Judge Rebuts Claim He Denies the Poor Their Legal Rights

A Municipal Court judge under investigation for allegedly denying hundreds of poor defendants their basic constitutional rights conducted his court properly and with sound legal advice from his colleagues on the bench, the judge’s attorney said Tuesday.

In a detailed rebuttal to a lengthy complaint brought by the public defender’s office, Ronald G. Brower, a criminal law specialist, defended Judge Claude E. Whitney’s six-month stint last year in one of the county’s busiest arraignment courts.

Since January, Brower’s client has been under investigation by the state Commission on Judicial Performance, a watchdog agency that looks into complaints of misconduct involving the state judiciary.

The commission has been seeking to determine whether Whitney, pursuing a court policy aimed at maintaining a high rate of guilty pleas, excluded defense attorneys from the arraignments of defendants too poor to afford bail. If wrongdoing is found, Whitney could face a wide range of disciplinary actions, from simple reprimands to removal from the bench.

“There was a personality clash, and a misperception about his methods,” Brower said. “Judge Whitney was doing it properly. . . . He did not put public defenders out of the courtroom to deprive anyone of counsel.”

Orange County Public Defender Ronald Y. Butler, whose office defends those too poor to afford private attorneys, declined to comment Tuesday, saying it would be inappropriate given the confidentiality of the commission’s proceedings.

Victoria B. Henley, director and chief counsel of the Commission on Judicial Performance, also declined to comment on the investigation, except to say that no decision on any possible charges has yet been made.

The 325-page complaint, prepared by Deputy Public Defender Allyn Jaffrey, charges that Whitney prevented defendants from exercising their right to an attorney, and ordered those asking for one to return to jail for a week, ostensibly while a search for attorneys was underway.

It also alleges that Whitney illegally denied defendants bail hearings, did not provide adequate interpreters to non-English speakers, handled cases at such a breakneck pace that defendants were often confused, and, in some instances, forbade defense attorneys from talking to people who requested a lawyer.

In the aftermath of the complaint, the Orange County Bar Assn. passed an unprecedented resolution in April stating “there was systematic denial of due process to many criminal defendants representing themselves at arraignment before Judge Claude Whitney.” A few months later, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights opened a formal investigation into the allegations lodged against the judge.

Since the controversy began, Whitney has declined to comment. But in May he defended himself in a formal letter to the judicial performance commission. On Tuesday, Brower discussed the contents of the response. But citing the confidential nature of the commission’s investigation, he declined to provide The Times a copy of the letter.

Attacking one of the complaint’s main charges, Brower said Whitney properly advised defendants that they had a right to defense counsel at all stages of the court process.

The public defender claims, however, that Whitney failed to explain that arraignment is one of those stages, leaving many defendants ignorant about their rights before they pleaded guilty.

“There are case precedents,” Brower said, “where the simple advisement that you can have an attorney at ‘all stages’ of the proceeding is sufficient advisement to allow a plea of guilty to stand.”

In some of the cases the public defender has complained about, Brower said, the defendants signed so-called Tahl forms, a list of rights that they acknowledged waiving at the time of their guilty pleas.

Similarly, Whitney contends that non-English-speaking defendants were fully advised of their constitutional rights by interpreters, who have provided the judge a declaration to that effect.

Brower also downplayed the public defender’s research purportedly showing that Whitney spent on average no more than 45 seconds per case, moving so fast that defendants were unable to understand what was going on.

Many of those cases, Brower said, involved minor offenses--such as public drunkenness, sleeping in the park or public disturbances--that normally can be disposed of very rapidly without compromising quality.

“It is a heavy-duty calendar,” Brower said. “You have to move it quickly because following arraignments you have to handle preliminary hearings.”

Whitney claims that throughout his assignment in arraignment court, he has sought advice on the law from other Central Municipal Court judges. At the time of his appointment to the bench by then-Gov. George Deukmejian, Whitney was a divorce lawyer with very little, if any, experience with criminal law.

“He called that calendar the way it has been for as long as I can remember,” Brower said. “His advisement by his colleagues was adequate and legally proper. If his practices have been misperceived then he would be glad to modify them.”

Questioning the public defender’s complaint, Brower said the office’s lawyers never complained about Whitney’s conduct when he performed arraignments for six months in 1990, roughly a year after being appointed to the bench. Brower asserted that deputy public defenders were regularly present in his courtroom at that time.

Brower says the complaint appears to have its roots in a personality conflict between the judge and some deputy public defenders, including Deputy Public Defender Jeff Lund.

Lund, who heads Municipal Court operations for the public defender’s Santa Ana office, said in a sworn statement that Whitney threw him out of court when he asked the judge to tell defendants that the public defender was available to talk to them.

At least one other deputy public defender, Lorene Mies, said under oath that she was ordered away from defendants who had lined up in a court holding cell to talk to her.

Brower contended that Lund was ordered out of the courtroom because he was asking the clerk for things in court files, violating a posted rule forbidding contact with the clerk while court is in session.

“There is a public defender who says he was yelled at and that he left the courtroom,” Brower said. “The public defender is not a lawyer for a client until the judge makes the appointment.”

Throwing Lund out of the court, Brower said, has caused so much difficulty for Whitney that the judge wishes he had handled it differently to avoid the misperceptions that are now haunting him.

In support of Whitney, Brower said the Commission on Judicial Performance has received scores of letters from Orange County lawyers who said they have had positive experiences in the judge’s courtroom over the years.