Group Plans to Pressure Bird to Quit Court

A group trying to unseat three members of the California Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it is launching a campaign to flood the court with phone calls and preprinted postcards urging Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird to resign.

In press conferences here and in Los Angeles, the political committee, which calls itself Crime Victims for Court Reform, attacked Bird and the current court for rulings that the group contends favor the rights of criminals over victims.

“Common sense no longer prevails in our court,” said San Diego Sheriff John Duffy, who spoke in support of the committee’s campaign. “I think the people of the state do, in fact, have common sense . . . and we’ve had enough of Rose Bird.”

As is the custom, the court did not respond to the criticisms. But a former president of the State Bar, attorney Anthony Murray, accused the group of misrepresenting the court’s position in several cases and of threatening the integrity of the state’s judicial system.

“This is not a committee of victims,” said Murray, a frequent defender of the court. “It is not organized by victims; it’s not operated by victims. It’s organized and operated by Bill Roberts . . . a paid political operative who was paid to do a hatchet job on the state Supreme Court of California.”

Roberts, who served for several months as Gov. George Deukmejian’s campaign manager in 1982, is running the campaign, which is working to defeat three of five justices who will be on the November, 1986, ballot. The three are Bird and Associate Justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin. All three were appointed by former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.

The other two who are scheduled for a confirmation vote at the same time are Associate Justices Malcolm M. Lucas, appointed by Deukmejian, and Stanley Mosk, appointed by former Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown Sr.

Duffy and Kern County Dist. Atty. Edward Jagels attacked the court for shackling law enforcement and permitting decisions that Jagels said have put “thousands of criminals on the streets.”

Duffy was particularly critical of a court opinion that prevents police from searching a tote bag in the trunk of a burglary suspect’s car. In that case, Bird concluded that the police should first obtain a warrant from a judge. Of the current members of the court, only Bird and Mosk were serving at the time the opinion was issued. There was only a single dissenting vote, that of then-Associate Justice William P. Clark, on the seven-member court.

‘Go After the Head’

But when asked why the post- card campaign was directed only at Bird, Duffy said, “If you go after the snake, you go after the head.”

The committee’s literature also attacks Bird for voting to return a “a child to the home where she had been beaten (by her father) so badly that she had received irremediable brain damage.” In fact, Bird agreed with the court’s decision not to return the child to the home but disagreed with its action that permanently separated the child from her mother, who was not held responsible for the crime.