5 Counts Dismissed in Kline Case

State child molestation charges were dropped Wednesday against former Superior Court Judge Ronald C. Kline, the latest Orange County defendant to benefit from last week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling against a California law that allowed prosecution of old sexual abuse cases.

It took only a minute for Norwalk Superior Court Judge Daniel Solis Pratt to dismiss five felony counts of oral copulation that stemmed from acts Kline was accused of committing against a 14-year-old boy in 1979. He could have faced nearly six years in prison on the charges.

With no other choice, Deputy Dist. Atty. Sheila Hanson did not oppose the defense motion to dismiss the charges.

“I’m disappointed that the victim and the public have lost their chance to seek justice for the abuse that occurred,” she said. “But the United States Supreme Court has ruled, and as a result Mr. Kline cannot be prosecuted for these offenses.”

Afterward, Kline’s attorney, Paul S. Meyer, said he would have expected the same outcome if the case had gone to trial.

“We pled not guilty from Day One,” Meyer said. “In all of the hoopla about the Supreme Court, let’s not forget the presumption of innocence. I am confident Judge Kline would have been acquitted in trial.”

The Orange County district attorney’s office has identified at least six other defendants who were awaiting trial on charges filed under the state law that was invalidated last week by the Supreme Court.

Three of those cases involve former Roman Catholic priests. Prosecutors from the district attorney’s sex-crime unit are compiling a list of convicted defendants who must be freed under the high court’s ruling.

Also Wednesday, prosecutors said charges were dropped against Carl Bucy, a Huntington Beach middle school teacher accused of molesting a female student in the early 1970s. On Tuesday, the case against former priest Gerald John Plesetz was thrown out. He was accused of impregnating a 14-year-old girl who gave birth to his child in 1974.

Other cases pending include those of priests John Peter Lenihan, accused of impregnating a teen 25 years ago, and Denis Lyons, charged with molesting a teenage boy more than 20 years ago. Assistant Dist. Atty. Roseanne Froeberg, head of the district attorney’s sex-crime unit, said Wednesday she was unsure how soon those cases would be dismissed.

The California attorney general has directed prosecutors across the state to re-examine cases that might be affected by the ruling and estimates that as many as 800 cases may need to be reviewed.

The dismissal of the state charges is the second dose of good news for Kline in three weeks. It comes after a U.S. District Court judge’s decision to throw out most of the key evidence against him in a separate federal child pornography case.

Two years after Kline’s arrest led him to give up his bid for another term on the Orange County bench, the case against him has all but collapsed.

Kline, 62, once faced a combination of state and federal felonies and misdemeanors. Now, unless the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals restores critical evidence in the federal case, the former judge faces a single federal count of possessing child pornography on his courthouse computer, a felony that carries a maximum of five years in prison. A hearing on that allegation is scheduled for Sept. 15.

Kline remains tethered close to his Irvine home by an electronic monitoring device he was ordered to wear when he surrendered to authorities in November 2001. He has yet to speak publicly about any of the allegations against him.

Kline was running unopposed in his re-election campaign when he was arrested after federal authorities announced they had found sexually explicit diary excerpts and photos on his home and courthouse computers.

It was publicity from his federal indictment that prompted a man who grew up in Kline’s neighborhood to come forward and tell investigators that Kline had molested him more than two decades earlier. Kline was a prominent civil attorney at the time. The accuser, who has never been publicly identified, had told his parents and fiancee about the abuse in 1995 but insisted to them then that he did not want to report the matter to police.

Initially, the man told authorities that Kline had befriended him and then sexually molested him on several occasions between 1976 and 1978, and prosecutors filed four felony counts of lewd acts on a child under 14, charges that carry a maximum of 14 years in prison.

But after interviewing the man a second time, investigators realized the alleged acts occurred in 1979, when the boy was 14. Because he was older, the charges were altered to the five felonies that were dropped Wednesday, which had carried a reduced sentence.

In his federal case, Kline is still charged with seven counts of child pornography. But on June 17, U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall ruled that evidence was discovered on Kline’s home computer after illegal invasions by a Canadian hacker who was working for police. She granted a defense motion to suppress diary entries about his sexual desires and more than 1,500 pornographic photos of young boys. The evidence supports six of the seven counts against him.

Federal prosecutors have promised to challenge Marshall’s decision. They have until July 18 to file a letter of appeal.