Archive for September, 2016

The History of Theo Lacy and Orange County’s Jails

Monday, September 19th, 2016

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Theophilus “Theo” Lacy,  was a farmer, stable operator, and former Santa Ana town treasurer. He was also Orange County’s second (1891-95) and fourth (1899-1911) sheriff. Because the county was principally agricultural and sparsely populated, however, Lacy didn’t have much to do other than chase vagrants, look into an (infrequent) fight or robbery, and oversee the simple jail. Theo Lacy died in June 1918, as one of the county’s best-known citizens. Today, one of Orange County’s modern jails is named after the Lacy family.

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The Spurgeon Square Jail, aka “Lacy’s Hotel,” 1897-1924

Today, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department oversees three jails, with a daily inmate population generally averaging about 6,800. At the first of August, 1889, when Orange County was carved out of Los Angeles County, OC had not only no jail and no inmates, but also no county offices of any kind. So the county rented fourteen rooms in Santa Ana for a dollar a year, including a sheriff’s quarters at 302½ East Fourth Street. That took care of the office shortage, but there was still the jail problem. So jeweler Joseph H. Brunner offered the dark, dungeon-like basement of his building at 116½ East Fourth Street in Santa Ana. It was 30 feet long, extending partially under a sidewalk; 10 feet wide; and 10 feet to the ceiling with scant ventilation, double iron doors, and was known as “Brunner’s Basement.” “I have been in the basement,” an unfortunate scoundrel would bemoan. Following, then, is the chronology of Orange County jails:

Brunner’s Basement, 1889-1890

The “First Sycamore Street Jail,” 1890-1897

The Spurgeon Square Jail, aka “Lacy’s Hotel,” 1897-1924

The “Second Sycamore Street Jail,” aka “Old Sycamore,” 1924-1968

The Central Jails Complex (one jail each, for Men, Women), 1968-present; the Theo Lacy Facility, aka “The Branch,” 1960-present; the Intake Release Center, 1988; and the James A. Musick Facility, aka “The Farm,” 1963 (technically the IRC and Central Jails Complex are the same facility, located at 500 Flower St. in Santa Ana)

The subterranean Brunner’s Basement, clearly a stopgap measure, was in use only from August 1889 to May 1890 (although there are vague records of an unnamed “basement” lockup used for intoxicated persons, back in the late 1870s, before the county existed. This may have been a Santa Ana city jail). With the first county jail came the first jailbreak, in November 1889 when four of the eight prisoners manually threw a lock bolt and strolled out. Sheriff Richard T. Harris thought it over, surmised that the escapees “were well on their way to San Diego” by now, and good riddance. Saved the county 40 cents a day to feed them, anyway.

In any event, that 1889 “walk-away” jailbreak meant it was time for Orange County to have a real jail, so $4,000 was allocated for a new facility on Sycamore Street between Second and Third Streets, which opened in May 1890. Sometimes called the “First Sycamore Street Jail,” this was a small brick building containing three iron cells. It had its own rock pile next door, where the prisoners “made little ones out of big ones.” There was said to be no fence, just a ball-and-chain for each guest.

Although there is no record of a break-out from this jail, there was, unfortunately, one break-in, and it is still to the county’s great regret. Sheriff Theo Lacy had only two deputies in 1892, one who stayed in the office and one who oversaw the jail. (There was no such thing as routine patrol; officers went out only when summoned.) Among the prisoners was ranch worker Francisco Torres, who had used an ax to kill a well-liked local ranch foreman, and then fled to Escondido, where he was arrested. Sheriff Lacy retrieved Torres by train, but the sheriff had heard murmurings of a lynching. Accordingly, he ordered the train to stop early as it entered Santa Ana, and he whisked the prisoner to the jail. Still concerned at the growing restive sentiment, Lacy asked the County Supervisors for funds to transfer Torres to the Los Angeles jail for safekeeping. The supervisors responded by authorizing an additional guard instead. On August 20, 1892, a quiet, orderly mob broke open an iron jail door, shoved Deputy Robert Cogburn aside, removed Torres, and strung him up from a telegraph pole at Fourth and Sycamore streets.

Along about now (date uncertain), two inmates using a jackknife and a bucket dug their way out of the jail and slipped away, taking the jail blankets with them. The fleeing blanket-thieves split up but were captured. At some point, two other men burglarized a blacksmith’s shop, and stole tools that were then used to break into the jail and free about five vagrants. They were all captured, but then one of them took off again. Next, a group of prisoners removed metal bars from a furnace, and then, with a knife and two forks, dug themselves out. Such unseemly events were beginning to wear thin with the public, and in 1893 the Supervisors were forced to begin considering a new jail.

By 1897, the (slowly) growing Orange County required its third jail upgrade in eight years. A land parcel in the 200 block of Santa Ana Boulevard was purchased for $8,000, and $23,000 was allocated for a three-story lockup to be named Spurgeon Square Jail. It was better known as “Lacy’s Hotel,” named after Sheriff Lacy, whose family resided in, and oversaw, the lockup. The fortress-like Lacy’s Hotel, the first building in Spurgeon Square and soon to be joined next door by the grand old red sandstone courthouse, which elegantly survives today, was the county’s jailhouse for 27 years.

The fourth Orange County Jail and Sheriff’s Office, “Old Sycamore,” was constructed at 615 North Sycamore Street in Santa Ana in 1924 and remained in use for 44 years. (Orange County gets high mileage out of its jails.) It had an initial capacity of 260 inmates, but soon surpassed that number, as Orange County jails have tendency to do (and which for decades has drawn Grand Jury attention). In the early 1930s, crowding necessitated adding a fourth floor (“The Penthouse”) to Old Sycamore.

Old Sycamore closed in 1968, upon completion of the $10.4 million Central Jails complex in Santa Ana at 550 North Flower Street. Twenty years later, the biggest aggravated jailbreak in OC Sheriff history occurred when five men rappelled four stories down from the Men’s Central Jail roof, and disappeared. Unlike the four-man jail walk-away of 1889, however, this time the escapees were pursued, although it took six months (and help from the America’s Most Wanted TV show) to catch the last one. Rappelling remains the favored modern method of busting out of the Men’s Central Jail. On January 22, 2016, three violent and dangerous prisoners rappelled off the jail’s roof after cutting through multiple layers of metal, wriggling through a plumbing tunnel, evading barbed wire, sliding four stories down a bedsheet rope, and disappearing. Authorities said the trio had been working at it for weeks, even months. The escapees’ absence was not noted for fully 16 hours. The escapees fled to Northern California. One promptly returned to Orange County and surrendered, but thanks to alert citizens—and a $150,000 reward—the other two were captured in San Francisco within a week. The still-publicly-unannounced source of their cutting tools was a sizable exasperation for sheriffs’ officials. When Old Sycamore was torn down in 1973, an old ball and chain was discovered hidden away in its attic—obviously not in use in 1889, 1988, and 2016! The artifact is now retired to the Sheriff’s Archives.(1157)

Is it a crime to be poor? (We don’t think so)

Friday, September 2nd, 2016

Is it a crime to be poor?   by Scott Miner

Lightnin’ Hopkins, the most heavily recorded blues musician once wrote a song entitled “It’s a sin to be rich, it’s a low-down shame to be poor”.

The United States Justice Department recently issued a ruling stating that holding defendants in jail is unconstitutional based on the fact that they can’t afford to make bail. The court filing said that it is a violation of the US Constitution Fourteenth Amendment. This is the first time the government has taken a position like this before a federal appeals court.

It’s the latest step by the current presidential administration in encouraging state courts to distance themselves from the process of mandating fixed cash bail amounts with the result of jailing those who are unable to pay.

The Department stated in a friend of the court brief that bail bond customs that end up jailing persons unable to pay for pretrial release is where the violation of the Fourteenth Amendment comes from, citing the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection

The filing came in the case of Maurice Walker of Calhoun, Georgia. He was kept in jail for six nights after police arrested him for the misdemeanor offense of being a pedestrian under the influence. He was told he could not get out of jail unless he paid the fixed bail amount of $160.

The Department’s civil rights attorneys stated that courts need to consider a person’s indigence and search for other ways of guaranteeing an attendance for a court date. They felt that set bail schedules that permit the pretrial release of only those who can afford to pay, without taking into consideration an individual’s ability to pay unlawfully discriminates against destitute members of society.

Many civil rights advocates have accused local judges of operating modern-day debtor’s prisons (which were banned under Federal law in 1833. The Fourteenth Amendment affirmed the unconstitutionality of the practice in 1983). There are examples of these types of abuses alive and well in today’s society, due to the rise of private probation companies, like Judicial Correction Services.

A woman in Illinois was arrested and taken to jail because she owed a debt related to an unpaid medical bill. Unbeknownst to her, a collection agency had filled a lawsuit against her, and never having received the appearance notice, missed her court date.

Another woman in Alabama spent seven weeks in her local county jail without ever appearing in court. Her crime was a failure to pay the monthly fees mailed to her by the aforementioned Judicial Correction Services.

Until recently, the effort to help the indigent in the question of excessive bail and sentences was led by organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Human Rights Watch. They’ve sued courts around the country in an effort to force reforms. But the recent filing from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has put chief justices and court administrators on notice that the Feds are joining the fight. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has made a priority of fighting what she calls “the criminalization of poverty”.

A statement from the ACLU’s racial justice program said “The DOJ is sending a strong message that judges should voluntarily comply and examine closely their policies before they get in trouble.”

It’s a rare move on the Court’s part, because it tries to change policies in courts it does not control. The efforts began with the Civil Rights Division’s looking into Ferguson, Missouri, lately a powder keg of racially related events. Investigators found a court system that emphasized revenue over justice, forcing people into debt (and jail), with blacks bearing a disproportionate burden. The filing reminds judges that it’s illegal to jail people because they cannot pay a fine, a protection safeguarded by Supreme Court decisions.

Back to the case of Maurice Walker: a federal judge in January ruled in Walker’s favor, ordering the city to allow those arrested on misdemeanor offenses be released on their own recognizance (aka “o.r.”) and to make other changes in its post-arrest procedures.

Appealing that order, the city said the preset amounts of the city’s bail schedule are tied to the seriousness of each offense and are specifically allowed under Georgia law.

“A system of unsecured recognizance bonds,” the city said in its appeal,” greatly reduces the incentive for defendants to appear.”

The city is supported by the Georgia Sheriff’s Association and by a group representing the nation’s bail bondsmen. They argue that the Constitution does not guarantee bail, it only bans excessive bail.

“It thus simply cannot be that any defendant arrested for any crime must be immediately released based on a bare assertion of indigence,” the group said in its court filing.

Barry J. Pollack, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense lawyers, said Friday said he applauded the Justice Department’s for making “critically important arguments.”

A spokesman for the defense lawyers group said it believes “pretrial liberty must be the norm and detention prior to trial the carefully limited exception.

An argument can be made for pretrial set bail schedules in that bail is not just for the accused as much as it is for victims, society and the interest of justice. Yes, mistakes can happen, but the catalyst for an arrest is usually probable cause, so therefore, at face value, defensible.

An accused person has a right to a reasonable bail (the key word here is reasonable, the preceding argument being against excessive or unaffordable bail). Society has the right to know that an accused person will show up for trial. History has shown that the most effective way to insure that someone shows up for a court appearance is a fully guaranteed bail bond written by a licensed bail bondsman. An unsecured release, as proposed by the Court’s filing is unenforceable. With absolutely nothing to lose, why would any accused person show up for a court appearance? Only commercial bail bonds guarantee an appearance in court or payment of the full bail amount if an offender fails to appear.

Here at Orange County Bail Bonds, we of course believe in the effectiveness of bail, but have always been willing to work with all our clients in tailoring bail bonds payment options to accommodate any and all economic situations. (see our YouTube video on financing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcXTLB2iqSM  as well as the blog post here from June 14th regarding financing)