Nothing Can Top This Crusading Attorney’s Latest Cause

Liana Johnsson doesn’t mean to cause trouble. But she’s not exactly the kind to tolerate injustice.

So the veteran Ventura County public defender fights hard for her indigent clients, railing against a system that jails the homeless for being drunk in public or for snatching shopping carts to haul around their belongings. She is known for efforts to help addicts find their way into treatment programs and straighten out their lives.

In 11 years with the public defender’s office, she has become known as a passionate advocate for the poor and underserved, a patron saint of longshots and lost causes.

Her latest crusade has reached the state Capitol as she leads a campaign to allow women to go topless at California parks and beaches, seeking to end what she calls the last criminal sanction that treats women differently from men.

“I’m not a troublemaker. It’s just sometimes I know I’m right,” said Johnsson, 42, who won’t say whether she wants to bare her breasts but believes she should have the right to do so.

“I have a desire to be equal to men,” she said. “The Constitution tells me that everybody is created equal. Unfortunately, I read that part.”

Born in Northern California and raised by two attorneys, she was perhaps meant to practice law. Her mother was a longtime legal services attorney, and her father is an attorney who now teaches in the Napa Valley and believes his daughter should be spending her time trying to abolish the death penalty.

The Ventura resident got her undergraduate degree in psychology from Pennsylvania’s Haverford College, which was founded by Quakers. Although she is not a Quaker, she embraces Quaker teachings. She said she decided to go to Haverford largely because college officials initially said she wasn’t qualified to attend.

“I don’t like being told that I can’t do something,” said Johnsson, who earned her law degree in 1990 from UC Berkeley. “The more you step on me, the harder I fight.”

Friends and colleagues can attest to that. She works daily in the bowels of the Ventura County Jail, handling the arraignment calendar for waves of poor defendants. If bail is excessive, she’ll jump up and say so. If a suspect has been roughed up by police officers, she makes sure the judge knows it.

“To say she’s aggressive on behalf of her clients is an understatement. She’s a tiger,” said longtime Ventura activist Alice McGrath. “If you were in trouble, you’d want Liana on your side.”

Johnsson helped launch the Ventura County Black Attorneys Assn. and serves on the board of directors for the state bar’s Conference of Delegates. And until recently, she has done her work with little fanfare.

“Her assignment has not had her handling high-profile cases,” said fellow Assistant Public Defender Duane Dammeyer. “She has worked behind the scenes to get things done.”

But all that changed in October when Johnsson sparked a campaign at a bar association convention to strike down the law that makes topless sunbathing illegal, arguing that it treats men differently from women.

To drive home her point, she produced a short video showing overweight men lounging on California beaches, their ample breasts apparent for all to see. And she sounded alarms when noting that because of a recent court ruling, women convicted of indecent exposure could find themselves listed as sex offenders under Megan’s Law, alongside rapists and child molesters.

As a result, lawyers have asked the state Legislature to abolish the topless sunbathing ban, and Johnsson hopes to soon launch a letter-writing campaign to persuade lawmakers to take up the cause.

“She’s looked at places where women do sunbathe nude on the beach, and lo and behold, kids are not traumatized and society has not fallen apart,” said Tina Rasnow, coordinator of Ventura County Superior Court’s self-help legal access center. “Her advocacy for women goes into everything she does. It’s the way she lives her life.”

Johnsson said she would prefer to live her life outside the spotlight. But absent someone else stepping up, she said she was willing to push as hard as necessary to ensure women were equal to men on paper and in practice.

“I would gladly yield the lead to somebody else, somebody who wants the publicity or their five minutes of fame,” Johnsson said. “Then I can make my father’s dream come true and get rid of the death penalty.”