Rancher Gets No Prison Time in Sentence Change

A Ventura County flower rancher originally charged with enslaving Mexican laborers will spend no time in prison following a change in sentence Monday by a federal judge who found that incarceration would cost dozens more farm workers their jobs.

U. S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall in Los Angeles changed the three-year prison sentence of Edwin M. Ives, 57, to one year in a halfway house and two years of house arrest under electronic surveillance.

Instead of reporting to a minimum-security prison in Boron, as favored by federal corrections officials, the rancher will now be free during the day to go to work and attend religious services. He has remained free pending a requested change of sentence.

Ives, who employs up to 100 workers at his 50-acre Somis compound, must still pay $1.5 million in restitution. About 200 former employees have already received most of the money.

Ives was initially sentenced in September after he pleaded guilty to seven criminal violations of labor and immigration law, including transporting and harboring undocumented immigrants and payment of substandard wages.

But Marshall said she had seen no evidence of slavery, extortion or racketeering by Ives--charges that brought the case international notoriety as the largest slavery prosecution in U. S. history when it broke in 1990.

Ives’ attorneys said Monday that the change in sentence was another sign that the case against Ives was never as serious as it was reputed to be.

“What this shows me is that ultimately justice prevails,” defense lawyer Robert Talcott said. “This reflects what we’ve been saying for three years, that this was a case that was grossly and improperly exaggerated by the government.”

But federal prosecutors, who had once hailed Ives’ fine and three-year sentence as a strong message to abusive employers, said Monday’s change is more of a reflection of concern for Ives’ current employees--and an effort to save the government money.

Marshall apparently embraced defense arguments that without Ives, the ranch would founder under a deepening depression in the ornamental flower business.

“The result of him being removed would have been hardship to a hundred employees and their families,” Talcott said.

But Assistant U. S. Atty. Carol Gillam said Ives’ advancing age and strained federal prison budgets also came into play.

“She seemed to focus more on the fact that he would not pose a threat to society and that it was not so important for him to occupy a Bureau of Prisons bed,” Gillam said.

Under the new sentence, Ives will probably stay at a halfway house in Los Angeles, paying his own room and board of about $1,500 a month, Gillam said. He will begin serving his sentence once it is certain where he will stay.

“Perhaps we do sometimes focus too much on prisons and maybe the judge was trying to reach a just result here,” Gillam said. “But I am certainly disappointed that the judge did not see fit for him to spend some time in a jail-type facility.”

Marshall was allowed to modify her sentence under a rule of criminal procedure in effect at the time of Ives’ crimes--1985 to 1989. That rule allowed a judge to adjust a sentence if there was a substantial change of circumstance from the time of the sentence.

Ives had not begun to serve his sentence because of an appeal. Marshall set the new sentencing hearing Monday so that it would not interfere with Ives’ winter harvest, prosecutors said.

Although prosecutors dropped their original slavery charge in a plea bargain, they have continued to argue that Ives virtually imprisoned laborers recruited from rural Mexican villages during the 1980s, forcing them to work for sub-minimum wages and buy the necessities of life from a company store.

Times staff writer Fred Alvarez contributed to this story.