Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Monday, November 19, 2001

 

Page 1

 

Runoff Set for Superior Court Commissioner’s Post

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

A runoff will be necessary in the balloting to fill a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner vacancy, a court spokesman said Friday.

None of the 32 eligible candidates received a majority in the voting that ended Thursday, Kyle Christopherson said, so Superior Court Referee Mitchell Beckloff and Deputy District Attorney Scott Gordon, the two highest vote-getters, will compete in a new round of voting.

Ballots will be mailed out today and will be due back sometime next month, although no exact date has been set, Christopherson said.

Beckloff and Gordon, in that order, were the candidates highest ranked by the court’s Commissioner Examination Committee. The committee issued its rankings in September, naming a total of 35 candidates from among more than 200 who applied.

The three highest-ranked candidates—Jeffrey Marckese, Sanjay T. Kumar, and S. Robert Ambrose—were elected commissioners in previous balloting. The rankings are not binding on the judges, who can elect anyone on the list.

Beckloff sits in Eastlake Juvenile Court. Gordon is assigned to the district attorney’s central trials unit and also teaches evidence, criminal procedure, and trial advocacy at Southwestern University School of Law.

The highest ranked candidates after Beckloff and Gordon were Los Angeles attorneys Robert Kawahara and Melissa Widdiefield, Deputy District Attorney Diana Summerhayes, Superior Court research attorney William Dodson, newly appointed State Bar Court Judge Stanford Reichert, Referee Jane Godfrey, Santa Monica lawyer Michael Levanas, Deputy Federal Public Defender Richard Novak, and Sherman Oaks practitioner Michael Convey.

 

Copyright 2001, Metropolitan News Company