Homeless Woman’s Trial Underway

The police pictures make the situation clear. A group of friends, bonded by their common predicament of nowhere to sleep, set up an encampment near the railroad tracks in Buena Park last fall.

For prosecutors who have targeted 66-year-old Diane Grue, a repeat violator of Buena Park’s homeless laws, it’s a one-witness case featuring testimony from the arresting officer this week in Orange County Superior Court in Fullerton.

For the defense, the issue is much broader than a public camping violation: Where do you go when you have nowhere to go? “This woman had no reasonable alternative,” defense lawyer Jon Alexander said. “Buena Park has no homeless shelter plan, in defiance of [state] mandates.”

Alexander sees the Grue trial as a drama in which Orange County’s commitment to helping its homeless should be the key issue for jurors.

Grue is charged with two misdemeanor counts: public camping and storing camping paraphernalia--her two blankets. She was one of six people arrested about dusk Nov. 25 in an undeveloped area off Stanton Avenue a few blocks east of the Buena Park Civic Center.

The first picture of the six taken by arresting officer Sgt. Gary Worrals shows the group smiling, waving peace signs at him. They were unaware that he and others were about to shut down their camp and take them to jail in handcuffs.

The others were permitted to pay fines. But Grue, arrested five times for other homeless-related misdemeanor violations in the last two years, faced a stiffer penalty. City prosecutor Greg Palmer insisted on a 15-day jail sentence in exchange for her guilty plea. She refused, insisting that needing a place to sleep is not a crime.

Last week, Superior Court Judge James P. Marion called the lawyers into his chambers and offered a compromise that would let Grue avoid jail time: probation plus community service and an agreement to accept some type of referral help.

Grue turned the judge down. She told her lawyer, “You tell Mr. Palmer I ain’t moving,” meaning that she would demand her day in court.

Alexander, a Dana Point attorney who accepted her case without pay, has been letting Grue and a companion live at his house the last two weeks to make sure she gets to court on time.

In the picture jurors saw depicting Grue in a lawn chair at the homeless encampment, she was wearing the same blue nylon jacket she wore to court Wednesday.

In his opening statement, Alexander told jurors that Grue was born during the Depression, that her father left when she was 3, and she has had tough times since. She became homeless in 1989 after her only son died, a loss that sent her into a deep depression that kept her from working.

Getting a decent job would be difficult for Grue, he said, because she is functionally illiterate.

With nearly 20,000 homeless people in Orange County and fewer than 2,000 shelter beds, finding space in a shelter is not easy, Alexander told jurors.

Prosecutor Palmer cautioned jurors in his opening statement that Alexander would not be able to prove a defense of “necessity” because he lacks two key elements: evidence that Grue was in imminent danger and that she had no options.

Grue has said she lives in motels two weeks out of the month after receiving her Social Security check. The other two weeks she has no means to stay off the streets, she said.