’t need tension between ourselves and the media,” he said.

The Santa Monica Municipal Court is betwixt and between, keeping the arrest reports sealed but “struggling” with the issue, Presiding Judge David Finkel said Thursday. He said the court hopes to have a more precise policy by next month.

Last November, a Santa Monica Municipal Court judge unsealed arrest reports in a high-profile case, the beating and robbery of veteran television correspondent Gary Shepard.

“Our goal is to arrive at an ethical answer,” Finkel said Thursday. “And we’re trying to harmonize the issues without the courts becoming the bad guy in this drama.”