Beverly Hills Judge Fined, Put on Probation for Fixing Tickets

Beverly Hills Municipal Judge Charles Boags was placed on six months’ probation and fined $4,000 Friday for conspiring to obstruct justice by suspending fines on parking tickets issued to his son and the younger Boags’ Beverly Hills High School friends.

The 59-year-old jurist was also ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.

If Boags does not pay the fine and perform the work by Sept. 11, ruled Beverly Hills Municipal Judge Carlos Baker Jr., he could spend 90 days in County Jail.

But Baker said he might extend probation to allow more time.

Boags could have received up to a year in jail for the misdemeanor conviction.

Boags was convicted in December by a jury whose foreman said, “Public officials must be accountable for what they’re doing.”

A month ago the state Supreme Court ordered the judge suspended without pay. The suspension, requested by the state Commission on Judicial Performance, is to last while Boags appeals his case.

Under the state Constitution, a judge can be suspended if convicted of any felony or of any misdemeanor involving “moral turpitude,” which means dishonesty or morally objectionable conduct.

During the four-week trial, Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Healey introduced into evidence 205 parking tickets on which Boags had recorded guilty pleas and suspended the fines. One hundred and forty-five of the tickets were issued to a car registered to Boags and driven by his son, Martin R. Boags.

Friends of the son testified that they gave their parking tickets to the younger Boags and heard no more about them.

Defense attorneys argued that the offense was not a criminal matter and that in any case there was no conspiracy because the son did not know what his father would do with the tickets.

Healey, however, insisted that father and son had an understanding that the fines would be suspended.

The tickets were issued in 1984, 1985 and 1986.

Martin Boags graduated from high school in 1986 and became a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Judge Boags contended that he treated his own family as he would anyone else.

He made no comment when he was sentenced on Friday.

Boags was appointed to the bench in 1979 by then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. and has twice been reelected. Before that, he served 20 years as a Los Angeles County deputy public defender.