EDITOR’S NOTE: On any given day, the biggest chunk of the County’s jail population—45 percent— is made up of people waiting to go to trial.

Most of that pretrial 45 percent are in for felony charges. About half of those with a felony charge are accused of violent or sex related crimes.

But this leaves a big chunk of people who are in jail awaiting trial for far less serious charges. Many of this group are locked up, not because they are considered a public safety risk, or a flight risk, but because they simply don’t have the money or the assets (like a house) that will allow them to make bail.

Both Dr. James Austin and the Vera Institute compiled reports for LA County that recommended implementing an innovative system pretrial supervision, which would mean that certain people could get out, pretrial, without having to post bail, but they will have some element of supervision to insure that they show up for their court dates.

Matt Fleischer is keeping a close eye on the issue and has an update.

DR. JAMES AUSTIN SAYS THAT MAKING PRETRIAL RELEASE A REALITY IN LOS ANGELES IS NOT A SURE THING—BUT THE CHANCES LOOK GOOD

by Matthew Fleischer

It’s been nearly a month since LA County Sheriff Lee Baca stood side-by-side at a press conference with nationally-renown corrections expert Dr. James Austin to debut Austin’s plan to shutter Men’s Central Jail and reduce the LA County Jail population by up to 3,000 inmates. Austin worked with the Sheriff’s department for three months to develop his plan. (

The Austin plan, if you’ll remember, calls for the release of selected non-violent inmates awaiting trial, the transfer of inmates to lower-cost fire camps, expanded release opportunities through the sheriff’s Education Based Incarceration program, and the expansion of capacity at the North County Correctional Facility. The pretrial release component is generally considered the report’s centerpiece, and also the element that could be the most controversial.

Baca seemed impressed—publicly professing his support for the plan, and announcing for the first time that, thanks to Austin’s efforts, the complete shutting of MCJ could be accomplished without building a $1.4 billion new jail.

As I wrote in the wake of the press conference, however, Baca’s supportive statements were no guarantee of action. “The sheriff is not committed to implementing the Austin plan,” Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore told WitnessLA.

Even if the Sheriff does wish to implement the plan, he still has to convince the Board of Supervisors, the CEO, the probation department and the local judiciary of its potential efficacy. The prospect of closing the most dangerous jail in America certainly seems daunting.

I reached Austin by phone last Friday to see how things are progressing.

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What is your role now that the plan has been completed? Are you sticking around to help implementation?

I’m funded to work with the Sheriff to help implement that plan. We’re starting that process. I just had a meeting with the CEO and the Board of Supervisors. We’re putting together the nuts and bolts.

How are things progressing in your estimation?

I’m still optimistic. By June 1st we’ll know how real this thing is going forward. We’ve got some players outside the Sheriff’s department, obviously–the CEO and the supervisors. Everything has to be negotiated. We have a ways to go.

Can the Sheriff enact any elements of your plan unilaterally? Does the money already exist for electronic monitoring of inmates released pretrial?

As far as the money situation, I’m not sure. Legally you can do it. But it’s best we get everyone involved. During the planning process I met with the overseeing judge, who was fully behind the plan. Funding is an issue, perhaps. But Baca can do it legally. He has those powers under the Rutherford case.

What is the first step we should be seeing the department take that would indicate they are taking this report seriously?

The releasing some of the pretrial people. The second thing would be to get the construction plans in place for shutting down parts of Men’s Central Jail and getting it reconfigured for lower risk inmates.

Have any pretrial inmates in the county system been released yet?

No inmates have been released. At least not that I know of. Things could have happened and I wasn’t informed of. But not to my knowledge anyway. We should see something in terms of releases soon though.

UPDATE:

Steve Cooley tells why he decided to go after Polanski.

And the Polanksi filmmaker, Marina Zenovich, talks about inteviewing David “I was lying to make the story better” Wells.

Okay, I’ve changed my mind on Roman Polanski’s extradition. I want him hauled back, toute de suit, for his 1977 alleged drugging and rape of a 13-year-old girl.

And I want certain people from the DA’s office (or retired from the DA’s office) hauled into to court and forced to sort out their own increasingly appalling behavior.

To recap: Back in 1978, in part in response to the wishes of Polanski’s victim and her family, Polanski’s attorney Douglas Dalton and the assistant DA prosecuting the case, Roger Gunson, agreed on a plea bargain in order that Samantha Geimer would not have to undergo the trauma of a trial. Polanski pleaded guilty to having sex with a minor. In return, all other more serious charges were dropped. The judge ruled that Polanski would go for a psychological evaluation at the California Institution of Men at Chino, after which time, the judge would sentence the director according to the prison’s recommendation.

Polanski went to Chino as required. When he was released, the relevant Chino personnel recommended no more prison time.

It looked like Polanski would be released altogether for time served, as had been reportedly agreed. But in the meantime, Judge Rittenband had been chatting about Polanski with another prosecutor in the DA’s office, David Wells, who although he was not assigned to the case, knew it well, and felt strongly that Polanski should not be allowed to skate quite so easily.

Whether or not because of Wells’ extracurricular influence, Rittenband did do an about face and decided Polanski had to go back upstate. He also reportedly had additional side conversations with personal friends and even at least one reporter about his desire and/or plans to send Polanski behind bars for many decades.

According to Well’s he said as much in the courtroom—albeit out of any other attorneys’ hearing. “[He] said, ‘Screw the deal, he’s going to state prison.’ And he said it straight to a reporter from The Outlook.”

But getting back to those cosy chit-chats between Rittenband and Wells,—again, a DA who was NOT on the case. Those talks—if they took place–were what is known as ex parte conversations, which are both unethical and illegal.

So how do we know such illegal chin wagging occurred? After all, Judge Rittenband is dead, so cannot be questioned.

Well, mostly we know because Wells went on camera and said so when he was interviewed for an HBO documentary about Polanski’s case with the unfortunate title, “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.” And not only did Wells tell of conversations with Rittenband, he did so in great and colorfully convincing detail.

But then yesterday Wells decided that, upon reflection, he didn’t really, really mean what he said to those filmmakers. In fact, Wells has confessed cheerily to several newspapers and media outlets (including the LA Times), he lied about his misconduct way back when. Why? Because he thought the ex parte thingy would make a better story. “”I made that up to make the stuff look better,” Wells said.

Plus, he said, he thought the documentary would only air in France.

(Damn those unscrupulous filmmaker scum! They used the dreaded “It’ll only air in France” ploy.)

Okay, So let us get this straight: Wells, the veteran prosecutor, lied to a couple of documentary filmmakers about committing prosecutorial misconduct, thus possibly endangering an otherwise respectable career (plus a still open case)— because he thought the dramatic arc would be better? (For French audiences?)

And now, according to him, this time he is really, no-kidding, cross-his-heart-hope-to-die-stick-needle-in-his-eye telling the real and unvarnished truth about his unfortunate misconduct lie because…What? He figures screw the dramatic arc?

Uh, Yeah. Sure. That works.

Marcia Clark—yes THAT Marcia Clark—first floated this bizarre sounding tale in a column in Wednesday’s Daily Beast.

However, at some point in her lengthy essay, Clark–who said she knows the now-retired prosecutor well—let slip this interesting little moment of musing, ” For the record, if he [Wells] really did make those suggestions to the judge, I wouldn’t put it past him to fall on his sword, say he lied, and save the case.”

Great. That’s comforting to contemplate in the name of justice.

And in addition to the Wells’ did-I-or-didn’t-I stories, there is also the alleged misconduct of the late Judge Rittenband.

Bottom line, if Polanski isn’t extradited, we won’t get to sort out this circus, which badly needs sorting.

But there are other reasons.

Reason number two: Like most anyone with any sense, I’ve had it with the apologists who oppose the prosecution of the admitted pedophile Polanski on account of his past suffering (the murder of his wife Sharon Tate and child-to-be, plus his personal Holocaust traumas)—and mostly, because of his artistry.

This elitist perspective is beyond offensive. Yes, Polanski has been through terrible truama. (And, yes, Chinatown is a truly great American film.) But we don’t cut gang members one iota of slack, even though many come from horrorshow backgrounds that would give Polanski a run for his money in the suffering category.

And if talent was a get out of jail free card, as a friend of mine noted, let’s start with the Unibomber. Ted Kaczynski was a genius. (Unfortunately he was also crazy. But Polanski is also a pedophile.)

Nonetheless, more than 100 film industry figures have signed a petition asking that Polanski be released. The names include such people as . Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Michael Medavoy, Michael Mann, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Weinstein and Woody Allen. (Oh, the irony.) There was also a slew of directors from outside Hollywood like Wim Wenders and Pedro Almodovar.

A part of the text of the petition is reportedly as follows:

“We demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski. Film-makers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision… It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary film-makers, is used by police to apprehend him.”

Yeeccchhh. Extradite the SOB—if only to slam the apologists upside the head. (No, I don’t think that’s a good legal reason. It’s an emotional reason.)

Yet in the end, for me, the most persuasive reason for Polanski’s extradition is contained in the written statement from the organization called SNAP—The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests—which staged a demonstration downtown on Wednesday. The statement they distributed Tuesday night read in part.

“Since his arrest and the announcement that he will be extradited to the US, some entertainment figures have expressed sympathy for him. These public statements of support… make teenagers who are being victimized now feel intimidated and hopeless, thus staying silent and enabling their predators to keep hurting them and others. Rallying around admitted child rapists also rubs salt into the wounds of other rape victims, both adults and kids,….

Despite the probable misconduct in the 1978 case, despite the DA’s office likely grandstanding and questionable priorities, despite the wishes of Polanski’s victim, SNAP expresses the perspective of hundreds and hundreds of victims of child sexual abuse.

Theirs is a collective voice that cannot be ignored.

What can Steve Cooley’s office be thinking? First Deborah Peagler, then Bruce Lisker, and now this bizarre, off the rails chase after Roman Polanski.

But before we talk about the great public safety threat posed by film director Polanski, here are some of the threats to public safety that actually occurred Los Angeles over the weekend:

A six-month old baby and his mother were shot in the head on Sunday in Van Nuys. The father was wounded too, but not as seriously. The baby died.

A 26-year old man hit and killed a pedestrian in a Woodland Hills crosswalk after the man took off following an attempt by CHP to pull him over on a routine traffic stop. The man also fired on officers and was eventually taken into custody by SWAT.

There was a double murder in Canoga Park on Saturday morning.

There was a fatal hit-and-run in Boyle Heights on Friday night in which a woman was killed.

A 25-year-old South LA man was shot and critically wounded at his birthday party on Saturday.

Sunday morning a dead person was found hanging from a tree at Hollenbeck Park.

And this was a comparatively quiet weekend.

So, in this bad budget season when every city, county and state agency is in a fiscal crisis, where is our city’s prosecutorial effort and money going?

Obviously, you know the answer: The DA’s office is spending the big bucks extraditing Polanski from Switzerland on a 31-year-old U.S. warrant charging that he had sex with a minor, a case that has already been badly compromised by alleged judicial misconduct and possibly by prosecutorial misconduct. Moreover the victim, Samantha Geimer—now a mother of two in her 40’s—has asked publicly and repeatedly for the charges to be dropped—not for Polanski’s sake, but for her sake.

Just to remind you of the facts: in 1977 Polanski allegedly drugged and raped then 13-year-old Samantha Geimer.

However, in order to avoid putting the young teenager through any more of the invasive media circus that a celebrity rape trial would have brought, her family agreed that her interests would be best served by the plea bargain that had been worked out between Polanski’s attorney, Doug Dalton and the Assistant DA prosecuting the case, Roger Gunson. Polanski would be sentenced to a 90-day psychological evaluation at the state prison at Chino. In return, Polanski agreed to plead to the lessor charge of “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor,” and all seemed ready to move ahead toward a resolution.

But then Judge Laurence Rittenband thought things overand decided that the plea bargain wasn’t what he had in mind—and rescinded the deal. The judge also reportedly talked over possible sentences with a reporter, and supposedly made public remarks about his intention to see that Polanski was locked up for the rest of his life. It is also alleged that an LA prosecutor who was not on the case, pressured Rittenband to yank back the deal.

In reaction, to what appeared to be a life-sentence coming his direction. Polanski fled the country.

In the years since, several efforts have been made to settle the case by dismissing the charges. Gunson, the original prosecutor, and Samantha Geimer, Polanski’s victim, both pushed for dismissal of all charges so that the matter could be put behind everyone.

There was one unsuccessful attempt at a settlement in 1997.

In 2003, Geimer wrote an impassioned Op Ed for the LA Times asking for an end to the case.

Again, in early 2009, Geimer filed a very strongly worded declaration that urged the charges to be dropped in the clearest of terms—for her sake.

What does the DA’s office imagine is going to be accomplished for the public good with this expensive spectacle it has triggered?

What Roman Polanski did was morally reprehensible and a crime.

But the DA’s Javert-like pursuit of the director across the world all these years later—when the victim has pleaded for him not to—is starting to seem worse.

PS; As I was preparing to post this material, I read Patrick Goldstien’s Column One story for the LA Times on this same subject.

In a fascinating and welcome turnaround, the LA District Attorney’s office has dropped charges against Bruce Lisker, the man who was recently released from prison after spending 24 years in prison due to what many believe was a wrongful conviction. Lisker is 44-years old.

When he was 17, Lisker was convicted of the beating and stabbing death of his mother, Dorka Lisker, whose body was discovered in a bloody scene at the Lisker’s Sherman Oaks home. Bruce Lisker was tried and convicted as an adult, and sentenced to life in prison in 1985.

Early last month, U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips overturned Lisker’s conviction stating that Lisker was convicted on “false evidence” and that his attorney (who is now a court commissioner) did not adequately represent him.

But although Lisker was released, the DA’s office strongly hinted they would go ahead with a new trial.

Initial doubts about the case had come to light when an LAPD Internal Affairs sergeant named Jim Gavin responded to an ethics complaint about the main officer on the Lisker case, Det. Andrew Monsue. The more Gavin looked into things, the more he began to believe that what he was looking at was no simple misstatement by an officer, but a rush to judgment in a murder investigation that might have the wrong person in prison.

However, his bosses at IA, then headed by Michael Berkow, thought Gavin was overstepping his bounds and told him to cease and desist.

He mostly did so—but handed over some of what he’d found to Lisker’s lawyer.

Gavin also began talking to LA Times reporters Matt Lait and Scott Glover who wrote an excellent 2005 account of the murder investigation and subsequent conviction that raised a great many troubling questions about Lisker’s guilt.

Since that time, Jim Gavin, who essentially acted as a whistleblower, calling attention to what he believed might be a grave miscarriage of justice, appears to have been marginalized by some sectors of the LAPD, a department where he still serves.

As to why the DA decided not to proceed, DA spokesperson Sandi Gibbons, stated that, while “…we remain confident in Mr. Lisker’s original conviction of the second-degree murder of his mother, Dorka…” the prosecution was unable to go to trial due to the fact that much of the original physical evidence had been “destroyed” (not comforting to know, whatever one believes about the Lisker case) and some of the witnesses had died.

“Given these factors and policy considerations, we cannot proceed to trial. ”

In other words, Gibbons said when we talked, although the prosecutors’ view of the case has not changed, the state of the available admissible evidence assuredly has.

This is obviously great news for Bruce Lisker, and in the view of many, very good news for justice in general.

After his release, amid TV cameras Bruce Lisker thanks private investigator Paul Ingles, one of those who worked on his case: the above photo and other photos from that day by Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

UPDATE: For a radical twist on my crusade for justice for Big Bad Roger, see Joe Mailander’s blog here.

Love him or loath him, it’s a sure bet that Steve Cooley is going to be LA’s district attorney for a third term. His opponents are non starters and he gets along with both law enforcement and city hall. With all this in mind, my pal, KPCC reporter Frank Stolz, did this mini-portrait of Cooley, past and present

Here’s a transcript clip of one of the more…um…interesting moments in which retired LAPD Detective Jimmy Trahin, who trainedCooley as a reserve police officer in the early 1970s, tells what our DA was like in those years.

Jimmy Trahin: First thing I noticed about Steve is that he was one of these gung ho types. He just couldn’t wait to get out there and pick up bad guys. We’d stop and jack ‘em up, and they were scared of us. And they were scared of Steve.

Stoltze: Trahin recalls one backyard encounter with three robbery suspects.

Trahin: It was an all knock out brawl. And it ended up, other officers came in and Steve backed off, and then he came back in with his baton, and he was doing his number to try to keep these people down, and he ended up hitting half of the other cops that were there with his baton, and we all end up getting medical treatment after that.

Okie-Dokie. (By the way, Cooley swears he didn’t pull his baton.)

All in all, the anecdotes in this intriguing group of audio snapshots may please some, irritate others. But they suggest a complex, interesting man who, in our complex and interesting city has managed to get along well with and be respected by law enforcement, city hall, and the defense bar—-and most of (but not all) of the town’s most outspoken activists.

In any case, he’s our DA for the next four years so click, listen and enjoy.

Here’s the rest.

Photo by Anne Cusack for the LA Times