Sheriff Gets Blanket OK to Release Prisoners

A federal judge Tuesday gave the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department blanket authority to release as many prisoners as it needs to control jail crowding.

The department, which runs the county jails, has already granted early release to about 8,500 convicted misdemeanants in the last three months in a court-approved program to ease crowding. They were freed one to three days before their sentences expired.

However, the releases were not enough to bring the jail population into consistent compliance with federal court-ordered population caps. So the Sheriff’s Department asked the court for broader authority.

‘Low-Grade’ Cases

It was unclear how many more releases are contemplated, but a lawyer for the Sheriff’s Department said those released next would be additional “low-grade misdemeanants.”

Chief spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department, Capt. Dick Walls, declined to go into further detail, saying Sheriff Sherman Block would hold a news conference “to do that today.”

“He’s going to discuss the whole thing,” said Walls, who characterized the court ruling as “unprecedented to my knowledge.”

Senior U.S. District Judge William P. Gray, sitting on temporary assignment in Martinsburg, W. Va., granted the sheriff the authority to release the inmates “according to priorities that (the sheriff) shall establish” in order to comply with Gray’s previous orders for a fluctuating cap of between 6,800 and 7,500 inmates at the Men’s Central Jail and 22,319 inmates countywide.

Fluctuating Population

The population fluctuates daily. On Tuesday, there were 7,758 inmates at Men’s Central and 23,571 in the county’s other 10 jails.

Gray said in his order that he was “reluctant to interfere in the management of the county jail and with the authority of state courts over the terms of confinement of their prisoners. However, the court concludes that the present overcrowding of the jail seriously interferes with the constitutional rights of the inmates ‘to be treated like human beings.’ ”

Assistant County Counsel Frederick R. Bennett said by telephone from Martinsburg that the Sheriff’s Department had asked Gray to approve a specific set of priorities for the releases: first, unsentenced defendants with bails of $2,500 or less; then, if necessary, accused misdemeanants who have been in jail awaiting trial for more than 60 days; then, if necessary, suspects accused of nonviolent felonies who have been in jail awaiting trial for more than 150 days; and finally, if necessary, some sentenced inmates up to 30 days early.

Different Decision

But Gray decided to give the sheriff blanket authority instead.

Bennett said he believes the Sheriff’s Department will stick with those priorities.

However, Walls said those could change. “There may be some additional priorities,” he said. “It’ll be announced (today).”

The Sheriff’s Department said in court papers that it needed authority for more releases to operate the jail safely.

Jail population has swelled from 8,000 to more than 23,000 in less than a decade. The county has committed itself to expanding some of its jails, but the first of these will not be ready until early next year.

The Sheriff’s Department was joined in its request for authority to release more inmates by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which won a federal lawsuit against the department in 1979 over jail overcrowding and has since sought to work cooperatively with the sheriff on the problem. Judge Gray presided over that lawsuit.

In papers he submitted to Gray, ACLU lawyer John Hagar blamed the continuing overcrowding on two key factors: a “dramatic” increase in the number of inmates accused of gang violence who require special handling and whose threatening presence limits the flexibility of jailers to manage jail space; and unwillingness by state Superior Courts to honor pledges made last December to handle more speedily the cases of those in jail.

Hagar said the Superior Court made the pledges when it was seeking to avoid imposition of a seemingly innocuous 1979 order that Gray threatened to enforce. That order requires that the sheriff provide a seat for each inmate waiting for a bus to court. Its enforcement would probably cause widespread disruption in Superior Court schedules, because in order to provide a seat for each inmate, the sheriff would have to bus inmates to court in shifts.

Hagar said that the Superior Court promised but failed to use more judges to handle criminal, rather than civil, cases full-time. He also said the court broke its promise to stop granting unnecessary continuances in criminal cases. Hagar noted that 1,000 defendants in county jails have been there for more than six months awaiting trials.

Richard P. Byrne, presiding judge of Los Angeles Superior Court, said in an interview Tuesday that Hagar was inaccurate. “The court has substantially complied with everything that it agreed to do,” Byrne said. But he acknowledged that not all of the court’s 224 judges--each of whom is an independent elected official--has complied with a state law restricting the granting of continuances.

Hagar said by telephone from Martinsburg that he and sheriff’s officials had a series of meetings recently with Byrne and presiding Municipal Court judges in an attempt to persuade the courts, rather than the sheriff, to choose inmates suitable for release.

However, he said of the judges: “They said ‘No. We don’t want to be involved. . . .’ They were afraid of the election implications” of having one judge send someone to jail and another judge release him because there was not enough room.

Compton Municipal Judge Robert D. Mackey, chairman of the Los Angeles County Presiding Judges Assn., acknowledged in an interview: “It was our position that we could not join in this particular effort. The political situation does not allow Municipal Court judges to start letting people out. It’s our job to propose they should be in there.” Mackey said, however, that judges have been turning increasingly to sentences that do not involve incarceration, where the law allows.

Byrne said that Hagar had proposed putting a judge in a trailer behind the Men’s Central Jail. Additional inmates arriving from court after the jail population cap had been reached on any given day would be brought before the judge. If the inmate fit certain characteristics, such as having a bail that had been set below $2,500, he would be ordered released by the judge in the trailer, pending a court appearance. Byrne said that sort of role was rejected as “not a judicial function.”