Night Court Experiment to End After 11 Months

The Los Angeles Superior Court plans to dismantle its 11-month-old experimental night court, despite an assessment from law enforcement officials and the public defender that the pilot project has been a resounding success.

“It was a policy decision . . . based on an evaluation that night court is just not effective,” Jack E. Goertzen, presiding judge of the Superior Court, said Thursday.

Launched on a trial basis last year, the project divided six Superior Courts and one Municipal Court into early morning and night to test whether case backlog and jail overcrowding could be reduced.

Statistics compiled for the Board of Supervisors show that from April through October, the courts participating in the experiment disposed of almost twice as many cases as had been projected and saved about 114 jail beds.

In addition, cases heard in the pilot program courtrooms were adjudicated an average of 10.7 days earlier than comparable cases in day courts, according to the Split Court Session Pilot Project Task Force report.

Attached to the report were enthusiastic letters about the project from Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, Public Defender Wilbur F. Littlefield, George W. Trammell, presiding judge of the Municipal Court, and Sheriff Sherman Block.

The three felony courts split into double sessions were compared to six regular day courts chosen by the Superior Court. Figures show that from July through October the split courts handled 21 homicide cases, contrasted with 20 for the day courts; 205 crimes against persons, contrasted with 182; 216 crimes against property, contrasted with 184, and 549 drug cases, contrasted with 508.

Judges, however, say the figures are misleading.

“The statistics look impressive until you realize that they’re not getting the heavy cases,” said Judge Aurelio Munoz, who supervises criminal felony trials. He added that prosecutors and public defenders were “handpicked” for the split courts because their offices were “trying to make it (the program) look spectacular from the beginning.”

In enumerating their problems with the program, the judges say valuable time is wasted when a case is settled on the eve of trial and there is no way for the night court to be assigned a new case. They say some attorneys refuse to work at night, with the result that cases sometimes have to be shipped to overtaxed civil courtrooms.

The judges say attorneys--and also defendants in custody--are often late for the morning sessions, which are supposed to begin at 7 a.m.

But critics of the decision to end the night court experiment say these objections mask the true reasons for the judges’ position.

“They are very concerned that if this program succeeds it will inhibit the construction of court facilities that they think will be needed in the future,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Gerald G. Haney, who heads his office’s night court division.

“They are sincerely concerned that Superior Court judges are being required to make sacrifices that people of their stature should not have to make,” he added.

Similarly, Littlefield noted that judges object to working conditions that result from split sessions.

“When you come right down to it, the main reason they don’t like night court is that it is not seemly for Superior Court judges to have to share chambers or work nights,” Littlefield said.

Presiding Judge Goertzen acknowledged that judges do not like sharing chambers but he said that is not a principal factor. The real concern, he said, is the quality of criminal justice.

“When you have a production running at full capacity, it seems to make sense to start a second production line,” he said. “But we’re not producing ball bearings.”

Frank S. Zolin, county clerk and executive officer of the Superior Court, said the court is examining the feasibility of a night court for civil or family law cases when the current night court program ends June 30.

“It may be possible to design programs to handle short matters on a short shift,” he said.

Although the Superior Court has the final authority when it comes to scheduling court sessions, Supervisor Ed Edelman, who favors the pilot program, said he has been holding meetings with the judges in an effort to “understand what can be done to help them come back into the program.”

“There may be some compromises,” Edelman said.