Attorney Faces Charges in Courtroom Confrontation

VAN NUYS — A lippy lawyer faces a possible 90 days in jail and $400 fine for mouthing off at an opposing attorney--at least if prosecutors have their way.

The city attorney’s office has filed a criminal charge against attorney Daniel Hustwit for allegedly calling a prosecutor and a courtroom bailiff “asses,” challenging the bailiff to a fight and yelling an obscenity at him. The alleged offense is using “offensive words in a public place which are inherently likely to provoke an immediate violent reaction.”

The confrontation erupted following a March 14 sentencing hearing in Van Nuys Superior Court for a client Hustwit was representing in a perjury case involving a bogus driver’s license. As Hustwit tells it, prior to the hearing he struck a plea agreement with the district attorney’s office on behalf of his client, who agreed to plead guilty to one count of perjury.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Pargament, the prosecutor assigned to the case, asked a judge to sentence Hustwit’s client to 25 years to life for the offense, contending that it was a three-strikes case.

Hustwit, however, submitted a memo stating that one offense his client pleaded to occurred in 1993, four months before the three-strikes law took effect, and therefore the three-strikes law was not applicable. At that point, said Hustwit, Pargament accused him of acting under false pretenses, because the two counts he had dropped would have been applicable.

The judge, however, imposed the three-year sentence that Hustwit proposed, adjourned and left the courtroom. On his way out of court, Hustwit said he caught Pargament and bailiff Michael Ascolese, the sheriff’s deputy who had arrested Hustwit’s client, glaring at him so he decided to approach them.

“I said, ‘You’re an ass. And you’re an ass,’ and I pointed at both of them as I said it,” Hustwit said. “They were shocked.”

Hustwit said Ascolese got “right in my face and stared at me in the way a man looks at another man he’s about to fight. At that point I looked at Ascolese and said, ‘If you want a piece of me take off your gun and badge and let’s go outside.’ ”

In his arrest report, Deputy Ascolese recounted the incident somewhat differently, saying that after the name-calling, he admonished Hustwit that “That’s not appropriate language for the courtroom, counselor.” To that, Ascolese said, Hustwit replied: “You want to take me outside, deputy?”

The courtroom crowd that overheard the exchange included “several . . . young children,” the arrest report added.

Ascolese called his sergeant and detained Hustwit at the courthouse for an hour, then released him. Hustwit said he got a surprise in the mail two weeks later when he received a notice informing him that he was being charged with disturbing the peace.

“I can’t believe they’re prosecuting this,” said Hustwit, who added that he has been inundated with calls from defense attorneys offering to help him fight the case since it was reported in the Daily Journal, a legal newspaper.

“It’s so foolish that in America something like this can happen,” he said.

Ascolese could not be reached for comment and Pargament declined to discuss the case. Deputy City Atty. Daniel Kleban, who filed the charge against Hustwit, did not return telephone calls seeking comment, but said in a previously published interview that the charge was based not on Hustwit’s language but on his challenging the deputy to fight.

Hustwit, however, said he believes he is being charged for using offensive language and that he was responding to Ascolese’s challenge to a fight, not issuing a challenge himself.

A hearing on a defense motion to have the case dismissed is scheduled for June 16. Hustwit, 31, who has been practicing law for nearly five years, said he does not regret his actions.

“If given the same circumstances, I would do it again in a second,” Hustwit said. “Really, I was calling an ass an ass both times.”