City Prosecutors Are Out to Get Judge Davis, Defense Maintains

Attorneys for San Diego Municipal Judge Joseph K. Davis, who is accused of beating his pregnant girlfriend, have charged that vindictive city attorneys singled Davis out for prosecution because of anger with his rulings in criminal cases.

In motions filed late last week, Davis’ lawyers ask that the misdemeanor battery charge against the judge be dismissed or that the city attorney’s office be barred from prosecuting the case.

The defense motions say Deputy City Atty. Casey Gwinn, who signed the complaint against Davis when the judge’s girlfriend declined to cooperate with prosecutors, had a series of angry courtroom exchanges with Davis during a trial in a traffic case. At one point, the defense lawyers say, Davis admonished Gwinn for making faces and “pouting” about rulings and told him: “I think you better grow up a bit.”

Defense attorneys Jan Ronis and Patrick Q. Hall also contend that “numerous” city prosecutors “have become emotionally upset and angry with Judge Davis’ rulings” and that the city attorney’s office repeatedly has sought to move cases out of Davis’ courtroom because of disagreements with his judicial tendencies.

Chief Deputy City Atty. Stuart Swett said Tuesday that he had not seen the defense motions and could not respond to them in detail. But he insisted that personal or philosophical animosity had nothing to do with the filing of a charge against Davis.

“The decision to prosecute Judge Davis was based upon a review of the evidence presented to us and only based upon the evidence,” Swett said.

A hearing on the defense contentions is scheduled for Feb. 2, two days before Davis is to stand trial. South Bay Municipal Court Judge James Edmunds was selected last week to preside in the case because of San Diego judges’ reluctance to hear a case involving one of their colleagues.

Davis, a municipal judge since his appointment in 1980 by Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., is accused of beating his live-in girlfriend, Anna Monica Garcia, during a quarrel in November. Initially, Garcia made a citizen’s arrest of Davis and sought a court order to keep him away from her and their home. But Garcia has subsequently declined to cooperate with prosecutors, and Ronis says she has retracted her allegations and again is living amicably with Davis.

According to the defense motions, the city attorney’s office has adopted a policy of filing challenges aimed at barring Davis from presiding in all cases of resisting arrest or police brutality and repeatedly has sought to remove him from a variety of other cases.

Swett, the defense lawyers allege, recently told Davis that city prosecutors would insist that all cases before Davis be conducted as jury trials--rather than allowing Davis to hear cases himself--”because they did not believe that he understood the true meaning of ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ ”

The defense motion adds: “Mr. Swett further indicated that he believed that Judge Davis was an anti-prosecution judge.”

Ronis and Hall contend that the charge against Davis was “based upon deliberate and invidious discrimination” against the judge and should be dismissed.

They allege, too, that city prosecutors’ strong feelings about Davis create a conflict of interest for the city attorney’s office and ask, short of dismissal, that the office be barred from acting as prosecutor in the judge’s case.