Judge Says Severity of Looting, Backgrounds Dictate Punishment

While nearly 200 looters have been sentenced in the county’s Long Beach courts, only a trickle of felony defendants have reached that stage in downtown Los Angeles, scene of the bulk of riot prosecutions. But those first sentences suggest that cases in the main Criminal Courts Building could follow the pattern seen in Long Beach--and doom Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner’s bid for minimum one-year jail terms for looters.

Cecil J. Mills, supervising judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court, recently sentenced several looting defendants to time served since their arrests, plus 200 hours of community service. In addition, Mills predicted that he and other Los Angeles judges will hand down three levels of sentences in riot cases, varying with the background of defendants and severity of the looting:

* Release with time served in the mildest cases, involving defendants with clean records and minimal looting, such as those who are in a store but have not removed anything. Such defendants would be placed on three years probation and ordered to do community service, preferably in the riot area, Mills said.

* County jail terms of six months to a year for a “middle group,” those with “more than insignificant” records--perhaps four or five misdemeanors--or whose looting was less than minor, such as someone who stole a VCR, he said.

* State prison terms for “people with horrendous records” or in extreme cases of looting.

“The very easy thing is (to say) ‘these people were out there rioting, I’d like to throw the book at them,’ ” Mills said. “But every case and every defendant is different.

“If you have a woman with no prior record who is coming out of a store with a box of Pampers . . . that defendant stands in a different posture than (one) with three prior felony convictions coming out of a stereo store.”