D.A. Group Ends Public Effort to Unseat 3 Justices

Concerned that it could lose its tax-exempt status, the professional association that represents 2,000 California prosecutors has quietly given up its public role in the campaign to unseat California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and two of her colleagues.

But critics charge that an independent group of prosecutors that has taken up the anti-Bird effort is all but indistinguishable from the California District Attorneys Assn., the organization that says it has bowed out of the campaign.

Some Bird supporters have privately discussed suing the prosecutors association, which receives much of its money from the state government, because of what they regard as the group’s improper participation in a political campaign.

Two Los Angeles attorneys, one of whom heads a statewide organization of criminal defense lawyers, on Monday sent letters formally asking state and federal tax authorities to investigate the association’s political activities.

“If they have tax-exempt status and they are engaging in obvious political activities to try to unseat members of the court, then that causes me concern,” said Robert Berke, president of the 1,700-member California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, the defense lawyers’ group. The organization itself has taken no stand on the propriety of the prosecutors’ activities, Berke said.

Berke said he is also concerned that public money given to the district attorneys organization by the state Office of Criminal Justice Planning and by counties that have paid membership dues for prosecutors has been used for political purposes. The state provides about 60% of the organization’s annual budget of $400,000, an official of the association said.

Alameda County Dist. Atty. John J. Meehan, who also is president of the California District Attorneys Assn., said last week that his group effectively ceased its activity in the anti-Bird campaign last spring, after it took the unprecedented action on Feb. 28 of publicly opposing the retention of Bird and Justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin, all of whom were appointed by former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.

The three justices have been criticized by prosecutors for rulings that they believe are excessively favorable to criminal defendants.

In May, a long “white paper” stating the reasons for the prosecutors’ stand against Bird, Reynoso and Grodin was released under the association’s name. But Meehan said the work that went into the document was donated by individual prosecutors and that no association money was used to print or distribute it.

In addition to Bird, Reynoso and Grodin, Justice Malcom M. Lucas, appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian, also faces a confirmation vote in November, 1986. Also on the ballot will be a replacement for retiring Justice Otto Kaus as well as either Justice Stanley Mosk or his successor. Mosk is said to be considering retirement instead of seeking another 12-year term.

Meehan said the California District Attorneys Assn. decision to withdraw from the campaign was not a reaction to outside criticism but rather a recognition by its board members that the group’s political activities are limited by its status as a tax-exempt educational organization under Sec. 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code.

“The fact that a position had been taken and announced was sufficient,” Meehan said. “As far as being advocates, we have taken every position we should and should go no further.”

The prosecutors’ fight to unseat Bird will be carried on by a loosely knit organization known as the Prosecutors’ Working Group, many of whose members drafted the white paper for the district attorneys group.

Speakers, Position Papers

Headed by Sacramento County Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathryn A. Canlis, the working group will dispatch speakers and position papers to organizations interested in hearing the case against Bird, Canlis said.

“Our goal is to provide sufficient factual information in support of that position so that interested voters can make as intellectual a decision as possible,” she said.

The group does not plan to raise money, although it has received a $5,000 donation from a Ventura County businessman to print extra copies of the white paper. And it will ask speakers to pay their own expenses, Canlis said.

Berke, the defense attorney, suggested in his letter to William Connett, commissioner of Internal Revenue for the Los Angeles district, that the speakers bureau operated by Canlis is, in effect, an arm of the California District Attorneys Assn. Canlis denied the charge.

Organizational Differences

“Although I think many of the ideals and many of the beliefs of the prosecutors’ working group and the CDAA (California District Attorneys Assn.) are the same, they are organized totally differently and they have different goals,” Canlis said.

Meehan, the association president, added, “We are doing everything we can to show some space between the two organizations.”