Lawyers Cancel Show Featuring a Lampoon of Rose Bird

Leaders of Los Angeles’ largest organization of criminal defense lawyers, eager to appear inoffensive, have canceled the group’s annual satirical show, which this year was to lampoon California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird.

The show, a series of musical sketches written for the organization’s annual dinner-dance by a member who is a Bird supporter, was to roast the chief justice by portraying her as popular among convicts.

At one point, for instance, an actress playing Bird was to reassure a killer named Kowolski that “lots of people are sentenced to the gas chamber, but nobody goes.”

Then, to the tune of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes,” the actress was to sing: “If you like to slash or strangle, or Night Stalkin’ is your angle, you’ll fill Death Rows. But nobody goes.”

The barb was one of several aimed at Bird for never having voted to uphold a death sentence. Bird, who is seeking voter confirmation for a 12-year-term, has been targeted for ouster by a number of conservative groups who have criticized her for voting to reverse every death penalty appeal she has heard.

The board of directors of the Criminal Courts Bar Assn., some of whose 500 members have defended Death Row inmates, was not amused. “I did not find it funny. I found it insulting to the chief,” said board member Garrett J. Zelen.

Earlier this month, while the show was in rehearsal, the board reviewed the script and voted to ask its author, Marvin Part, for permission to edit it, the outgoing president, George V. Denny III, said.

But Part, who has written many other shows for the organization and said he had never run into a problem like this, balked.

“Specifically, it was ‘Marvin, can we discuss it?’ ” recalled Ed Tolmas, incoming president.

“Marvin said, ‘Not one word will be changed.’ ”

End of discussion. End of show.

Part noted that Bird was not the only person he had planned to lampoon during Saturday’s $60-a-person affair at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, which will now feature a stand-up comic instead of the show.

The script also called for roasting Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum and Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David Horowitz, who was being honored as judge of the year.

But it was the plan to repeatedly joke about Bird that caused concern. Leslie Abramson, who is to be honored as defense lawyer of the year, had not seen the script but heard that the bulk of the show was going to be “very, very rude” to the chief justice. If this was so, Abramson told a board member, she would not attend.

Abramson’s stance--that it was inappropriate for an organization composed mainly of lawyers who support Bird to “assault” her at a time when she is under attack “by everyone in the world for all the wrong reasons”--apparently sparked the board’s decision to review the script in advance of the show.

“Some of us have clients on Death Row,” Abramson explained. (Bird) may be the reason why they’re alive. Some of us like our clients. . . . Some of us don’t want them to die. So we’re sensitive to a judge who’s sensitive to the procedures of death penalty litigation.”