Radio Ad Campaign to Defeat Bird and Other Liberal Justices Begins

Opponents of the liberal majority on the state Supreme Court announced a radio advertising campaign Monday featuring commercials describing the November, 1986, vote on whether to retain California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and others as a life-and-death matter.

“Voting against these justices is not a negative act. It is a positive step forward in the continuous battle by the law-abiding people in society to protect themselves from the murderers who prey on innocent victims,” said former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Robert Philibosian in one five-minute radio spot.

With court confirmation election exactly a year away, two separate anti-Bird political organizations unveiled separate radio advertising campaigns. It was an unusually early start for any kind of political advertising and an unprecedented use of media in a California Supreme Court election.

Meanwhile, Bird’s campaign organization released endorsements from 255 law professors, who complained that the opponents’ campaigns amounted to political interference with the court and declared that the stake in the election is the very survival of an “independent judiciary.”

In response to the radio ads, a spokesman for the chief justice said, “The campaign of the anti-court groups has been to inflame rather than inform. It is more in their interest to talk about a grisly murder, which we’re all repulsed by, than it is to talk about the rules of law and a particular case.”

One of the groups seeking to unseat the chief justice and others on the court, Californians to Defeat Rose Bird, is featuring Philibosian, a potential 1986 candidate for the Republican nomination for state attorney general, and Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury in five-minute commercials. A spokesman said their radio spots, which started airing Monday, represent a $100,000 volley of what will grow into a $2-million-plus media campaign.

To further illustrate its case against the court, Californians to Defeat Rose Bird invited reporters to the murder scene of two children in Bell Gardens. The conviction of the accused killer, Harold Ray Memro, was overturned after the Supreme Court ruled that the trial court erred by blocking Memro’s attempts to show that his confession in the case was coerced by police.

The second organization, called Crime Victims for Court Reform, taped a series of messages delivered by district attorneys from around the state, telling listeners that the lives of crime victims and their families “will never be the same because Supreme Court Justices Rose Bird, Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso have let their personal and philosophical biases overrule an objective interpretation of the law.”

This group said its radio ads, which will begin airing later this week, will cost between $50,000 and $60,000 for one month in major metropolitan areas.

Second Opposition Group

In Sacramento, Justices Bird, Reynoso, Grodin and Stanley Mosk came under attack by still another opposition organization of district attorneys and their deputies called Prosecutors Working Group. Ventura County’s Bradbury, speaking for the group, said the four justices “have forgotten their legitimate role in a Democratic form of government. . . .

“They have become policy makers, legislators, their decisions affect social groups that are not even before them. They are acting beyond the scope of a judge and they have forfeited their right to claim independence and they should be defeated.”

The law professors whose names were released Monday by Bird’s campaign urged a “yes” vote on all justices up for election in one year. The list includes former state Supreme Court Justice Frank C. Newman as well as Stanford Law School Dean John Ely, and Jesse Choper, dean of Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California, Berkeley. The total number of endorsements represented about 46% of the full-time law school faculty members in California, and the Bird campaign said it had not yet talked to professors on some campuses.

UCLA law Prof. Steven H. Shiffrin urged voters to consider only the very narrow qualities of competence and honesty in evaluating the high court. Whether a person agrees or disagrees with court rulings, he continued, “goes outside the proper standard of judging judges.”

Election Process

Under the California Constitution, the seven members of the Supreme Court are initially appointed to office and then must stand for election for 12-year terms. The justices stand unopposed and voters can say only “yes” or “no.” Defeated justices are replaced by the governor. In 1986, six justices are up for election--Bird, Reynoso, Grodin, Mosk, who all are appointees of previous Democratic governors, and two new appointees of Republican Gov. George Deukmejian, Malcolm M. Lucas and Justice-designate Edward A. Panelli.

Grodin, in a telephone interview, responded to the attacks against him only indirectly. “I took an oath to support all the laws, including the death penalty, and I spend a great deal of my time thinking about how best to do that,” he said.

In the radio commercials, both anti-Bird organizations concentrated on the death penalty, which has been under review but unused in California since voters reinstated it in 1977.

“Because of Bird, Grodin and Reynoso, police and prosecutors are in shackles,” said Gary Yancey, Contra Costa County district attorney since 1969, speaking on behalf of Crime Victims for Court Reform. Others who read the same message for listeners in their regions included Sheriff John Duffy of San Diego County, Orange County Dist. Atty. Cecil Hicks and Kern County Dist. Atty. Edward Jagels.

Murder Scene

At the Bell Gardens crime scene, beside a park pond, Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-La Habra), in remarks frequently interrupted by loudly quacking ducks, said the two young boys would never hear the ducks but, thanks to the court, “Harold Memro, who slit their throats with a pocketknife, may very well hear those ducks again.”

Also contributing to this report were Times staff writers Dan Morain in San Francisco and Carl Ingram in Sacramento.