It’s Jail, Not Hospital, for Haidl

A judge sent rape suspect Gregory Haidl to jail Tuesday, rejecting last-ditch defense efforts to prove that the former Orange County assistant sheriff’s son would not be safe there.

Haidl, 19, has been confined to the mental health ward of a Laguna Beach hospital since shortly after the most recent incident in his spate of legal troubles: a minor head-on car crash after he mixed beer and a tranquilizer. Haidl’s psychiatrist has testified that he was going out to buy more drugs to kill himself.

Although Haidl’s lawyers proposed keeping him at the hospital under guard until the completion of his retrial on the felony rape charges, Superior Court Judge Francisco P. Briseno on Tuesday refused.

“It’s just not practical,” he said.

The judge on Monday had granted the prosecution’s request to revoke Haidl’s $200,000 bail, agreeing that the young man was a danger to the community.

“He seems determined not only to take his own life, but to do so in a manner that puts others at great risk,” Briseno said Tuesday.

After the judge issued the order for deputies to take Haidl to jail, prosecutors said they were relieved.

“This is not a victory for anybody but the community, because we’re protecting them with Mr. Haidl in jail,” Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Charles Middleton said outside the Santa Ana courtroom.

Haidl was transferred about 4:45 p.m. from the hospital to Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana. He arrived about 6:30 p.m. in a beige, unmarked sheriff’s car with tinted windows, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and jeans.

Jail officials said he would be kept in a cell by himself until a screening process was completed. He will be in the mental health ward until he is judged ready for transfer to the main jail, where he will remain separated from other inmates.

The bail revocation came two months after the judge tightened the original bail conditions set in summer 2002, when Haidl and two friends were charged with raping a seemingly unconscious 16-year-old girl at the Corona del Mar home of Haidl’s father, then-Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl.

After the rape charge, Gregory Haidl had several brushes with the law -- alleged vandalism, trespassing and marijuana possession -- and was charged in August this year with having unlawful sex with a second underage girl. Briseno then restricted his activities and ordered him not to drink alcohol or break any other laws.

As Haidl’s legal problems escalated, so did his anxiety and depression, a psychiatrist testified Monday in urging the judge to let Haidl stay at South Coast Medical Center.

“He said he would rather kill himself than be in jail,” said Dr. Irwin Rosenfeld, who started treating Haidl when he was admitted the day after the Oct. 30 collision.

Haidl’s lawyers had hoped the judge would allow their client to stay at the hospital, with two deputies stationed there at his father’s expense to watch him. The hospital would not allow the deputies to be armed inside the facility, only outside the doors leading to the 32-bed mental health ward.

But both the sheriff’s captain who oversees the Central Jail complex and the assistant sheriff who supervises jail operations testified Tuesday that such an arrangement wouldn’t work.

“We don’t normally do business that way,” said Assistant Sheriff Kim Markuson. “We need access [to the defendant] at any given time.”

The defense had called Markuson at the last minute, hoping that the high-ranking official would testify that whatever the court ordered, his staff could facilitate.

Department spokesman Jon Fleischman said the personnel called to testify were not there in support of either the prosecution or defense.

“Whatever the judge wants to do in this case, we’re going to facilitate,” Fleischman said. “We’re not here to take sides.”

Haidl’s attorneys repeated after the hearing that they were not comfortable with Haidl being in jail, given his ties to law enforcement, the media attention to his case and his continuing psychiatric treatment.