Invalidity of Criminal Complaints Is Appealed : Justice: Superior Court had ruled that hundreds of thousands of failure-to-appear complaints were illegally filed by clerks against traffic violators.

An appellate court has been asked to decide whether hundreds of thousands of criminal complaints filed against traffic violators who missed court appearances in Orange County were issued illegally.

At issue is whether Municipal Court clerks, rather than prosecutors, may issue failure-to-appear complaints, as allowed by a 1989 state law.

The case was brought by Kurt Albert Stapf, a Laguna Niguel resident who had received five $140 fines for failing to appear in court for motorcycle speeding tickets.

The Orange County Superior Court sided with Stapf when he claimed the state law allowing clerks to issue such complaints was unconstitutional. Under the state constitutional provision for separation of government powers, the authority to file such complaints belongs to the district attorney’s office and not court clerks, the Superior Court ruled.

After that June 27 ruling, law enforcement officials in Orange County began canceling at least 175,000 arrest warrants issued by clerks in connection with failure-to-appear complaints.

Kenneth Schwartz, a traffic trial commissioner in Municipal Court in Laguna Niguel, said that court’s clerks have begun routing all failure-to-appear complaints to the district attorney for approval before they are filed.

*

The Municipal Courts of Orange County, meanwhile, appealed to the 4th District Court of Appeal to reverse that opinion. The Municipal Courts contend that the state Legislature had the right to allow court clerks to issue failure-to-appear complaints.

The court’s decision, expected by the end of the year, may determine how municipal courts statewide will handle those complaints.

“No matter which way the court goes, it will impact the whole state if they publish their decision,” said John R. Farris Jr., Stapf’s attorney.

Farris said prosecutors statewide are looking to the appellate court for direction in dealing with some 974,000 failure-to-appear complaints involving traffic violations that are filed each year in the state.

At a hearing Wednesday before the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana, a lawyer for the Orange County district attorney’s office acknowledged that it has violated the state Constitution by allowing municipal clerks to issue the complaints.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregory J. Robischon suggested to the three-judge panel that the time-saving system of allowing clerks to file such complaints could be salvaged if the district attorney simply gave them “blanket authority” to do so.

The three-judge panel immediately questioned whether the district attorney should give up discretion to treat each case on its own merits.

Justice Edward J. Wallin asked if a clerk then would be required to file a complaint against a person who failed to appear on time for a court hearing because he was kidnaped in the court parking lot.

“Once you have authorized these filings by clerks, you have lost the discretion to drop the prosecution,” added Justice Thomas F. Crosby.

Robischon countered that, in practice, it would not be difficult for the district attorney’s office to persuade a judge to drop a case that proved unfounded.

Broadening the discussion of separation of power, the judges also quizzed Robischon about the district attorney’s failure to provide prosecutors for traffic infraction cases in South County traffic court, although deputies do prosecute such cases in other Orange County traffic courts.

“The trial judge is serving as both prosecutor and judge in those instances when you don’t send a prosecutor,” Wallin said.

Robischon said later in an interview that deputies do not prosecute infractions at South County traffic court because the court’s location on Moulton Parkway in Laguna Hills is too distant from district attorney offices.

Commissioner Schwartz said he does not believe defendants in South Court suffer from this system.

“We bend over backward to be fair and make sure any potential defenses are raised,” he said.