Taking Aim at Bird : Conservative Group Wages Fight Against Chief Justice in Court of Public Opinion

Janet Byers said she tries to discourage extremists.

Still, as press director for Californians to Defeat Rose Bird, Byers has come to expect an occasional letter from “somebody who would like to be a hangman”--someone volunteering to carry out the Death Row executions that Chief Justice Bird and her liberal colleagues on the state Supreme Court have blocked for the last eight years.

“It is an emotional issue--the death of murderers,” Byers said the other day at her small office in Irvine that serves as statewide headquarters for the campaign.

“But much as we would like to think otherwise, retribution and revenge are so a part of our values.”

An Emotional Campaign

Then again, the campaign against Bird and fellow Justices Joseph Grodin, Cruz Reynoso and Stanley Mosk is one of the most emotional campaigns Byers and her fellow political strategists have joined.

Fully one year before the November, 1986, re-confirmation vote on the justices, Californians to Defeat Rose Bird has already spent more than $1.5 million on an advertising and direct-mail campaign urging that Bird and her liberal colleagues be removed from the bench.

Over the next 12 months, the group expects to spend up to $4 million to educate the public not only about what it claims is Bird’s refusal to uphold the death penalty (which California voters approved in 1977), but about her and her colleagues’ failure to uphold initiatives like Proposition 13 and the Victim’s Bill of Rights.

Abuse of Power Alleged

Much of the group’s lobbying has featured prosecutors making a legalistic argument that Bird has abused her power.

But a new phase of advertising will add “kind of a shock appeal” to the campaign, Byers said. Aided by sympathetic lawyers and police officers, campaign staffers have been tracking down and interviewing the families of murder victims.

Beginning next month, newspaper ads for the campaign will include pictures of murdered children and comments from their relatives about the Bird court, Byers said.

With 80,000 contributors, more than 3.7 million people contacted by mail, and more than 300 state and local officials signed on as “co-chairman,” Californians to Defeat Rose Bird is one of the largest groups working to defeat Bird next year. Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-Fullerton), state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia) and tax fighters Paul Gann and Howard Jarvis are the campaign’s founders and executive directors.

Among other groups arrayed against Bird and her colleagues are:

- Crime Victims for Court Reform. A statewide group based in Los Angeles’ Westwood, it boasts a grass-roots membership of 13,000 people--not politicians but average citizens, including 2,000 “crime victims.” The group has been conducting a radio and public-speaking campaign to oust Bird, Grodin and Reynoso, but not Mosk. (Mosk has not yet said whether he will run again).

- The Law and Order Campaign Committee. Run by state Sen. H. L Richardson (R-Glendora), this group has sent out mailings against Bird.

- The Prosecutors Working Group--a statewide campaign against Bird led by deputy district attorneys around the state, including Orange County prosecutor Anthony J. Rackauckas Jr.

Bird, meanwhile, is not campaigning herself but she has been rebutting the charges through Californians to Conserve the Courts, a campaign committee she formed in 1982 when she first faced a confirmation vote.

Committee spokesman Steve Glazer declined to estimate the size of the group or the amount of money it has raised. But he promised “a people’s campaign” over the next year. “I don’t think there’ll be a Rotary Club, a chamber of commerce or a Kiwanis Club in the state that won’t hear from the pro-Bird committee” by election time, he said.

‘Court Bashing’ Deplored

Glazer deplored the “court bashing” by groups like Californians to Defeat Rose Bird. “They advocate a sort of hangman’s justice,” he said. “Their whole campaign is to inflame rather than inform about the court.”

Also, he said, the attack on the court seems to have become “a moneymaking machine for these consultants.”

Stewart Mollrich, campaign director for Californians to Defeat Rose Bird, admitted that the group’s direct-mail campaign has been unusually expensive. To receive about $500,000 in contributions, the campaign must spend about $1.5 million on mailings, he said.

But mailings on this issue are very difficult to target, he said, because opposition to Bird is “not confined to one political party or one ideology.”

To seek out contributors, the campaign has rented dozens of mailing lists. Campaign statements through June 30, 1985, indicate more than $43,500 paid to Butcher-Ford Consulting Group of Newport Beach, which is coordinating the mailings, for list rentals, data processing and postage. By that date, the campaign had also spent $7,735 renting lists from the American Mailing List of Falls Church, Va.; $6,600 for names from the Omega List of Vienna, Va., $4,300 for names from Capstone Lists Inc. of Alexandria, Va.; and smaller sums for additional list rentals.

In addition to the mailings, Mollrich and Byers have set up a speakers’ bureau, helped organize occasional fund-raisers, sent out a campaign newsletter, produced newspaper, radio and television ads, and organized a campaign to deluge news organizations around the state with letters opposing Bird.

At the moment, about 100 people--most of them lawyers--have signed up for the speakers’ bureau; Mollrich said he expects to eventually have 500 on board. As a member of the campaign’s “Truth Squad,” each speaker receives a thick red binder of background material, including biographies of targeted justices, a synopsis of controversial rulings and hints on public speaking.

The briefing materials recommend that any discussion of the Bird court rouse emotions as well as convey the facts. “AROUSE INTEREST--create an attention-getting opening,” the briefing book suggests. “As an opener, pause for one minute, after you have their attention, look at your watch and say: SOMEONE IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA WAS JUST MURDERED, RAPED OR ROBBED IN THE BRIEF TIME THAT I’VE BEEN STANDING HERE.”

“Don’t wait for a controversial question,” the primer also advises. “Bring it up along with the suitable answer.”

Giving Details Encouraged

Though the guidelines discourage “faked answers to questions,” they recommend that speakers give details about controversial murders.

“While some of those death penalty cases are unsavory, it’s time they (an audience) knew about the real world and what’s being done by the Rose Bird Court to keep convicted murderers from facing their sentences,” the briefing book advises.

Besides the speakers, Californians to Defeat Rose Bird earlier this month began a radio “documentary” series, “Justice Denied,” featuring five-minute radio interviews with prosecutors and an occasional juror who served on a murder case. The interviews are to air once a week until the November, 1986, election. So far, the campaign has purchased $150,000 of air time on 18 radio stations from San Francisco to San Diego.

The campaign also plans to purchase 30-second spots on radio and television stations, directing its attack at Bird first, then the three other justices.

‘A Negative Campaign’

“It’s a strange campaign,” said Mollrich, who at 33 has handled several other statewide campaigns. “By its nature it’s a negative campaign” in that they are only attacking Bird, not promoting another candidate, he said.

But when Bird supporters question the group’s motives, Mollrich, who is a lawyer as well as a campaign consultant, has a ready answer.

“It’s our right as citizens to campaign against the court,” he said.

Although a state Supreme Court justice has never before been defeated at a re-confirmation election, Mollrich, Byers and their fellow campaigners are hoping that this time will be the first.