L.A. Judges Named to Appeal Court

The judge and one of the prosecutors in the “Hillside Strangler” trial were named justices of the state’s Los Angeles-based 2nd District Court of Appeal on Thursday by Gov. George Deukmejian.

They will fill the vacancies left when Justices John A. Arguelles and David N. Eagleson were elevated to the California Supreme Court earlier this year.

Ronald M. George and Roger W. Boren, both now Los Angeles Superior Court judges, became acquainted when Boren prosecuted the two-year trial of “Hillside Strangler” Angelo Buono Jr. before Judge George. Boren, as a deputy attorney general, won Buono’s conviction after the district attorney’s office had pronounced the case unwinnable. The trial was the longest criminal proceeding in U.S. history.

‘Twilight Zone’ Case

Boren, 45, was appointed to the Municipal Court bench in 1984 and elevated to the Superior Court in 1985 by Deukmejian. He conducted his own high-publicity trial earlier this year--the “Twilight Zone” case in which film director John Landis and four associates were acquitted of manslaughter charges.

George, 47, former president of the California Judges Assn., will be returning to the court where he practiced law two decades ago. As a deputy attorney general, he defended appellate criminal convictions, including that of Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert F. Kennedy.

George was appointed a Los Angeles Municipal Court judge in 1972 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan and to the Superior Court in 1977 by former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. The new justice, who lives in Beverly Hills, was graduated from Beverly Hills High School, Princeton University and Stanford University School of Law.

Boren, a native of Utah who lives in Saugus, served as a Mormon missionary in Austria and as an Army intelligence officer and earned degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, San Jose State University and UCLA School of Law.

Says He’s ‘a Plugger’

In an interview with The Times earlier this year, Boren speculated that he “probably would enjoy an opportunity to be an appellate judge.” But he said he considered appellate judges “the544367969business” and himself just “a plugger.”

George earlier turned down an opportunity given many trial court judges by former Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird to substitute on the appellate bench for a three-month stint.