Bradley Is Charged by Prosecutors

State prosecutors charged suspended Judge Robert C. Bradley on Thursday with violating his probation, saying he failed to abstain from drinking alcohol as required by his sentence for two earlier drunk-driving arrests.

Bradley, who was released on bail from Ventura County Jail on Wednesday afternoon, is scheduled to be arraigned on those charges this morning in Santa Barbara Municipal Court.

The 57-year-old jurist was arrested Tuesday at a Ventura motel where he had been staying after unexpectedly leaving an alcohol-treatment program in Arizona.

The arrest--the judge’s sixth in the past eight months--came after two probation officers visited Bradley at the motel and talked to him for about 30 minutes.

Suspicious that Bradley had violated the terms of his probation, the officers contacted the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and Bradley was taken into custody.

Under terms of his five-year probation, Bradley is prohibited from consuming alcohol. Supervising Deputy Atty. Gen. Allison Ting filed a notice in Ventura County Municipal Court on Wednesday charging Bradley with violating that requirement.

Bradley, who had been held overnight in the medical ward of the jail for security purposes, posted $15,000 bail Wednesday afternoon.

Bradley did not check into the same Ventura motel after his release, an employee said. And Santa Barbara County probation officials said they had not heard from him.

Before his arrest this week, Bradley had asked probation officials to consider placing him on a less-restrictive custody program when he begins serving a six-month jail sentence next month for other alcohol-related offenses.

Supervising Probation Officer Vicki Rochester said Bradley had scheduled an appointment with her office to discuss the possibility of wearing an electronic bracelet instead of going to jail.

But after Tuesday’s arrest, Rochester said that request is now on hold.

“He was in the process of applying for electronic monitoring,” Rochester said. “However, that initial interview had not taken place and, of course, there has been a subsequent arrest. . . . As of now the process has stopped.”

Rochester said the program is an alternative form of custody designed for low-risk offenders.

Bradley’s most recent arrest marked a continuation in his tumultuous struggle with alcoholism and the dissolution of his marriage.

Bradley’s first arrest occurred in December near his Ojai home on a drunk-driving charge. He was arrested a month later on the same charge in Santa Paula. He pleaded guilty to those offenses and was sentenced to 30 days in jail plus probation.

In April, authorities said Bradley broke his probation requirements by getting drunk and then taking a cab to the home of his estranged wife. He broke into the house and subsequently was arrested and ordered to stay away from her.

Within hours, however, Bradley called her repeatedly--violating the protective order and prompting an additional arrest at the jail. He pleaded guilty to charges stemming from those incidents while other charges were dropped.

A month later, after details of the April arrest were made public, Bradley again broke the probation rules by going to a Ventura bar near the sober-living house where he was staying and riding a bicycle while intoxicated.

Several weeks later, Bradley was admitted to a 90-day program at an alcohol-treatment center in Prescott, Ariz.

In July, Bradley’s Santa Barbara attorney, Samuel Eaton, requested that the six-month jail sentence for his earlier arrests be postponed so Bradley could complete the program.

The judge agreed and Bradley was ordered to turn himself in on Sept. 2 to begin the jail sentence. But on July 21, Bradley dropped out of the treatment program in Arizona and returned to Ventura.

Concerned by the judge’s sudden move, Ting filed court papers this week requesting Bradley undergo daily alcohol screening because she feared he was at risk of breaking his probation requirements. A hearing on that issue is scheduled for Wednesday.