Courthouse Approved for Laguna Niguel

Laguna Niguel will get the new courthouse it wanted but not the jail it fought under a plan given preliminary approval Tuesday by Orange County supervisors. The victory could lead to a new centralized system in Santa Ana for arraigning and housing county inmates.

The county needs the new courthouse and jail to relieve overcrowding at other facilities and has been in negotiations since 1999. But Laguna Niguel officials opposed the jail, citing the potential for escapes and the constant flow of sheriff’s buses to and from the facility.

“To us, the jail was a deal-breaker,” said Cathryn DeYoung, a Laguna Niguel City Council member. “Having most of the arraignments and trials for all of south Orange County in what is basically a residential area is not a compatible idea.”

Instead, the plan approved Tuesday calls for the county to develop a centralized arraignment system that would avoid sending adult inmates to any south Orange County court before the start of their trials. If successful, the idea could be expanded for the entire county.

Early plans call for two small courtrooms to be attached to the county’s main jails and Intake Release Center in Santa Ana, court officials said.

Centralizing arraignments has the support of the Sheriff’s Department, Superior Court Presiding Judge Frederick P. Horn, the county’s executive office and police chiefs, as well as Santa Ana and Laguna Niguel, said Sheriff Mike Carona, who presented the plan to supervisors.

Alan Slater, chief executive officer for the superior court, said Horn wants arraignments centralized as a demonstration project for the entire Harbor Justice Center area. That includes an area from Costa Mesa south to San Clemente, and east to Anaheim Hills, Orange and Tustin.

Centralizing arraignments would eliminate the high costs and security of transporting inmates early each day to the various branch courthouses, Carona said.

Supervisor Tom Wilson praised the plan and said it has won approval of most of those in the county’s justice community, except for the local bar.

“I have plans to meet and speak with members of the bar in the near future. But some have already told me they like the idea of centralizing arraignments because they don’t have to travel as far.

“I was surprised the entire plan was discussed today, though,” Wilson said. “We really don’t have everything worked out.”

The South County courthouse in Laguna Niguel had become so overcrowded that marshals used to have to chain defendants to metal chairs in hallways. Jurors were squeezed into a once-condemned fire station with a single working restroom.

Jury trials have been moved to other courts, Slater said. “The facility has just been severely overloaded. The building is design-plagued and we also have had significant problems accommodating people with disabilities. Plus all the support people, like the public defenders are outside in trailers.”

Jury trials were shifted to the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach, and family law and juvenile cases to the Lamoreaux Justice Center in Orange. Large civil and criminal trials were moved to the Santa Ana and Newport Beach courthouses, Slater said.

Laguna Niguel has expressed interest in buying 22 county-owned acres adjacent to the South County courthouse for a new civic center, including a City Hall and other facilities. The City Council was to hear a report by DeYoung at its regular meeting Tuesday night.

“The council wants to become a partner in this and we will be discussing it,” DeYoung said. “Our interests are to put a City Hall there and perhaps expand our library ....This [vote by supervisors] really starts a long planning process for us.”

The county could use the money from the sale of the land to pay for construction of the arraignment courts or to defray costs for the new court facility in Laguna Niguel.

The county has put aside $29 million for the new Laguna Niguel courthouse, which would include courtrooms and court-related departments, such as offices for prosecutors and public defenders. Slater said the new facility is overdue.

Projected growth throughout the county would require the construction of 60 courtrooms over the next two to three decades.

“We have something like 750,000 population in South County and they had only four courts. Nowhere in the country is there a population [that is] that underserved,” Slater said.