Charges Filed in Shooting Spree Case : Crime: A woman is accused of firing at homes and driving drunk. Her case exposes flaws of justice system, an official says.

A 47-year-old woman accused of going on a shooting spree while cruising Thousand Oaks streets was charged Thursday with 15 criminal counts of shooting at occupied houses and unoccupied cars, drunk driving and malicious mischief, prosecutors said.

A high-ranking county probation official acknowledged that the case of Kathleen Ann Quinn illustrates flaws in the justice system, which allowed the woman to leave jail on $5,000 bail after her arrest Sunday even though she was booked on a weapons charge and had been placed on probation a month earlier.

“In my experience, and I’ve been out here a long time, generally on weapons cases you don’t get out without going to court,” said Douglas R. Hansen of the Corrections Services Agency.

No one was hurt by Quinn’s shooting spree Sunday, although bullets tore through seven homes with children and others inside them.

Officials, though, said Quinn was released on a $5,000 bail because she was booked on a single count of shooting at a house and drunken driving.

Quinn was placed on probation in another case last month after pleading guilty to public drunkenness at the Ivy Lawn Cemetery in Ventura. A California Highway Patrol officer confiscated a loaded handgun from her case, but she was not charged with a weapons violation.

“When there is a weapon involved, that is kind of a red flag through the system,” said Hansen, a probation officer in the county for more than 30 years. “When you put alcohol and weapons together, some bad things are going to happen.”

Prosecutors on Monday charged Quinn with seven counts of shooting at occupied houses, five counts of shooting at unoccupied vehicles, two counts of driving under the influence and one count of malicious mischief, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald M. Grant.

But a spokesman for the Ventura County district attorney’s office said it was unclear on Thursday why she was not charged with a weapons violation in the previous case.

“We will look into her whole criminal history, including that gun in the previous case in determining a disposition in this matter,” said Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin J. McGee.

In the first case, Quinn was arrested at 9:45 p.m. on Oct. 24. A guard at the cemetery called the California Highway Patrol after finding Quinn lying on the grass next to a grave site with a half-full bottle of rum, a CHP report says.

The cemetery had closed five hours earlier. A trooper arrived and questioned the woman.

“As I was talking to Ms. Quinn, I could see that she had a hard time standing without falling and weaving, and that she had a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage on her breath,” the trooper wrote in his report.

The officer said Quinn became verbally abusive and was arrested. The gun was found on the front seat when the trooper searched the woman’s car.

Quinn waived her right to an attorney and pleaded guilty to public intoxication on Nov. 24. Deputy Dist. Atty. John L. Russell said he asked in Municipal Court to have the gun considered as a condition of Quinn’s probation. Court records show that a judge ordered the gun destroyed and ordered that Quinn be fined $100 and placed on two years’ probation.

Specifically, she was placed on so-called summary probation, which is unsupervised and makes her freedom contingent primarily on her not committing any other crime.

Hansen of the Corrections Services Agency said there is a big difference between formal probation and summary probation.

Summary probation, he said, “really isn’t probation at all. It’s really a conditional and revocable release.”

Criminal defendants, he said, must “report to the court if they move or get arrested or something like that. But no one is checking up on them.”

Summary probation is reserved for relatively minor offenders. Officials said that even though she had a loaded handgun, Quinn appeared to have been considered a minor offender because she was only charged with public intoxication.

On the other hand, Hansen said Quinn probably would not be out on bail today had she been placed on the more stringent formal probation.

“If it was formal probation, we could place a hold on her,” he said. “That’s a weakness in the conditional-release system.”

Municipal Court Presiding Judge Bruce A. Clark, however, defended unsupervised probation as useful in the vast majority of cases. He said the court system does not have the resources to formally supervise every offender, especially those convicted of minor misdemeanors.

“I don’t think it exposes a weakness in the system,” Clark said. “It just demonstrates the difficulty in predicting the future behavior in a human being.”

Quinn’s phone number has been disconnected and she could not be reached for comment.

She is scheduled to be arraigned in Municipal Court today.

Her attorney, Arthur Scovis of Thousand Oaks, said he expects his client to be charged with violation of probation and declined further comment.