U.S. Magistrate Kronenberg : His Views From Bench Raise a Few Eyebrows

It doesn’t necessarily surprise veteran lawyers when U.S. Magistrate John R. Kronenberg uses the bench as, in effect, a pulpit to speak out on contemporary issues.

Back in 1981, for example, he denounced Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley during a hearing for allegedly defying a federal court order to give a deposition.

And not long ago, he used an arraignment proceeding involving an accused narcotics dealer to expound on his views of “rich kids” flouting drug laws.

Nevertheless, some eyebrows in Los Angeles’ legal community were raised Thursday when Kronenberg--again from the bench, in a case involving an accused child molester--used the matter to declare that, in his view, local morality around this town was abysmal.

” . . . Community standards here with regard to sexual conduct are practically non-existent,” he said in apparently rationalizing his decision to release the accused molester, John Karl Herriot, 33, on $100,000 bail.

The decision was overturned by U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi, and the defendant, a former Roman Catholic schoolteacher and ex-Boy Scout leader, remained in custody.

Grants Interview What’s more, in the view of some lawyers and jurists, Kronenberg then proceeded to step over more legal lines by granting a newspaper interview to further explain his comments from the bench.

“Technically,” a veteran Los Angeles attorney with extensive federal court experience said, “that’s a violation of judicial ethics to talk to a reporter” about a pending case. “ . . . It was quite improper and inappropriate of a (magistrate) to discuss the merits of a case off the bench.”

The lawyer declined to be quoted by name.

In Thursday’s decision, Kronenberg said he had no regrets about allowing Herriot--accused of bringing boys into the United States from Latin America for sexual purposes--to walk back into society because “I don’t think we have any community standards here.”

He then attempted to back up this view by pointing to the programming of the Playboy Channel by Times Mirror Cable Television; and to a recent Times series on Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner, whom the magistrate labeled as “one of the leading pornographers in the country.”

Lawyers interviewed by The Times on Friday could not fathom Kronenberg’s logic in attempting to cite community standards on sexual conduct as an underpinning for moving to release Herriot on bail.

And Kronenberg would not make any more comments.

But at least one lawyer who has appeared before the magistrate several times was not particularly surprised.

“His associations are kind of weird,” the attorney, who also asked to remain anonymous, said. “He has a strange way of expressing himself. But I like his openness from the bench. You know what he’s thinking.”

‘Has Every Right’ Los Angeles attorney Stephen Yagman--himself an outspoken lawyer who often has appeared before Kronenberg--said he, too, likes the magistrate’s style. And, Yagman added, under the First Amendment, “he has every right in the world” to say what he wants to from the bench.

Kronenberg, 61, a native of Spokane, Wash., and the eldest of five children, grew up in Santa Monica and then returned to Spokane to attend college at Gonzaga University.

Although he later attended the University of Oklahoma while in the Army during World War II, he never graduated from college.

After the war, he worked for Douglas Aircraft as a tool design engineer for six years before graduating from Los Angeles’ Loyola University Law School in 1958. He was admitted to the State Bar of California the following year.

For the next 13 years Kronenberg served as a public defender before being appointed a U.S. magistrate in 1973 after answering a want ad in a local law journal advertising the position.

Pretrial Hearings As a magistrate, one of his most important judicial duties is to preside over pretrial arraignment hearings, where it is decided whether an accused individual may or may not be freed on bail, which is also set by the magistrate.

Unlike federal judges, U.S. magistrates do not often preside over courtroom trials.

In an interview several years ago with the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a newspaper specializing in legal affairs, Kronenberg made clear that he enjoyed his work as a public defender, but sometimes got restless on the bench.

“After 13 years of participating in lots of trials (as a public defender), it’s (being a magistrate) kind of a drag,” he said.