Lawyer Protests Sentences in Plea Bargains : Courts: The public defender wants the state attorney general to prosecute cases involving repeat drug-dealing suspects.

The chief public defender at the San Fernando Courthouse, annoyed that prosecutors have been ordered to demand at least six-year sentences in plea bargains with repeat narcotics-dealing suspects, has asked that state authorities replace the district attorney’s office in all such cases.

The minimum acceptable sentence until recently was three years, which continues to be the standard used in other courthouses, said Bill Weiss, head deputy public defender at the San Fernando Courthouse.

Weiss filed a motion last week with Superior Court Judge Malcolm Mackey asking that the state attorney general’s office be required to take over prosecution of all repeat offender drug-dealing suspects because of an order issued May 4 by Billy Webb, head deputy district attorney at the courthouse. Mackey is scheduled to rule on the motion June 10.

Webb’s order requires prosecutors not to accept a sentence of less than six years--the statutory minimum--in a plea bargain with a repeat narcotics offender, no matter how weak the case against the suspect.

The memo forbids the previously common practice of allowing repeat offenders to serve the three-year term imposed--but often suspended--for their first offense, evading the requirement for a six-year minimum term for repeat offenders.

The “policy as to narcotic dispositions is sacrosanct,” Webb’s memo ordered. “It will not be altered,” it said in an underlined sentence. “Any judge wishing to negotiate with a dope dealer for less than the statutory minimum must take the plea himself/herself.”

Webb acknowledged that the standard acceptable plea in other courthouses for repeat offenders in drug cases is three years, but he argued that “they only end up doing half that time, and drug dealers are back on the street.”

A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office said Webb has the support of his superiors, but the district attorney is not planning to order a similar policy change at other courthouses.

Weiss countered that all he is seeking is that acceptable pleas be consistent with those specified at other courthouses in the county, and that individual prosecutors be given discretion to accept lower sentences based on the case.

“When he adds that even in a weak case you push the case, that is a refusal to use discretion,” Weiss said.