Sexual Accusation Against Judge ‘Reviewed’

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office is “reviewing” a waitress’ claim that San Pedro Municipal Judge David M. Kennick offered to dismiss a drunk-driving charge against her in exchange for sexual favors, officials said Tuesday.

“We are aware of the allegation and we’re reviewing it,” district attorney’s spokesman Al Albergate said, adding that it has not been determined whether a full-scale investigation is warranted.

The waitress, Mary Davis, 45, of Lomita, told reporters that Kennick made the offer at Cigo’s, a San Pedro restaurant where she works, on the night after her arrest on Feb. 22, 1985. Located six blocks from the courthouse, the restaurant is frequented by judges, lawyers and court personnel.

Thought Case Dismissed

Davis said that even though she did not agree to have sex with the judge, she believed her case had been dismissed--until a warrant was issued for her arrest.

Kennick, 48, who has served on the bench since 1972 and is being challenged in the June 3 election, denied that he had ever propositioned Davis and said they are virtually strangers, though they were once introduced at Cigo’s.

“I don’t know her and I don’t know her lawyer,” Kennick said in a telephone interview. “I met her one time through a friend of hers for five seconds. This was one of the girls in the restaurant. That was the first and last time.

“I wouldn’t know this woman if she walked in right now and spun cartwheels across this courthouse.”

He branded the allegation a smear.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen A. Sowders, head of the prosecutor’s Special Investigations Division, said one of his investigators was assigned to attend a hearing Tuesday in Los Angeles Municipal Court at which Davis’ attorney sought to raise the allegation against Kennick.

Drawing a distinction between a “review” and an “investigation,” Sowders said his office would wait until the criminal proceeding against Davis is complete before deciding whether to take any further steps.

“We have a charged defendant making allegations,” he said. “We have to be sensitive to that. . . . If she’s still making that claim at the end of the trial, then we might contact her.”

Sowders added: “So far we don’t have anything.”

Subpoenaed to Hearing

Davis’ attorney, William C. Case Jr. of Santa Ana, subpoenaed Kennick to a hearing Tuesday before Ronald R. Combest, a municipal judge from the Mendocino County community of Round Valley.

Davis’ case was assigned to an out-of-town judge after Los Angeles Municipal Judge Ronald S. Coen decided it would be inappropriate for a local jurist to handle it because Kennick was being subpoenaed to testify.

But Case never raised the allegations about Kennick in open court.

In an extraordinary sequence of events at the hearing, Case announced that he was frustrated because Combest was not allowing him to question a witness about Kennick’s conduct on the bench.

In protest, Case said, he would remain mute through the entire trial. At that point, Combest denied Case’s motion to dismiss the case. And Kennick was never called to the stand.

Staff writer Tim Waters contributed to this story.