Countywide : Hearing Delayed on Jail Overcrowding

A court hearing scheduled for next week on Orange County jail overcrowding has been postponed for the second time to give U.S. District Judge William P. Gray more time to recover from recent surgery.

The judge had been expected to tour the county jails and inspect allegations of overcrowding at four of the five facilities. But aides to the judge said Thursday that it will have to wait.

“It was on, but now it’s off again,” the judge’s scheduling clerk said. “He’s just not quite up to that kind of thing yet.”

Gray, who has overseen the county’s jail cases for more than 15 years, originally had planned to hear the most recent case late last year. But in late November, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, forcing him to postpone all his cases.

He underwent surgery, and the tumor proved to be benign. Although he is back on the bench, Gray is still recuperating.

The Orange County case now before him was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of inmates who are requesting better access to the jail law library and demanding that they be given their full 15-minute allotment for meals, among other issues. Most significantly, the inmates and their lawyers are seeking a cap on the housing population of all five county jails to relieve overcrowding at all but one of the facilities.

No new date has been set for the hearing, but it is tentatively being planned for late March.