Hearing for Sex-Assault Trio Won’t Be Public

The public will be barred from an October hearing to determine whether three young men convicted as adults in the videotaped sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl should be sentenced as juveniles, an Orange County judge ruled Friday.

The men, who were 17 at the time of the assault, would probably face much more lenient punishment if sentenced as juveniles.

Although the defendants were tried as adults, Superior Court Judge Francisco P. Briseno has the discretion to conduct a key component of the sentencing process with the confidentiality of a juvenile hearing.

The defendants -- including Gregory Haidl, son of former Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl -- were convicted March 23 of assaulting a girl who was too drunk to resist during a July 2002 gathering at Don Haidl’s Corona del Mar home. The youths videotaped their night of heavy drinking and sex.

“We wanted the hearings closed because that’s what the law provides,” said Pete Scalisi, one of Haidl’s lawyers. “None of these are serious or violent felonies.”

Prosecutors protested the judge’s ruling, saying that it seemed irrational to close the hearings now after two high-profile trials in open court. The first trial ended with the jury deadlocked.”There’s nothing to hide. It’s in the public interest to have it open,” Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Chuck Middleton said outside court Friday afternoon before the attorneys met to set a date for the next hearing. The defendants’ relatives were allowed to watch, but reporters and the public were barred.

A 1st Amendment expert agreed. “The worst has already come out,” said Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition. “The doors have to be kicked open.”

Testimony at the Oct. 21 hearing will probably focus on what Haidl, Kyle Nachreiner and Keith Spann, all now 20, told probation officers in jailhouse interviews over the last two months about the attack and whether they feel remorse. A hearing will be held before then for the judge to consider the media’s request to open the proceedings.

Earlier Friday, attorneys met behind locked doors in Briseno’s Santa Ana courtroom for almost three hours. Dozens of the defendants’ friends and relatives milled around in the hallway, at one point gathering in a corner to pose for a picture. “I love you, Kyle!” one girl yelled.

Juvenile court hearings generally are closed, but are public under state law when minors are charged with certain crimes such as murder and rape by force -- but not sexual penetration by intoxication, which the defendants were convicted of. Judges also may open hearings when they are convinced that public interest overrides the need to hold them behind closed doors.

Although the men were originally charged with rape by force, they were not convicted of that count at trial. California law does not specify what the public’s access should be to any later hearings, and Briseno opted to revert to the statute that bars everyone but family from juvenile proceedings.

But lawyers experienced in 1st Amendment cases said the public’s right to know trumps the rules governing juvenile hearings.

“I can’t think of anything that would be said in this hearing that the public doesn’t already know or that would be so prejudicial to the defendants,” said Guylyn Cummins, a San Diego attorney who has successfully argued two appellate cases on access to juvenile hearings.

Cummins could not find any precedent for such a situation in California. “I think that’s because it’s a fairly easy issue,” she said. “After all the evidence has been made public at trial, there’s no reason to close these hearings.”

Scheer agreed, adding that after conducting the trial in open court, the judge should not close the hearings on such a sensitive issue.

“It’s not as though this is a tangential or not very important issue,” Scheer said. “What will happen to these defendants after what they did is perhaps the central issue in the case,” he said. If the men are sentenced as adults, Haidl faces up to 18 years in prison, Spann up to 16 and Nachreiner up to 14, due to the different charges for which they were convicted. If they are treated as juveniles, lawyers said, the sentences could last a few months -- until they turn 21 -- or two years from the day they arrive at a juvenile facility.

“They will need a lot longer than that to rehabilitate for their crimes,” Middleton said.

The first trial ended in a mistrial June 28, 2004. Another jury convicted the men of sexual assault in March. They were acquitted of assault with a deadly weapon, and jurors deadlocked on the rape charge.

The principal evidence at both trials was a videotape, which has not been shown to the public, showing the defendants assaulting the victim with objects including a pool cue as they positioned her on a pool table and a wicker couch. The teens were all living in Rancho Cucamonga at the time.

The further delays in the sentencing hearings mean that the defendants may not be sentenced until next year, especially if additional probation reports are needed. The current set of reports, sent to the lawyers Tuesday, will not be made public until the judge decides how the men will be sentenced, Scalisi said.