A Case of the Penalty Not Fitting the Crime

Linda Jensen lives a quiet life on a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood in Castaic. She’s the conscientious mother of two young boys, president-elect of the PTA, a participant in community affairs, and generally loved and respected by everyone who knows her.

Then why, I hear you cry, was this beloved, middle-aged PTA mom in the L.A. County slammer for six days?

Good question.

She was there among the whores, drunks and druggies because she may or may not have bumped the bumper of another vehicle in a local hardware store parking lot.

She was also there because a Superior Court judge, in a twisted display of judicial power, was angry because she denied the incident and because, due to some strange quirk of logic, he considered her a flight risk.

He saw her, one supposes, as fleeing into the Colorado wilderness, avoiding howling bloodhounds and armed deputies, and swearing she would never be taken alive, like James Cagney in one of those old prison-escape movies.

Forget that this is a 43-year-old lifelong resident of Southern California and a happily married woman whose only previous brush with the law was a parking ticket. The possibility that she would jump bail was as likely as Martha Stewart giving up her kitchen.

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It all began in December when Jensen, driving her Ford pickup, was alleged to have brushed the bumper of an unoccupied pickup in the parking lot of Valencia’s Do-It Center. She says she didn’t. A witness said she did.

Unknown to her at the time, this soft-spoken, almost fragile woman had become Case No. 100-15799-0644-250 in the files of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, charged with misdemeanor hit-and-run.

Jensen was informed of this some days later by officers who rang her doorbell after the family had turned in for the night. She maintained her innocence then, and through subsequent proceedings, before Superior Court Judge Floyd Baxter.

“I never thought it would go as far as it did,” she said to me one day in her modest tract home. The sounds of children playing in front of the house drifted into the living room. “I thought the worst that would happen was I’d get a fine and that would be it.”

Her home bears the imprint of a mother deeply involved with her kids. A wall is filled with their schoolwork and their drawings. A table is piled high with material being gathered for an upcoming spring festival. In addition to her involvement with the PTA, she also volunteers as a teacher’s aide two days a week. Eleven years ago, she gave up her career as a legal secretary to be with her sons full time.

After pleading innocent at an arraignment, Jensen went to trial with a court-appointed attorney. Two days later, a jury found her guilty. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Baxter denied her bail request and remanded her into custody, pending a sentencing date six days away. Pale and in a state of shock, Jensen was led off in chains.

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What matters here is not so much guilt or innocence or even the conditions Jensen was forced to endure as an inmate at the Twin Towers jail for six days. What matters is why she was considered a flight risk, and why she was in jail at all.

I asked that question of Judge Baxter. Linda Jensen, after all, is not exactly Ma Barker. A family member says she is more like achingly sweet, stay-at-home Harriet Nelson of the old “Ozzie and Harriet” television series.

Because of a 60-day appeal period, Baxter said he couldn’t discuss the case, except to say, “There’s more here than meets the eye.” The prosecutor, Garrett Dameron, said Jensen was denied bail because the judge believed she was lying. He added: “Part of it was, she left once; what’s to say she wouldn’t leave again?”

That kind of logic is beyond credulity, rooted as it is in the presumption that a woman of Jensen’s nature, having allegedly fled the scene of a bumper-bump, would thereafter abandon home, husband and children in order to avoid the terrible penalties of a misdemeanor crime.

If that makes sense to anyone, lunch is on me.

According to his profile in a legal journal, Baxter believes that “common sense” ought to play an important role in judicial decisions. This leads one to wonder, would common sense have elevated a parking-lot incident into jail time for a woman convicted of bumping a bumper? I should think not.

Ultimately, Jensen was sentenced to time served, 36 months on probation, 65 hours of community service and $900 in restitution to the owner of the bumped car. Even that’s excessive.

Accused killers and people who lie and cheat and screw the public out of millions walk away from courtrooms without ever having seen the inside of a cell. Judge Baxter has granted bail in cases involving crimes far exceeding the severity of Linda Jensen’s, if she committed any crime at all.

One can only assume that the part of her case he is not able to discuss, the part that “doesn’t meet the eye,” is of such a horrific nature that he could do no less than toss this straight-arrow PTA mom into a human snake pit. Either that or Mr. Bumble was right when, in “Oliver Twist,” he proclaimed with insight and wisdom that “the law is a ass a idiot.”

And that’s giving it the benefit of doubt.

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Al Martinez can be reached at al.martinez@latimes.com.