Anti-Camping Violators May Get Community Service : Courts: The proposal could spare costly trials in cases of about 80 homeless people cited in Santa Ana.
About 80 homeless men and women cited for camping in Santa Ana two years ago may be able to spend a day picking up trash in the Civic Center rather than face prosecution, under a preliminary proposal being considered by the district attorney’s office.
Municipal Judge Gregory H. Lewis set a hearing for today to continue negotiations over the proposal, which defense attorneys say could spare dozens of costly trials for the misdemeanor charges.
“What’s the harm in dismissing the cases?” asked Cathy L. Jensen, a private attorney representing several of the defendants. “Who gets hurt? Nobody.”
Jensen added, “I’m not asking that anyone gets free rides. . . . But there should be a reasonable alternative to prosecution.”
Under the proposal, prosecutors would dismiss the charges if the defendants agreed to a day of community service--for example picking up trash in the Civic Center, where most, if not all, of the defendants were cited, according to attorneys.
“It’s our intent to continue to discuss the matter and evaluate each case,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Joel Stone said.
Defense attorney Lloyd Charton, who is also representing some of the defendants, said the proposal is rooted in the “good old American work tradition.”
Prosecutors earlier in the proceeding offered to reduce the cases to infractions, if the defendants would plead guilty to a lesser charge, Stone said. But defense attorneys rejected that proposal, saying their clients are not guilty of any crime.
The community service proposal came Monday during a pretrial hearing in which Charton, who like the other attorneys have been representing the defendants for free, requested $25,000 from the court to hire expert witnesses should the cases move to trial. A hearing has yet to be set on the issue.
Charton said the experts would be needed to support defense arguments that the homeless, by necessity, were merely sleeping outdoors, not camping. He said the homeless had no reasonable alternatives to sleeping in the Civic Center.
“If you don’t have a place to go to sleep, you go to sleep where you are exhausted,” Charton said.
Homeless advocates say Santa Ana has little more than 300 shelter beds for about 3,000 homeless people. The entire county has about 975 beds for about 12,000 to 15,000 homeless people, they say.
The misdemeanor charges against the homeless had been pending the outcome of a California Supreme Court decision about the constitutionality of Santa Ana’s 1992 camping ordinance. On a 6-to-1 vote, the court in April held that the law, one of the toughest in the nation, does not violate the constitutional rights of the homeless.
The decision, the first on a homeless ordinance by any state Supreme Court, gave city officials across California a major boost in their efforts to control the number of people who live on the streets.
The Santa Ana law makes it a crime punishable by up to six months in jail to use a sleeping bag or blanket or to store personal effects on public sidewalks, streets, parking lots and government malls.
