Ruling Voids 175,000 Court Warrants for Arrests : Jurisprudence: The action could mean a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. However, some may be reissued at a later date.

Law enforcement officials have begun canceling at least 175,000 arrest warrants for people who failed to appear in Orange County Municipal Court, spurred by an appellate court ruling that the warrants were unconstitutionally issued by court clerks instead of prosecutors.

Invalidating the warrants could mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue to county government from fines paid by defendants, said South Orange County Municipal Court Judge Ronald P. Kreber, an assistant presiding judge. It will mean at least temporary reprieves for scofflaws who failed to appear in court for traffic and misdemeanor offenses, he said.

The defendants named in the recalled warrants are off the hook “at least for now,” Kreber said, but could face arrest again if the orders are reissued by the district attorney’s office.

“We’re concerned with people getting arrested on a warrant for failure to appear where the statute has been ruled unconstitutional,” Kreber said.

The canceled warrants are the result of defendant Kurt Albert Stapf’s successful legal challenge of a 1989 state law that empowered court clerks to issue arrest warrants for people who failed to appear in court as ordered.

Brent Romney, the district attorney’s director of Municipal Court operations, said his department’s position is that the courts don’t have the constitutional authority to issue the warrants.

“We thought (Stapf’s) position was well taken,” Romney said.

Although “it’s still up in the air what’s going to happen” while the case is on appeal, Romney said the district attorney’s office intends to reissue many warrants after obtaining affidavits from court clerks to verify that defendants failed to appear.

Warrants older than a year probably won’t be reissued, he said, because “we feel the statute of limitations has run.”

In adopting the law, the Legislature intended to create a cost-effective method of issuing the arrest warrants, Kreber said. But the appellate department of the Superior Court ruled July 8 that the warrant-issuing procedure is unconstitutional because it gives powers to court clerks that are reserved for the district attorney’s office, he said.

The ruling could have statewide impact because the same practice is followed in many counties, Kreber said.

The 4th Appellate District in Santa Ana agreed Monday to hear an appeal of the case filed by Orange County Municipal Court officials. Oral arguments are set for September.

The Orange County Superior Court’s appellate department overturned five $140 fines for failure to appear that were levied against Stapf, a Laguna Niguel resident who failed to show up in court for motorcycle speeding tickets.

The panel said traffic-court clerks using computers to systematically charge traffic offenders violates the constitutionally mandated separation of powers.

“There is an apparent, if not actual conflict of interest,” the panel ruled.

County Counsel Terry Andrus argued unsuccessfully that the appeal of Stapf’s charges was “a direct attack upon the court’s inherent and statutory powers to control its proceedings and efficiently administer justice.”

Under the practice declared unconstitutional, clerks issued warrants for defendants who failed to appear, offering them “a choice of paying a fine or jail time,” Kreber said. “Fines usually run from $225 up to . . . the vicinity of several hundred dollars. If it gets too high, a person will just take the jail time.”

Law enforcement agencies have been advised by the county’s municipal courts to recall all warrants issued under the 1989 law, and have begun doing so, according to Kreber and a Sheriff’s Department memo issued Wednesday.

“Our estimate is that this invalidates approximately 175,000 warrants,” Capt. Jack Devereaux of the Sheriff’s support services division wrote in the memo, issued to county Sherifhf’s stations.

“I think there’s a lot more (warrants) than what’s been named by the Sheriff’s Department,” Kreber said.

Lt. Dan Martini of Sheriff’s Department said he could not comment on such a “major order” without talking to Sheriff Brad Gates, who could not be reached for comment.

Judge Kreber said it is unknown how the ruling will affect the cases of people who have already served jail time or paid fines stemming from warrants issued by court clerks since the law went into effect in 1989.

“I can’t really predict” how courts will deal with those cases, Kreber said. “I don’t know what the remedy will be on that.”