Judge Who Waived Fines for Son Is Charged

A Beverly Hills Municipal Court judge was charged Thursday with three misdemeanors for improperly suspending fines on 207 parking tickets issued to his son and the young man’s high school friends.

In a complaint filed by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, Judge Charles D. Boags, 57, was accused of conspiracy to obstruct justice, failing to remove himself from a case in which he had a financial interest and committing acts prohibited by the code of judicial conduct.

“What Judge Boags was doing, stripped down to its essentials, was fixing tickets for his son and fixing tickets for his son’s friends, primarily members of the (Beverly Hills High School) football team,” Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner said during a press conference Thursday.

“When a person is appointed to the bench, they have a special responsibility,” he added, “and that responsibility is that they are not above the law, even if it’s a parking ticket.”

The Times disclosed last April that Boags had suspended fines on at least 72 tickets issued to a 1984 Honda that his son, Martin R. Boags, drove to Beverly Hills High School.

Of the 207 tickets named in the complaint filed Thursday, 145 were issued to the Honda and a 1981 Volkswagen that was also registered to Boags. Sixty-two tickets were issued to cars registered to nine students at Beverly Hills High School or their families. All but two of the tickets were handed out in 1985 and 1986.

If convicted, the judge could face fines of up to $10,000 and up to a year in Los Angeles County Jail. Because the charges against him are misdemeanors, Boags may remain on the bench while the case against him is pending. He is to be arraigned today in his own courthouse.

Boags, in a written statement, said he regretted the district attorney’s decision to file charges. “Any responsible examination of the complicated parking regulations in Beverly Hills and particularly those involving student parking at the high school will support my actions,” Boags said. “No member of my family has been treated differently than any other citizen facing the same circumstances.”

But Reiner disagreed. “There is nothing complex about the parking laws,” he said. “People by the tens of thousands are receiving parking tickets, and they pay those parking tickets. For those who do not, warrants are issued for their arrests.”

The complaint says that Boags granted special favors to his son, who is now a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and the young man’s friends because Boags never required the students to appear in court. Instead, the judge himself entered guilty pleas to the violations and then suspended fines that totaled more than $2,000, the district attorney’s office said.

By doing so, Boags extended “special and favored treatment not equally available to all other defendants similarly situated,” the complaint said.

Boags refused to talk to reporters Thursday. However, in an interview last April, the judge told The Times: “(If) I thought that anybody else around me would have done any different, that (Martin Boags) is getting special treatment, it would never have happened. I’m not going to give my son any special treatment, any better treatment than anyone else.”

Boags is also the subject of an investigation by the state Commission on Judicial Performance, a fact that, one of his attorneys said, should have precluded the district attorney from filing criminal charges.

“What we’ve argued is that the proper forum for this, if any, is the judicial council, and that’s where we think it should be,” said Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., who, along with Richard G. Hirsch, represents Boags. “They are the ones who look at the conduct of judges.”

Cochran said Boags has had an “exemplary” career and that filing the criminal charges was an “unfair and unfortunate thing to do to a man who has dedicated his life to public service.”

Cochran said that fines are suspended on about 70% of all parking tickets issued in Beverly Hills. A court official in Beverly Hills said Thursday that Cochran’s figure is correct if ticket dismissals are included along with fines that are suspended.

“The only thing I can think of as any possible impropriety is that the judge himself ruled on it,” Cochran said. “If the judge down the hall had done it, there wouldn’t have been any questions.”

Boags was appointed to the bench in 1979 by former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. after serving for more than 20 years in the office of the Los Angeles County public defender. Boags was elected to a six-year term in 1980, and was reelected to another six-year term last year in an uncontested election.