Court Asked to Void Guilty Pleas : Judiciary: Those accepted by a municipal judge who is accused of depriving defendants of their constitutional rights should be thrown out, the ACLU says.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday asked Central Orange County Municipal Court to throw out thousands of guilty pleas accepted by a judge who is under investigation for allegedly depriving defendants of their constitutional rights.

In a letter addressed to Presiding Judge James M. Brooks, Dick Herman, a private attorney who works on behalf of the ACLU, requested that the court set aside or void all guilty pleas entered by defendants who were denied defense counsel during arraignments before Judge Claude E. Whitney.

Among other things, Whitney has been accused of coercing an extraordinary number of guilty pleas from poor defendants by routinely ordering those requesting attorneys back to jail for a week until lawyers could be found for them. At the same time, the judge was reportedly excluding from his courtroom public defenders whose job it is to defend people who cannot afford an attorney.

The state Commission on Judicial Performance, which monitors the judiciary, is now investigating the allegations.

“The judge, the community, and the court system will be well served if Brooks does what we suggest,” said Herman, who made the request to Municipal Court in a two-page letter. “The solutions (proposed so far) have not sufficiently addressed the situation. It is time . . . to solve the problems and make amends for what happened.”

Judge Brooks, who has steadfastly defended Whitney throughout the controversy, was unavailable for comment Thursday. Robert B. Kuhel, the top administrative officer for Central Municipal Court, said the ACLU’s request will be considered, but he questioned whether setting aside all the pleas would be appropriate.

Some defendants who did not have attorneys might have made fully informed decisions to plead guilty, Kuhel said, and it is still unclear whether Whitney actually deprived suspects of their constitutional rights.

“No independent person has made a determination that things were not done correctly in Judge Whitney’s courtroom,” Kuhel said. “The Judicial Performance Commission has not made a final judgment. Throwing out the sentences would be difficult to do at this juncture.”

Herman’s request is the latest chapter in the ongoing controversy surrounding Whitney, who presided over one of the county’s busiest arraignment courts from June to December, 1992.

During Whitney’s six-month stint, the Orange County public defender’s office successfully sued to halt what the agency thought was the blatant denial of constitutional rights to upward of 5,000 defendants accused of misdemeanors.

Even after reaching a formal court settlement with Brooks, the public defender believed the abuses to be so egregious that the office filed a 300-plus page complaint with the Judicial Performance Commission in January.

Beside the denial of defense counsel, the complaint alleged that Whitney illegally refused to grant people bail hearings, did not provide adequate interpreters to non-English speakers, handed down the wrong sentences for crimes and, in some instances, removed defense attorneys from his courtroom.

In April, the Orange County Bar Assn. concurred with the position of the public defender and passed an unprecedented resolution declaring that Whitney had violated the rights of defendants.

“In view of the action of Judge Whitney in denying the opportunity of defendants to consult with an attorney prior to making guilty pleas . . . it appears that good grounds exist for vacating the convictions of these defendants,” Herman said in his letter to the court.

The ACLU contends that not enough has been done by the justice system to overturn the guilty pleas in question, although the court has agreed to consider the earlier convictions whenever someone is arrested again and charged with new crimes.

There are vast number of defendants, however, who have served their time and do not know their guilty plea might have been taken illegally, Herman said. The best way to solve that situation is “to wipe the slate clean.”

Should Municipal Court not honor the request to withdraw the convictions, the ACLU is prepared to take other legal actions, including a civil rights lawsuit. “We want to make it clear that the matter will not be dropped if the response is not satisfactory,” Herman said.

Kuhel said the court has worked hard to bring the dispute to an end and will consider the cases in question as they are brought to the court’s attention by the public defender and private defense attorneys.

“We will, in fact, seriously consider the letter,” Kuhel said. “What must be understood is that although there is a stipulated agreement, it is not an admission there was any wrongdoing. Some things are already being done, and some things were being done by Whitney before the court agreement.”

The ACLU’s request to Brooks is the second time it has made a formal request to nullify the guilty pleas taken by Whitney. Earlier this year, the civil rights group asked the Orange County district attorney’s office to set aside the pleas, but the prosecuting agency declined.