In Court, Players Are Immersed in Issues of Right and Wrong

By John Balzar

Sept. 7, 2006 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

“There are three classes of criminal defendants.” Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Minnetian interrupts preparations for this day’s criminal calendar in Los Angeles County Superior Court in Norwalk to talk about the view from his side of the counsel table.

“One: Otherwise good people who make a mistake. Like the soccer mom who embezzles from the team.

“Two: The repeat offenders who don’t do anything heinous. Dope. Nonviolent crimes. You regard them on a sliding scale. The more often they come back, the harder you’ve got to hit them.

“Three: Evil people.

“Finally, you have the mentally ill who are scattered in all these categories.”

For a week, The Times has been following the ground-level workings of the felony-only courthouse in Norwalk. Minnetian, 41, a 15-year veteran of the district attorney’s staff, runs the daily calendar in Department S -- a realm apart from the theatrical legal dramas that make headlines. In this courtroom and others like it throughout the county, the running of the calendar is the process where a large share of daily justice gets dispensed.

Many people in positions of power in the criminal justice system, perhaps all of them, have a measure of judge and jury in their hearts. How could they not? They are humans immersed in the timeless struggles of right and wrong, of wickedness and virtue, of suffering and hope, of certainty and doubt. They see, if not everything, then at least plenty from here on the floor of the courtroom.

For the prosecutor, in particular, sizing up a defendant shapes the case to follow.

The district attorney’s office decides whom to charge among those arrested by police. From what can be a broad range of options, the office decides the specific charges, and how hard to push. Along the way, a deputy like Minnetian is also entrusted to broker the plea deals that are supposed to dispense fair punishment while keeping the court calendar moving.

Plea bargains follow a formula according to the crime and the defendant’s prior record. But within that range, prosecutors like Minnetian have discretion. He might, he says, put his “thumb on the scale” on behalf of a baby-faced defendant who doesn’t have a long record. “They’d eat him alive in the lockup.” But his sympathy is easily exhausted. A repeat offender might typically beg for mercy for the sake of a struggling family, perhaps a sick child or a disabled spouse. “I have to say to myself, ‘If he doesn’t care about his family, why should I?’ ” He knows it sounds harsh. It’s also the truth.

For most of this week, and again now, the newspaper’s guide to the running of the daily calendar has been Ramiro Cisneros, a public servant with the opposite job. Cisneros is a deputy public defender, one of 15 assigned to Norwalk.

At any given time, he has a caseload of 25 or so defendants, some of them perhaps innocent, some of them surely guilty, all of them too poor to hire a private lawyer. Duty demands that Cisneros keep his judgments to himself because no less an authority than the Constitution promises that no one will have to face The System unrepresented.

Extortion. Threatening to rape the victim’s wife. A prior record as a criminal.

This is judgment day for Cisneros’ first client.

The case went to trial earlier in a courtroom down the hall. An eight-count charge of armed robbery of a small business, extortion, criminal threat and resisting arrest was reduced to six counts by Cisneros’ earlier motions. Another count was dismissed. The jury returned a mixed verdict. The 22-year-old Lakewood man was cleared on two counts of robbery, the most serious charges. He was convicted on a single count of extortion, one count of criminal threat and a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest.

Wearing handcuffs and a County Jail jumpsuit, he stands expressionless before the judge on this recent Thursday. If convicted of the original charges, he could have been incarcerated for up to 14 years and eight months. Now, he is facing less than half that, a maximum of six years and eight months.

The defendant shows not a flicker of emotion when the judge reads a summary of the case in the deadpan voice of a newscaster. He refers to the man only in the detached third person: “The court considers him a danger to others.” Sentence: five years and eight months in prison.

Cisneros gives the man what will probably be his last gentle pat on the back until 2012. Depending on transportation schedules, the defendant will be moved from jail to prison in two to eight weeks.

Sometimes the justice system lives up to its promise of delivering punishment to fit the crime. “Sometimes, sometimes it does,” Cisneros says later in a reflective moment. “But sometimes it does not.

“With three strikes, a minor crime can get you 25 years to life. That doesn’t fit the crime. Other than that, most of the time it does.”

“Yes,” Minnetian says. “Yes, it does. I believe so.” In a reflective moment of his own, the veteran prosecutor says that justice, in the main, delivers “punishment that not only fits the crime but the criminal’s background.”

Today, even apart from three strikes, that means the laws pile on punishment for repeat offenders.

For someone with a clean record, a can of spray paint and a felt-tip marker are harmless household items. In the hands of a person with gang ties, these can be crimes -- possession of tools for vandalism. A first-time graffiti vandal might face a misdemeanor charge and probation. Another Cisneros client on this day, a Huntington Park man who is no first-timer, faces up to 11 years and four months in prison in a graffiti case.

The public defender asks for and receives a continuation of this pretrial conference. He wants to prepare a motion and have the judge review the arresting officer’s record. The defendant insists that he was not treated fairly.

Later in the morning, a man with a fierce gaze and prison tattoos is led into the courtroom to be sentenced in an attempted carjacking. A first-timer might get 18 months in such a case. This man has a strike plus another felony conviction. His sentence balloons to eight years.

His private attorney asks that the man be kept in jail for a time and not sent immediately to prison. The reason? The defendant wants to marry his girlfriend while here in jail. Request refused.

The prisoner rises and turns his head briefly toward the audience. He gives a savage nod of his chin to a woman in the spectator gallery. He is led away, and she bolts out of the courtroom in tears. Married or not, their love must wait until 2014.

California’s prison population, with 172,130 total inmates, would make it the 24th most populous city in the state, larger than Salinas, Pasadena or Palmdale.

Captivity is a curiously relative matter for those who step onto the treadmill of crime. A longhaired man from La Mirada had been put on probation for possessing drugs. Now he stands before the judge because he hasn’t been reporting to his probation officer.

“Well, I have a cure for that,” snaps Judge Larry S. Knupp.

Representing the man, Cisneros argues for giving him another chance. The man is pulling his life back together. He has a place to live and a job and a companion, a woman who sits in the audience biting her lip and fighting back tears. These are understood to be no small steps for a man in his station of life, and a jail term cannot help but send him backward.

Minnetian sees it differently. “We shouldn’t have to get down on our hands and knees to get him to honor the order of the court,” he says. “He should go in.”

Sentence: 180 days in jail.

Later, Cisneros remarks that the man is “just as fine” with the decision. After six months in jail, he will be free of the hassle of probation appointments.

Back at his first-floor office deep inside the courthouse, Cisneros has been putting in work on behalf of a different kind of defendant. This 20-year-old man doesn’t have the hardened glower of the jailhouse vet. He doesn’t have the slouch and baggy clothes of the street tough. He doesn’t have a criminal record. But he is in deep trouble just the same, and his worried face showed it at a recent hearing.

He is charged with statutory rape, unlawful sex with a 14-year-old girl. The girl’s mother called police after finding them together, and now the man faces a felony crime with a possible sentence ranging from 16 months to a maximum of three years in state prison.

Cisneros’ investigation of the case has led him into the world of MySpace.com, an Internet meeting place. He and a colleague believe they have identified the girl’s profile on the website, which describes itself as “a space for friends.” If they are correct, the girl has posted strongly sexual, and mature, come-ons that might -- might -- be evidence that she was posing as an adult.

At one time, California law imposed “strict liability” in cases of unlawful sex with a minor -- that is, a man was guilty, period, for sexual contact with someone under 18. Subsequent case law, however, allows a defendant to argue an “honest and reasonable” mistake in determining the age of a sex partner.

Another complicated case with twists awaits Cisneros. A 22-year-old man from Huntington Park stands accused of robbery. A week after the crime, the victim, by pure chance, thinks he sees the robber in a crowd of people. Police are called and the suspect is arrested. A search of the man’s house and belongings finds no evidence of involvement.

The accused has no previous record of a run-in with the law and has identified alibi witnesses by name. So far, however, the witnesses have been reluctant to come forward, and Cisneros is sure it’s because they are illegal immigrants and fear deportation.

“This is a weak case,” Cisneros says as he reads the file. “This is one where the guy could be factually innocent. This might be one to take to trial.”

Another case of doubt has absorbed attorneys in the public defender’s office for a few days now. Tempers are rising. Again, there is an eyewitness. But she says that the wrong man is facing prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

The case of the one-eyed man will come to a head tomorrow.

john. balzar@latimes.com

Ground-Level Justice

Monday

Going to bat for those who have hit bottom.

Tuesday

Should the judicial system lock up a man if he hasn’t broken the law?

Wednesday

A retrial and a sweet victory for the public defender’s office.

Today

An extortionist is sentenced and a drug user returns to jail.

Friday