The National Law Journal's L.A. Legal Pad

Riverside judge gives 1,330 year sentence for child molestation

A convicted sex offender was given a 1,330 year prison sentence yesterday for molesting two girls in Hemit, Calif.

The 44-year old man was convicted of 11 felony counts of lewd acts upon a child under 14, one count of digital penetration of a child under 14 and a sentence-enhancing allegation of multiple victims, KNBC reported.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge Sherrill Ellsworth sentenced Horace Man Williams, but not before Williams criticized his lawyer, Dario Bejarano Jr., as well as the prosecutor and the judge.

He filed a motion for a new trial, alleging juror misconduct, the KTLA reported.

O.C. Judge Kelly MacEachern removed from bench

Orange County Superior Court Judge Kelly MacEachern was removed from the bench, in a 7-3 ruling made public today.

MacEachern is the first OC judge to ever be removed, the Orange County Register reported.

She is fourth trial court judge to be removed in the last 18 months, but the only one of those to be removed by a divided commission, The Recorder reported.

The Commission on Judicial Performance ruling (here) found that MacEachern committed "willful misconduct" in filing false and misleading expense claims for a San Diego legal conference.

"The lack of integrity manifested by [MacEachern's] misconduct, compounded by her lack of candor in response to the commission’s investigation and deceitful testimony under oath before the masters compels our conclusion that removal is necessary to protect the public and maintain public trust in the integrity of the judiciary," wrote the commission.

Background on the case, previously blogged:

In August 2007, the state Commission on Judicial Performance accused MacEachern of lying in order to get a $220 hotel reimbursement for a 2006 judicial conference in San Diego.

MachEachern e-mailed a county staffer after the conference that she sat in on two classes on different days and should be reimbursed for hotel expenses. Superior Court Judge Nancy Stock had her executive assistant investigate the claim and found it to be false. Stock confronted MachEachern, who admitted that she hadn't attended the classes and withdrew her reimbursement claim.

MacEachern, who was a O.C. deputy district attorney for two decades before joining the court in 2002, testified that she didn't intend to mislead or steal on an expense report in January.

MacEachern will appeal the decision to the state supreme court, her defense attorney Paul Meyer told the O.C. Register.

"Orange County Judge Kelly MacEachern removed from bench," Los Angeles Times

"O.C. Judge Ordered Off Bench for Expense Reports," The Recorder

 

Judge tosses lawsuit on LAPD asking immigration status

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu tossed a lawsuit filed by a Los Angeles resident against a three-decade old order that prohibits police from asking arrestees their immigration status, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Yesterday, Treu ruled in favor of the city and the ACLU, who defended Special Order 40, that no conflict with federal and state law had been shown. Supporters say undocumented immigrants are more likely to assist police because of the order, in their roles as suspects, witnesses, inmates and victims.

Attorneys for L.A. resident Harold Sturgeon claimed that the order was a 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy for legally foreign Californians. They say they are considering an appeal.

The ruling had the potential to effect policies outside of Los Angeles, as police departments across the country instituted similar policies following the 1979 LAPD order, the Times reported.

California Supreme Court won't review Spector claim that judge was biased

The California Supreme Court denied the petition to review Phil Spector's claim that the judge in his first murder trial was biased and should be disqualified from his second trial, the Associated Press reported.

Lawyers for Spector claimed that Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler demonstrated bias in his rulings towards the end of the first trial, which ended in a mistrial with a deadlocked jury. The second trial will begin in September.

U.S. Supreme Court to review case weighing environmental protection and Navy training

The U.S. Supreme Court will review a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that limited the Navy's use of sonar off California's coast during training sessions because of its harm to marine mammals, the Los Angeles Times reported.

In January, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper sided with environmentalists, issuing a preliminary injunction creating a 12 nautical mile no-sonar zone off Southern California and limiting sonar use when marine mammals come within 2,200 yards of a vessel.

President Bush exempted the Navy from two major environmental laws, overriding Cooper's ruling, with government filings that claimed restrictions on the sonar training "profoundly interferes with the Navy's global management of U.S. strategic forces, its ability to conduct warfare operations, and ultimately places the lives of American sailors and Marines at risk."

In February, Cooper reinstated her decision and said President Bush's exemption raised constitutional concerns.

The 9th Circuit upheld Cooper's decision but ruled that the Navy could use sonar during a critical point in the training exercise when mammals are spotted nearby.

Arguments in the case will begin in October, 10 News reported.

U.S. Supreme Court rejects environmentalists challenge to border fencing

The U.S. Supreme Court said they they won't hear a case to stop the Bush Administration from waiving over 30 environmental laws along the border to building more border fencing, KPBS reported. (LISTEN)

Environmental groups and lawmakers claimed that Congress violated the Constitution by giving the Secretary of Homeland Security the ability to waive any laws along the border.

The San Diego Union-Tribune has more on the case here.

Bush blocks investigation into White House's pressure on EPA decisions

President Bush asserted executive privilege to withhold documents being sought in a congressional committee's investigation over White House pressure on the Environmental Protection Agency's decisions, KNBC reported (here).

Bush's statement came only 15 minutes before the committee's vote to hold the head of the EPA and a White House budget official in contempt for not handing over the documents.

Supreme Court rejects Calif. union law

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a California law that prohibited employers from using state money to negatively influence employees view on unions, today. The justices ruled 7-2 that the state is barred from regulating union-related activities by the National Labor Relations Act.

Opponents of the AB 1889, including the Bush Administration and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that the California's law violated employer's freedom of speech. California's lawyers argued that the law aimed to keep the state neutral in labor disputes by not subsidizing employer's union activities, Reuters reported.

California passed the law in 2000. A federal judge ruled against the law in 2002, but a full 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld it.

Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented.

New York has a similar law and 17 other states supported California, according to Reuters.

The Scotus Blog has the three other U.S. Supreme Court decisions, also on workplace rights, that were released today.

UPDATE: AG Brown has no regrets on passing case to another lawyer

The state attorney general's office doesn't regret its decision to take Angela Sierra, a supervising dupty in the Los Angeles office, off the case, The Recorder reported.

California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown passed the case to nationally known labor lawyer Michael Gottesman,  because the case involved national labor issues unfamiliar to lawyers at the AG's office.

Read The Recorder's full story here

Chief Justice Roberts assigns five Philadelphia judges for Kozinski ethics investigation

U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts named five Philadelphia judges to handle the ethics investigation of 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Justice Alex Kozinski.

Kozinski requested that Roberts select a different circuit to investigate the complaint of judicial misconduct, which was based on allegations in the Los Angeles Times article, "9th Circuit’s Chief Judge Posted Sexually Explicit Matter On His Website."

Roberts transferred the case In Re Complaint of Judicial Misconduct the Judicial Council of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

Chief Judge Anthony Scirica selected himself to the five-member committee that will investigate the case. Scirca appointed to the committee 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Marjorie Rendell and Walter Stapleton, as well as Chief District Judges Harvey Bartle III (E.D. Pa.) and Garrett Brown Jr. (N.J.).

Kozinski declares mistrial in obscenity case

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski declared a mistrial in an case where a Los Angeles filmmaker is accused of distributing criminally obscene sexual videos, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Kozinski removed himself from the case as a result of the public controversy that came his way, after the Los Angeles Times reported about a page on his Web site that included naked woman painted like cows. 

The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog provides a link to a letter by Marcy Tiffany, Kozinski's wife, which takes issue with the Times article, claiming that a tiny percentage of the photos were sexual but amounted to raunchy humor, not hard core porn.

Tiffany also claims the Times mischaracterized the content on the site as a website where Kozinski posted pornographic material. She says that the files were among a hodge-podge of material put in the "stuff" folder on their home computer by Kozinski and family members over the years, and was only accessible "if you know the precise location of a file."

Judge tosses lawsuit over Latino underrepresentation on juries

San Diego Superior Court Judge David Gill rejected a challenge by two lawyers that the county's system for summoning juries is unconstitutional because Latinos were underrepresented, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The lawyers, who are representing a man facing the death penalty, said they will appeal the ruling.

They based their claim on a defense statistician's finding that less than half of the jury-eligible population Latino population show up in the downtown court. Latinos made up 9.4% of jurors, while they are 19 percent of jury-eligible population.

 

LISTEN: "San Diego Lawyer Says Jury-Selection Process Flawed," KPBS
"D.A. says jury pool falls short of Latinos," San Diego Union-Tribune

Ex-wife's HIV suit goes to trial

A woman's lawsuit against her ex-husband that claims he infecting her with HIV will go to trial, a Los Angeles judge ruled yesterday.

Four months after getting married, Bridget B. and John B. were diagnosed as HIV-positive in October 2000. Bridget B. filed suit against her then-husband in April 2002, alleging fraud, negligence, and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

John B. claims that she didn't meet the one-year statute of limitations to file her suit. But Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu disagreed, finding that Bridget B. didn't believe her husband was responsible until November 2001.

Bridget B. claims that she originally thought she'd given HIV to her husband, and could only think that she contracted it when she got a cut or was bitten by an insect. After a therapist told her women rarely transmit HIV to men, Bridget B. investigated and found her husband had been sleeping with other people. She concluded that it was her husband who transmitted the virus to her.

Last year, the California Supreme Court ruled that Bridget B. could sue John B. for allegedly infecting her, even if he didn't know he was HIV-positive, and that she was entitled to her husband's sexual history during the six-months before his last negative HIV test.

The trial is set for Oct. 6.

"Suit Approved For Woman Who Alleges Ex-Husband Gave Her AIDS," KNBC
"L.A. woman's suit against husband over HIV infection will go to trial," Los Angeles Times