Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Page 7
PERSPECTIVES (Column)
Following Up on Earlier Reports …
By ROGER M. GRACE
As the year comes to the end, it seems like a good time to update some earlier columns.
HIS HONOR, THE DEFENDANT—In my Nov. 5 column, I contrasted sessions of “People’s Court,” on which retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joseph A. Wapner from 1981-93 educated the public on the law, with the current court shows on which actual legal precepts are just not going to get in the way of the effort to entertain. I related comments of retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Gilbert Alston who appeared on the show as a defendant while still on the bench. A probationer had sued him for false imprisonment based on being picked up on a bench warrant he had issued.
A couple weeks ago, Alston lent me a tape of the segment on which he appeared.
How different, how very different, it was from the raucous proceedings with grotesquely botched rulings now being shown on television—the worst of the seven shows now in syndication being “Judge Mathis” and “Divorce Court.”
Wapner carefully explained to the plaintiff the doctrine of judicial immunity, telling her that if a party could sue the judge every time the person thought the judge had made a bad call, “our system of justice would grind to a halt.” He ended his discourse by saying:
“The thing that’s important to me…is the concept. We don’t want judges in court all day being defendants. We want them to be up there trying cases so we can get rid of the caseload. So that’s the whole theory behind judicial immunity and that’s why you have to lose the case. There’s no other way.”
He didn’t shout at the defendant that she was stupid, as Judge Judy would have, make smart aleck wisecracks like Judge Mathis, or get folksy like the Houston lawyer who portrays a bucolic judge on “Texas Justice.”
Wapner did something in that segment, taped April 27, 1988, that no present television judge does. He acted as a judge is expected to act.
In a hallway interview following the simulated court proceeding (actually, binding arbitration), Doug Llewellan asked Alston why he had agreed to appear on the show. The then-sitting jurist responded:
“Because Judge Wapner has done more than any other single individual to increase the prestige and the respect of the judiciary and the judicial system in this state…, and I was very pleased and proud to have the opportunity to assist him in doing that.”
At the time when “People’s Court” was on the air, I did not appreciate what a public service it was. Having viewed the current shows, on which retired judges and active lawyers play-act the role of judges and prostitute themselves by misrepresenting the tenor of judicial proceedings and the substance of law in order to get their paychecks, I’ve gained a belated respect for what Wapner did.
On “People’s Court” in the Wapner years, there was no effort to delude the public into thinking that actual court proceedings were being aired, as there is nowadays.
Here’s what the announcer said, as I copied it down while viewing Alston’s tape:
“What you are witnessing is real. The participants are not actors. They are actual litigants with a case pending in a California municipal court. Both parties have agreed to dismiss their court cases and have their disputes settled here, in our forum, the People’s Court.”
It was thus made clear that real disputants were battling it out, but not in a real courtroom. What was not spelled out was that binding arbitrations were being shown, but it is doubtful that many laypersons would have had an inkling as to what that meant.
In the credits at the end, in conspicuous type, the star was listed as:
Judge
JOSEPH A. WAPNER
(Retired)
Viewers of current shows like “Judge Mathis,” billed as presenting “real cases, real people,” without elaboration, are deluded into thinking that Mathis, a retired Michigan judge, is a sitting judge, and that actual court proceedings are being broadcast, with parties permissibly shouting insults at each other.
Even “People’s Court,” in its current incarnation, does not take the care the show formerly did in explaining what is being shown. The announcer trumpets that “real cases, real litigants” are involved.
The pretense of reality exists with respect to each of the current shows. (Well, except for one show I haven’t mentioned, on the obscure Fashion Channel on cable TV; an expert adjudicates complaints as to the attire of the accused.)
The bottom line is that there is deception in the national marketing of products, and a need for attention to this by federal regulators.
HIS HONOR, THE FUGITIVE—Charles N. Henry, a retired Siskiyou Superior Court judge, is back home in Yreka after a stint as a trial judge in the Republic of the Marshall Island in Macronesia—an adventure that culminated in the issuance of a warrant for his arrest and his ouster from office by the nation’s parliament, the Nitijela.
Last December, I related that Henry was facing trial on seven counts of “cheating and attempted cheating.” As of August of this year, when his trial was scheduled, he was facing 29 counts based on alleged cheating and misconduct, with one count each of embezzlement and libel.
The arrest warrant was issued after Henry failed to show up for trial. He was yanked from office Sept. 26.
His title was chief justice of the High Court, which isn’t at all as impressive as it sounds. It’s a trial court of general jurisdiction with appellate jurisdiction over decisions of limited jurisdiction courts.
Henry first came under fire when it was determined (correctly or not) that he had charged the government for a trip to the United States, ostensibly for educational purposes, when he actually came to sit on assignment here (for pay) as a retired judge.
That determination was made, following an investigation, by another Marshall Islands’ chief justice, Allen Fields, also a former California judge.
Fields subsequently came to face criminal charges, himself. He was arrested on morals charges as part of a prostitution sting operation while back home in Sacramento. Pleading no contest to indecent exposure, he was fined $100 and put on probation for three years.
Henry is the judge who instituted contempt proceedings against a lawyer, Steven G. Hanson, for complaining in his summation to jurors that his client “has not received a fair trial in this case.” Taken in context, it was clear that he pegged that allegation to conduct of the prosecutor. A judge other than Henry found the lawyer in contempt. The Third District Court of Appeal affirmed in an ill-reasoned opinion by Justice Richard M. Sims III, in Hanson v. Superior Court (2001) Cal.App.4th 75, criticized here Aug. 9 and 10 of that year. Sims declared that Hanson “impugned Judge Henry’s integrity.”
Hanson didn’t. Prosecutorial authorities in far-off Macronesia subsequently have.
HIS HONOR, THE MOB’S PAWN?—In previous columns, I’ve presented evidence (circumstantial, but to my mind convincing) that the late TV commentator Tom Duggan was driven out of Chicago, where he was blasting mobsters, by a judge who was linked to what was referred to there as “The Outfit.” That was a euphemism for the Mafia.
Duggan fled to L.A. and landed a talk show on KCOP in 1956 after being found in contempt by Cook County, Ill. Judge Daniel Covelli. He faced the prospect of incarceration for 10 days (if he lived that long) with “hoods”—the very folk he was blasting in nightly commentaries.
The contempt was based on comments Duggan made in connection with a case before Covelli—comments which, under standards laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court, Duggan had the right to utter.
Anyway, I’ve received additional documents, released by the FBI in response to a freedom of information request, tying Covelli to organized crime.
A March 20, 1961 memo to the attorney general and the director of the FBI that individual who was “admittedly a close associate of an numerous Chicago racketeers,” in the company of apparently too others, “went to see Chicago Mayor Richard Daley on March 3, 1961, to urge appointment of Illinois State Judge Daniel A. Covelli as a Federal Judge in the Northern District of Illinois.”
The memo related that Covelli had been identified by a source as “a very close friend of Chicago hoodlum Gus Alex.” It related: “This source is of the opinion that if Covelli is appointed a Federal Judge, Chicago racketeers would have a ‘friend in court.’ ”
A May 27, 1963 memo to the attorney general and the FBI director, titled “CORRUPTION IN THE CHICAGO AREA,” advised, in part:
“Recently a highly confidential source reported that hoodlum figures in Chicago continue to have an interest in promoting Judge Daniel A. Covelli for the position oif Federal District Judge.”
The memo alluded to “Covelli’s reported close association with Chicago hoodlums.”
As I reported here last July 1, a 1965 memo declared that “Judge Covelli cooperates closely with the hoodlum element in Chicago in connection with matters of interest to them in his court and has acted in some matters on the specific instructions of [crime boss Samuel] Giancana.”
The contempt adjudication occurred nearly 50 years ago. But if you remember the irreverant, irrepressible, personable gabster Tom Duggan, who bobbed from station to station here, perhaps you find it of interest that he was apparently forced off the Chicago airwaves by a corrupt judge as a favor to local gangsters.
HIS HONOR, THE DISSENTER—Last month, I noted that one member of the Los Angeles County Law Library Board of Trustees, Superior Court Judge David Yaffe, had voted against renaming the main law library building at First and Broadway in the Civic Center in honor of the late Court of Appeal Presiding Justice Mildred L. Lillie.
Yaffe explained to me:
“I did not oppose the renaming. The resolution was not limited to the re-naming. The other part of the resolution was to pay a party planner 20 to 30 thousand dollars to plan a fundraiser at which we hoped to defer the costs of the re-naming.
“I did not think it was prudent for the library to do that.”
Actually, the resolution merely called for “an event to celebrate said naming” and did not make reference to a “party planner” nor specify expenses to be incurred.
Anyway, I contacted attorney Susan Steinhauser, president of the Board of Trustees, last week. She said the latest figures she’s seen showed that the event, held Nov. 6, grossed about $140,000 and “netted a little bit over 90” thousand dollars.
Congratulations to her, as well as those who assisted her in staging the event, for their fundraising success. It appears that the effort was not “imprudent.”
It is fitting that the building bear the name of the legendary woman who served as a California judge for 55 years, whose masterfully crafted opinions, produced over a period of 44 years, stretch from volumes in Cal.App.2d to Cal.App.4th.
HER HONOR, THE LEGEND—It is fitting that the building bear the name of the legendary woman who served as a California judge for 55 years, whose masterfully crafted opinions, produced over a period of 44 years, stretch from volumes in Cal.App.2d to Cal.App.4th.
A biography of Lillie appeared in the program at the Nov. 6 event. It bore no byline, but I understand it was written by Earl Johnson Jr., a member of the panel Lillie presided over, Div. Seven. It contained this little-known information about the late jurist: