Witnesses for Defense to Testify in Ives Case : Courts: The Somis rancher admitted to violations of racketeering, labor and immigration laws. Workers are expected to say they were treated well as judge decides sentence.

Three years after Edwin M. Ives was first charged with enslaving farm workers, his attorneys are scheduled to call witnesses today to testify that the workers were treated well at the rancher’s Somis compound.

U. S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall has set aside three days in March to hear defense testimony before deciding whether to send the 56-year-old Ives to prison.

“We hope what she will be left with is a picture that is a lot closer to reality than the fantasy that was foisted on her by the prosecution,” said Ives’ attorney, Stephen Sadowsky.

Sentencing is expected by early April after the hearings are completed.

Already before Marshall are numerous declarations from laborers who say conditions on Ives’ ranch were nothing like the virtual slave encampment depicted by prosecutors, Sadowsky said.

The judge has also received dozens of letters from Ives supporters arguing for a lenient sentence.

Friends, relatives, business associates, several pastors and rabbis, members of Ives’ temple and neighbors from the Fairfax area in Los Angeles have all vouched for the rancher’s good deeds and integrity, lawyers said.

Ives, 56, pleaded guilty last year to corporate racketeering, the federal government’s first organized-crime conviction in a civil rights case. He also agreed to pay $1.5 million in back wages to 300 former workers, the stiffest fine ever levied in a U. S. immigration case.

Ives, who also admitted to seven criminal violations of labor and immigration law, faces up to 16 years in prison. But he could receive a lesser term or be placed on probation under a plea bargain with federal prosecutors.

In exchange for Ives’ plea, the U. S. attorney’s office agreed to dismiss extortion and peonage counts that brought the case international attention as the largest slavery case in U. S. history when it broke in 1990.

Sadowsky said his witnesses, including former laborers on the ornamental flower ranch, will poke holes in the story of 23 prosecution witnesses who in testimony and declarations painted a picture of cruelty and greed by overseers.

Assistant U. S. Atty. Alfredo X. Jarrin said the truth of the case against Ives was demonstrated by Ives’ guilty pleas and by the inability of defense attorneys to shake six prosecution witnesses during cross-examination over the last two months.

“The reality at the ranch was that for years, hundreds of workers were physically and economically abused and exploited and subjected to scandalous conditions by Ives and his foremen,” Jarrin said.

Ives, seven ranch foremen, a recruiter and a smuggler have all pleaded guilty, and three have been sentenced.

Smuggler Mauro Casares, 66, of Oxnard received the stiffest penalty so far--18 months in prison and $13,443 in restitution. He admitted charging each Mexican laborer he brought to Ives about $435 for transportation and phony immigration documents.

This week’s testimony--and the letters supporting Ives--are expected to reflect contradictions that are central to the bizarre case.

Since Ives was arrested in April, 1990, prosecutors have charged that he became a millionaire by mistreating some of the hemisphere’s poorest and most vulnerable inhabitants.

He recruited Zapotec and Mixtec laborers from the mountain villages of southern Mexico, smuggling them into the country and allegedly imprisoning them behind high gates and barbed-wire fences at his 50-acre compound.

They worked for about $1 an hour, prosecutors said. Their heads allegedly were shaved upon arrival, and virtually every minute of their 16-hour workdays was controlled.

And they were forced to buy the necessities of life at inflated prices from a company store, prosecutors said.

But Sadowsky said Ives is the principal victim in this case.

The rancher’s guilty plea was extorted, he said, by the government’s excessive charges and by its charges against Ives’ wife, Dolly, which were dropped in the plea bargain.

Prosecutors said Ives enslaved hundreds of workers at his compound between 1984 and 1990, first by forbidding them to leave until smuggling fees were paid and then by threatening to turn them in to immigration agents if they fled.

But Sadowsky said that the prosecution’s slavery premise was hogwash and that its case is based on testimony by witnesses hoping for money from Ives.

The lawyer insists that conditions at the Ives ranch were similar to many other labor camps in California. The case would have been a routine labor-and-immigration prosecution, he said, had the government not decided to make an example of the rancher.

Ives has also drawn support from friends who say he is a simple, honest and charitable man who is devoutly religious and would not mistreat workers for extra profit.

Sadowsky said he has also submitted declarations from “a whole slew of people” familiar with conditions on Ives’ Somis ranch: a minister who lived there, neighbors who dropped by, potential partners, suppliers and an employee-relations consultant who worked there for about a month.

“Common sense tells us that if these allegations were even partly true, these people would be aware of them,” the lawyer said.

In an ironic twist, both prosecution and defense lawyers have maintained that they could each produce 100 former Ives employees who would offer opposite accounts of conditions at the ranch.

After defense witnesses testify this month, Ives will probably be sentenced within a couple of weeks, Jarrin said.

At sentencing, the plea bargain requires that Ives turn over $1.5 million in restitution, part of which is expected to come from the sale of a 10-acre Upland citrus grove to the state Department of Transportation for a new freeway.

But Sadowsky said that sale is not complete and banks have refused loans to Ives, so he does not yet have the full $1.5 million.

Nor has Ives, whose net worth was estimated at $5 million in 1990, been able to sell his 50-acre Somis ranch and a nearby 92-acre eucalyptus field in Moorpark, the lawyer said. Ives is asking $7 million for the two ranches, real estate sources have said.

“It’s my guess that if they can’t sell the Upland ranch, they will not have the $1.5 million at sentencing,” Sadowsky said.

Jarrin said the restitution is a key component of the plea bargain and must be paid. “We would have to figure out where we’re going to get the money and come to a reasonable resolution,” he said.

Both lawyers said they are eager to complete the costly, time-consuming case.

Testimony is set today and the next two Mondays in federal court in Los Angeles.