Little-Used Law Applied to Seek Officials’ Ouster

Members of the Orange County Grand Jury unsheathed a seldom-used law Wednesday when they leveled “willful misconduct” charges against three of Orange County’s top elected officials.

By using that law, grand jurors made clear their sole intention: to remove Auditor-Controller Steve E. Lewis and Supervisors William G. Steiner and Roger R. Stanton from office.

The charges accuse the three of failing to supervise the county’s business adequately, thus allowing former Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron and others to make risky investments that plunged the county into an unprecedented municipal bankruptcy.

Legal experts say the grand jury’s decision to press civil misconduct charges against the three--instead of criminal indictments--indicate that the panel did not believe these officials indulged in corruption or other criminal intentions in events leading to county’s financial problems.

Two other supervisors, Harriett M. Wieder and Thomas F. Riley, were already scheduled to retire when the bankruptcy was announced, thus escaping the grand jury’s civil action. Gaddi H. Vasquez, the only other sitting supervisor before the bankruptcy, resigned in October, avoiding any chances of removal from office.

The civil accusations mean that Lewis, Stanton and Steiner allegedly committed some “kind of misbehavior that wasn’t serious enough to constitute a crime,” according to John Shepard Wiley Jr., a law professor at UCLA School of Law.

Wiley and other legal experts said the grand jury’s action represented a knockout punch to a politician’s career.

“An official charge of misconduct strikes at the very thing politicians value highly--their reputation and their integrity,” said Wiley, a former federal prosecutor.

“Politicians want to be thought of as statesmen, as honorable public servants. A charge of official misconduct is medicine that’s very hard to swallow.”

To bring charges against the three, the county panel was armed with Government Code 3060, which empowers a grand jury to bring a civil accusation to remove elected or appointed officials from office.

Unlike former county Budget Director Ronald S. Rubino, who faces up to nine years in prison if convicted of criminal charges, the maximum--and only penalty--facing Lewis, Stanton and Steiner is removal from office.

Legal experts can point to only one case in Orange County history when that code was used to attempt to impeach officials. That was in 1987 when the grand jury charged four of the Orange Unified School District’s seven board members with “willful misconduct” in office in connection with alleged bid rigging by a former district employee.

It was not lost on many Monday that the school board’s president at the time was Steiner, who later went on to become an Orange city councilman and county supervisor. Steiner joined the school board after the alleged misconduct occurred.

But Steiner’s comments in 1987 about the grand jury’s action resemble his more recent protestations: “The implications of the grand jury’s action are far-reaching. Good people will be discouraged from running from public office and exposing themselves and their families to this kind of potential liability.”

The four trustees--Robert James Elliott, Ruth C. Evans, Joe C. Cherry and Eleanore C. Pleines--did not have to answer at a trial. Their tenure on the board expired before a court date was set.

Former Deputy Dist. Atty. Martin G. Engquist, the prosecutor in the case, said Wednesday he remembered it well.

Engquist, now a commissioner at Municipal Court in Westminster, said he received calls from lawyers and prosecutors across California inquiring about the seldom-used law after the civil accusations were filed against school board trustees.

“It’s as a serious an allegation as you can make,” Engquist said of the grand jury’s action Wednesday. “It is short of charging them with a crime. To make those kinds of allegations reflects on their professionalism and their integrity, which is the most important thing to a person. You are accusing people who have served in the public trust for years of negligence.”

On Wednesday, news that the grand jury had charged the Orange County politicians with civil misconduct sent law professors scurrying to the library to do legal research.

Wiley, the UCLA professor, found a 1961 case when a grand jury in Tuolumne County, home of Yosemite, filed civil accusation charges that eventually removed an elected sheriff from office because he refused to investigate a 15-year-old girl’s complaint that her father had abused her.

Such cases are rare.

“Fortunately, we don’t have many public officials who are so badly failing to do their jobs that they become defendants in office,” Wiley said.

What happens to Lewis, Steiner and Stanton after depends how each responds to the civil accusations against them.

Steiner’s attorney, Allan H. Stokke, said his client will deny the accusation and request a jury trial. He also plans to pursue legal action demanding that the district attorney be removed from the case, citing a conflict of interest.

Through his attorney, Lewis said he plans to vigorously defend himself against the allegation of willful misconduct in office.

Robert A. Pugsley, who teaches criminal law and procedure at Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles, said the procedure involving a civil accusation is a “hybrid between criminal and civil” trials.

Pugsley said the three officials will have an opportunity to answer the charges--and can plead guilty or not guilty.

If they plead guilty or refuse to answer, a judgment or conviction could be entered by a judge, thus confirming their removal from office.

If they plead not guilty, the trial takes the format of a criminal trial, Pugsley said, noting that each official would have a full range of rights, including the right to call witnesses in their defense.

“Basically, the civil accusation is meant to appeal to an individual’s sense of shame,” Pugsley said. “It dents your reputation and it certainly is not something they want to put on their resume.”