[X] Anthony (A.J.) Bayne

Friday, March 20, 2026

Page 8

Anthony (A.J.) Bayne

Los Angeles Superior Court Office No. 87

nthony Jeremiah (“A.J.”) Bayne has been a trial attorney for more than 30 years. In excess of 25 years of that time has been spent as a Los Angeles County deputy public defender. A senior member of his office describes him as “hard working and unassuming.” A judge remarks: “I think he would make an excellent bench officer. I’ve had multiple opportunities to observe him in court. He possesses the proper demeanor and temperament to be an excellent bench officer.”

Bayne’s office performance evaluation for the one-year period ending Nov. 30, 2023 gives him an overall rating of 3.53 out of 5.0—which is said to be “Very Good”—and contains these comments:

•“Mr. Bayne is one of our most senior attorneys. As such, he is able to perform the job independently and accurately. He works hard to best represent our clients and also takes the time to mentor newer to felony attorneys. He produces his work product in a neat and timely manner.”

• “Mr. Bayne is a strong communicator.”

• “Pays attention to verbal and nonverbal messages of others and responds in an appropriate manner and is clearly understood.”

• “Mr. Bayne is a skilled writer who ensures that his final work product is of the utmost quality.”

• “Mr. Bayne is well liked by his clients, the court staff and bench here in Compton. He is calm and courteous to all he comes into contact with, ensures that he is in court in a timely fashion, and takes the time to listen to his clients to ensure that he best represents their needs.”

For the previous one-year period, he was declared to be “Competent.”

His law degree is from the Simon Greenleaf School of Law, now known as Trinity Law School. The Santa Ana institution is not approved by the American Bar Association but is accredited by the State Bar’s Committee of Bar Examiners.

As candidates for the Superior Court go, he’s solid, though not among the strongest. In this particular contest, we believe his credentials exceed those of his rivals and we endorse him.

haree Sanders Gordon has been a deputy Los Angeles city attorney for more than 25 years. A former elementary school teacher, she was director of the office’s “Neighborhood School Safety Program” until it was killed as part of an internal restructuring. She’s now a filing deputy—a less than prestigious position.

She advises:

“[M]y office has not issued any formal performance evaluations for me since I became a tenured employee in 2003. As a result, I do not have performance evaluation documents to provide.”

Gordon, whose law degree is from the University of Nebraska, was admitted to practice on Dec. 1, 1999. Her background is not particularly impressive, but she could possibly do the job.

avid DeJute is also seeking the office. His chosen ballot designation is “Law Professor/Attorney.” There’s a problem there. He’s not a law professor. DeJute does teach at Pepperdine University’s Caruso School of Law, but he’s an adjunct professor. To bill himself as “Professor” would be like an assistant U.S. attorney—a post DeJute held for 11 years—claiming to be “U.S. Attorney.”

The candidate offers this explanation to us:

“I have taught law students in clinical classes at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law and have been running the Disaster Relief Clinic there for the past year. The full title on my contract, for this full-time job, is ‘Adjunct Professor of Law and Director of the Disaster Relief Clinic.’ I would be happy to use that as my ballot designation but, as you know, the designation is limited to 3 words, and I was required to use ‘Attorney’ as one of those words. Accordingly, my full title, or even ‘Adjunct Law Professor,’ is not an option.”

Elections Code §13107(c) provides:

“A candidate for superior court judge who is an active member of the State Bar and practices law as one of the candidate’s principal professions shall use one of the following ballot designations as the candidate’s ballot designation: ‘Attorney,’ ‘Attorney at Law,’ ‘Lawyer,’ or ‘Counselor at Law.’ The designations ‘Attorney’ and ‘Lawyer’ may be used in combination with one other current principal profession, vocation, or occupation of the candidate…,”

Although that subsection does not mention a three-word limit—and, it could be argued that it is a free-standing provision—it is more reasonable to read it in conjunction with §13107(b)(1)(C) which does contain such a restriction. DeJute could adhere to the three-word limit without using a title he does not posssess with such designations as “Attorney/Adjunct Professor,” “Attorney/Legal Educator,” or “Attorney/Law Teacher.”

is notion is that use of “Adjunct Law Professor” would be proscribed. It might not be. Without getting into intricacies, including elaborations on §13107 in the Code of Regulations, he may use “Attorney” because it is, whether he is handling cases or not, a “profession” of which he is a member. However, he is not compelled to use that word if it is not a “principal” pursuit. That he has a “full-time job” at Pepperdine suggests that the work he does in his post as “of counsel” at the Westwood firm of Michelman & Robinson LLP might be minimal.

DeJute’s chosen designation should have been disallowed by the Registrar-Recorder’s Office based on Subd. (e) of the statute which provides: “The Secretary of State and any other elections official shall not accept a designation of which any of the following would be true: [¶] (1) It would mislead the voter.”

Even if there were no three-word limit, it’s doubtful that DeJute would have stuck in the word “Adjunct” for sake of accuracy. That’s fairly inferable from the fact that he’s subject to no word-count restriction on his website, and there he is billed as a “respected trial lawyer, law professor, and former Assistant U.S. Attorney.”

he office-seeker also tells us: “Although I am not a full law professor, associate law professor or assistant law professor, I am still a law professor, and am required to discharge all of the responsibilities of one.”

The fact that he does the same work as an academician who has attained the rank of a professor is beside the point. With a few exceptions, a commissioner does the same job as a judge, but a commissioner is not a judge; a commissioner could not use a ballot designation with the word “Judge” in it. Using the term “law professor” in a generic sense, though he does not hold the title of “professor,” is designed to create an elevated image of DeJute’s academic standing and thereby defies the prohibition against misleading voters.

On Feb. 7, 2018, DeJute filed a declaration of an intent to run for a Superior Court open seat, and the following Feb. 12, he filed a declaration for an additional seat. Ultimately, he opted not to run. Before he made that decision, he mounted a campaign website that conveyed the distinct impression that he was currently an assistant U.S. attorney. The truth was that he had resigned from that position on June 30, 2017.

DeJute is too devious to be trusted.

The candidate graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and represented Barack Obama in gaining the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the then-president’s eligibility to hold his office based on the theory that he had not been born in the United States. He looks good—quite good—on paper, but not close up.

That leaves us with his two competitors, the worthier of whom, as we see it, is Bayne.