Supreme Court Imposes ‘Severe’ Censure on Judge

The state Supreme Court imposed “severe public censure” Thursday on a Northern California judge accused of lacking impartiality, being abusive to lawyers and once calling a coach at a youth soccer game a “pervert.”

The justices upheld a recommendation for such action by the state Judicial Performance Commission against Justice Court Judge L. Eugene Rasmussen, 52, of South Lake Tahoe.

Such misconduct, the court said, “represents a disturbing, intolerable affront to the legal profession, and to the public.” Had there not been evidence that Rasmussen had more recently made “continuing, commendable efforts” to temper his behavior, he might have been removed from the bench, the court said. But the court decided public admonishment was sufficient punishment.

Recommendation Not Challenged

Rasmussen, who said he has been left with a “crushing debt” in expenses from defending himself during the commission’s two-year investigation, did not challenge the recommendation for censure.

According to the commission, Rasmussen, attending a game in which his children were participating, had openly castigated the coach of a rival team as a “pervert,” based on the judge’s knowledge that the coach had once been convicted as a child molester.

Later, the judge succeeded in getting the coach banned from local sports programs and, on his own, unsuccessfully sought to have the coach’s probation revoked.

The commission concluded that despite the coach’s record, there had been “no immediate cause for concern” for the safety of the children in the soccer program and said that the judge had been motivated by anger over what he thought was a breach of sportsmanship by the coach. Rasmussen said he had been angered by the coach’s remarks to a parent who was officiating the game.

The judge was also charged with other acts of misconduct in a three-year period beginning in 1981, including:

- Showing a lack of impartiality toward several attorneys who sought to have their cases tried before other judges;

- Discussing with a defendant, in the absence of his counsel, the sentence the judge intended to impose;

- Showing “an intolerant, and persistently abusive and sarcastic demeanor” toward attorneys, litigants and others in his courtroom.

Rasmussen received support from a number of lawyers who testified before the commission that the judge in recent years had made considerable efforts to improve his behavior.

The court, in a three-page opinion, took note of Rasmussen’s “recent success” in conforming his behavior to the state Code of Judicial Conduct and said severe public censure would serve as “adequate admonishment” for the judge.

Sterilization Ruling

In another action, the justices refused a request to reconsider a 1985 ruling striking down a state law that had barred the sterilization of mentally retarded women. Lawyers for the state public defender’s office contended that the strict guidelines the court set out in the ruling that allowed sterilization in limited circumstances were not sufficient to protect the rights of the retarded.

The justices, however, left intact a ruling by the state Court of Appeal in San Jose last February prohibiting the sterilization of Valerie Nieto, 31, whose case was the subject of the 1985 ruling. The woman’s parents had sought her sterilization on the grounds that, as a victim of Down’s syndrome with an IQ of 30, she could not care for children if she became pregnant.