State judge persisted despite political scandal

Justice Gavin W. Craig, who sat on the state appellate court about 70 years ago in Los Angeles, made his mark on history not through his judicial opinions but through his own legal woes and a penchant for persistence.

When Craig refused to leave the bench after his 1935 felony conviction on bribery charges, opponents launched a drive to remove him and fomented a change in the California Constitution.

The justice “just didn’t know when to quit,” said Santa Clara University professor Gerald Uelman, who in 1981 mentioned Craig in an article for Los Angeles Lawyer magazine. “Most judges know that it takes some political wrangling to get where they’re at, and they know when to give up,” Uelman said in a recent interview.

Craig’s fall from grace was as dramatic as his rise to power.

Born in Scotia, Neb., in 1878, Craig came to Los Angeles as a teenager with a seemingly promising future. He was a member of the inaugural class at USC’s Law School, graduated in 1901 and went to work for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. He was active in the Republican Party and many civic organizations. Within a few years, he had been appointed a Superior Court commissioner, according to early accounts in The Times.

His ascent was swift. In 1910, at age 32, he was elected a judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court. In 1920, he moved up to the state’s 2nd District Court of Appeal. An authority on water rights and irrigation law, he also taught at his old law school and served as secretary of its board. Uelman said Craig also served as a fundraiser for a powerful U.S. senator, Republican Samuel Shortridge of San Francisco.

But things began to sour in December 1934, when Craig was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiring to obstruct justice by accepting a $60,000 bribe to help get a mail-fraud case dismissed. The defense alleged the money was to go to Shortridge’s reelection campaign, but at trial the senator denied any connection with the case and said, according to Times accounts, he “never authorized [Craig] to use my name in any connection with the collection of campaign funds or otherwise.”

Craig swore he was innocent and charged that “politics” lay behind his indictment. He kept his black robe and continued to work while his case made its way through the courts.

In May 1935, a jury convicted Craig and lawyer Joseph Weinblatt of bribery. Craig was fined $1,000 and sentenced to a year in jail.

Still protesting his innocence, Craig filed an appeal and refused to resign, prompting the state attorney general to bring legal action to boot him from the bench. But even after a Superior Court judge declared his seat officially vacant, Craig stayed put, making rulings and using the law library and court records.

That same year, he appealed his official removal from the bench to the state Supreme Court, which ruled that there were only three ways to remove a judge or justice: “impeachment, by concurrent resolution of both houses of the Legislature, or recall.” So Craig kept his seat.

As Craig was awaiting the outcome of his bribery conviction appeal, he wrote what would become his last opinion, filed Oct. 2, 1935, in People vs. Groves. In it, he upheld the conviction of a man who had been found guilty of murdering his wife. The defendant argued that the shooting was accidental, but, as Craig pointed out in his opinion, “unfortunately for this theory, the deceased was shot not once but twice.”

Craig’s own conviction was upheld in February 1936 by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a ruling that the U.S. Supreme Court let stand by refusing to review it.

But Craig still fought to keep his seat on the bench, arguing that there was nothing in state law that permitted his removal.

In October of that year, the state Supreme Court agreed, issuing an opinion that “by the provisions of the state Constitution, he is still entitled to hold office” and continue to receive his $10,000 annual salary. The court also noted that, if he wanted, Craig might even do some legal work for his cellmates.

The next month, Craig began serving his one-year jail sentence, working as a booking clerk at the Ventura County Jail. Members of the State Bar of California and the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. began putting pressure on the Legislature to oust Craig from office.

Disgraced and unable to pay for a lawyer, Craig resigned his judgeship Feb. 28, 1937, just days before he had been summoned to appear before a joint session of the Legislature.

Soon afterward, lawmakers wrote the so-called “Craig Law,” requiring the removal of convicted judges or justices from office. Voters approved Proposition 14 by a landslide in November 1938, amending the state Constitution to include the new requirement.

After serving 10 months of his one-year sentence, Craig was released and returned home to Los Angeles.

“This jail experience is one from which I have gained much, which I trust will be an advantage not only to myself but to others,” he remarked to reporters. “One can gain knowledge from each environment in life, and knowledge of all things is our greatest asset.”

Not surprisingly, his family did not share his views on the experience, according to Craig’s granddaughter, Karen Salaber of Carmichael, Calif.

“This was a source of a lot of pain for my father [Gavin Morse Craig], who was attending USC Law School when his father was indicted in 1934,” Salaber said in an interview.

Salaber said her father never told his children about their grandfather’s bribery case or his fight to keep his place on the court.

“We only learned about it when someone from USC Law School called us a few years ago and asked how we felt. We were shocked,” said Salaber.

The elder Craig promised he would continue to fight to clear his name. But he faced another setback when he was disbarred by the state Supreme Court the year after he resigned from the bench.

Craig went to work as a legal researcher for Morris Lavine, a colorful Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer who described himself as “attorney for the damned.”

Although his conviction was never overturned, Craig was granted a pardon by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Sept. 17, 1942.

A few years later, the California Supreme Court reinstated Craig to the bar, just months before his death in 1948 at age 69.

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cecilia.rasmussen@latimes.com