Judge Orders Appearance by Starr

A Santa Monica Superior Court judge on Tuesday ordered Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr to appear before him later this month to explain why former Whitewater partner Susan McDougal continues to be held in a Los Angeles County jail.

Judge Paul G. Flynn issued a bench warrant for Starr’s arrest, then immediately stayed that order until May 22, when McDougal is scheduled to be tried in his court on charges that she embezzled more than $150,000 from conductor Zubin Mehta and his wife.

McDougal, who has pleaded not guilty in that case, is far better known as the former investment partner of President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Whitewater land deal. She has been held since September on federal contempt-of-court charges for her refusal to testify before the federal grand jury studying Whitewater.

McDougal’s attorney, Mark Geragos, suggested that Starr is trying to keep McDougal in harsher county jail confinement to coerce her into testifying in the Whitewater matter.

Starr’s office said it had no comment on Flynn’s order.

Geragos said he initiated the action against Starr by having the independent counsel subpoenaed in San Francisco on Monday to appear at Tuesday’s scheduled hearing in McDougal’s case. Starr did not appear Tuesday. The district attorney’s office said there were questions about whether the subpoena was properly served.

At issue is the fact that McDougal remains confined at Los Angeles County’s Sybil Brand Institute for Women despite Flynn’s order in mid-December that she be released on her own recognizance in the embezzlement case.

At that point, McDougal’s attorneys say, she should have been sent back into federal custody.

McDougal was placed in a federal medical facility in Texas last September for contempt of court after she refused to testify. She faces a sentence of up to 18 months.

In December she was brought to Los Angeles to face the local embezzlement charges. Soon after, Flynn ordered her returned to Texas. But authorities here continued to hold her in what is called a “high profile” cellblock of Sybil Brand, segregated from the majority of the population and escorted between jail locations in handcuffs.

Her attorneys contend that officials at the federal facilities, which are thought to be less severe than the county’s jails, have refused to take her back and want Starr to explain why.

The Sheriff’s Department, which oversees the county jail system, says it is simply fulfilling its obligation to hold a federal prisoner.

Last March, Flynn objected in court to the fact that McDougal had not been transferred back to the federal facility in Texas, as he had ordered. At the time, the district attorney’s office said it had no problem with McDougal being moved out of state, but added that it was unwilling to pay to shuttle her between Texas and Santa Monica.

Geragos said that still does not explain why McDougal was not moved to the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal facility, in downtown Los Angeles.

According to the Sheriff’s Department, the issue is not one of retaliation, but of procedure. Just because a California judge orders McDougal released doesn’t mean the Sheriff’s Department can drop her on a federal facility’s doorstep, said Sheriff’s Custody Chief Barry King.

“We don’t have a removal order to remove her out of our jail, so she is still being held here,” he said.

In 1993, McDougal was charged with grand theft and forgery for allegedly making unauthorized credit card purchases and forging checks when she was working as a bookkeeper to Nancy Mehta, the wife of the former Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor.

Times staff writer Robert L. Jackson contributed to this story.