Taking a Ride on the Wheels of Justice : A Day in the Life of Downtown L.A.’s Superior Court

It is 8:15 a.m., and the Los Angeles County Criminal Courts Building is stirring to life. On the steps out front, a shoeshine boy does a brisk business. His pockets bulge with change as he buffs the black dress shoes of yet another customer--a witness in a drug case.

“I want to look good,” the customer explains.

Inside the banks of glass doors, the check-in line for Juvenile Dependency Court proceedings stands 30 deep. Cries of babies and clinging children echo off the marble walls.

Scores of people--unkempt teen-agers, over-perfumed attorneys, dazed jurors, a fulminating old crank--are poised in a narrow hallway between two rows of balky elevators. Finally, an elevator lands, the doors open and 35 people squeeze into a space meant for 25.

The elevator jolts from floor to floor, and on Floor 13 the stop is prolonged while a large woman in a caftan struggles to extricate herself. Politeness fails, and she lowers a shoulder: “I need off!” She completes her exit with curses, and one lawyer turns to another and says, pained: “And it’s only 8:30 a.m.”

The downtown criminal court branch of Los Angeles Superior Court is like no other in the country, say those who know it best. It costs taxpayers nearly $170,000 a day just to operate the squat gray building, which serves as the center of the largest court system in the nation. To spend just one workday in the courthouse, drifting from floor to floor, courtroom to courtroom, is to discover with a clarity statistics cannot deliver the volume and breadth of this city’s crime, and also its humanity.

McMartin, Night Stalker, the Ninja Murders--it is possible in a single day to sit in on trials on these and several other tabloid-strength cases, just as it is possible to witness a pageant of lesser-known but equally powerful struggles, all being played out for keeps in 26 courtrooms.

“The system is very human; you see what’s best and worst in people and everything in between,” says presiding Superior Court Judge David A. Horowitz. In his courtroom alone, 23,000 legal proceedings were undertaken last year, most of them related somehow to drugs.

“Sometimes I’m not sure how we get through it,” he says. “Some days I just place my hand on a rock and gaze at the sky.”

And so the day begins.

9:10 a.m.

Department 100 on the 13th Floor reverberates with the clatter of unsnapping briefcases, shuffling papers, attorneys’ whispered instructions to clients and their louder gossip with colleagues, hardy talk about racquetball, old cases, restaurants.

Horowitz slips onto the bench, and the room quiets as he begins to plow through 35 scheduled matters on what is called the trial calendar.

The first defendant pleads guilty to drug charges. Horowitz gives him six years.

Carlos Villareal, charged with assault with a deadly weapon, acts as his own attorney, always an interesting departure from the courthouse norm. He reads from a legal pad and lodges a request: $10 in dimes, his clothes returned, and a court-appointed investigator to look for a witness.

Among the throng of attorneys is Joel R. Isaacson. He has come on a pretrial matter in behalf of his client Lonnie Lewis, charged with murder in a case dubbed “Nightmare on Orange Grove.” Lewis and another man allegedly tied up three people in a closet, drenched them with gasoline and set them afire.

Isaacson is a busy man these days. He’s also got the “54th Street Massacre,” in which his client, Fred Knight, is charged with murder in a gang-retaliation attack that killed five and wounded several others.

“It’s interesting and exciting work,” Isaacson offers as he hurries out, rushing to another court, another appearance.

Attorney Madelynn Kopple has just waived her client’s constitutional right to a speedy trial. This is no lawyerly stall: There simply is no courtroom available.

“It’s like waiting your turn at a dentist’s office,” Kopple says.

And now, looking completely out of place, an old man with large thick glasses and gray rumpled hair shuffles forward with his attorney to be given a trial date.

His name is Issac Magier, who his attorney says is an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor. He is accused of murder. Magier’s wife of 40 years died of cancer and a sister-in-law came to take him East. Instead, the sister-in-law was beaten to death with a blunt object.

“I don’t get many cases like this,” attorney Richard Hirsch says later, out in the dim hallway. He looks over at the old man, slumped dejectedly by an ashtray overflowing with wadded facial tissues, doughnut wrappers, soda cans.

“Absolutely gut-wrenching,” Hirsch proclaims.

10:30 a.m.

The first business of the day is to dispense with pretrial motions, setting of trial dates, formal sentencing--the bureaucracy of justice. After that, the trials begin. Evidence will be presented, and a sampler of some of humanity’s darker moments will be recreated, probed, weighed, judged.

On this day, 18 of the 26 departments are hearing murder trials.

Each case seems to have its own devoted audience: family and friends of defendants and witnesses, authors and scriptwriters and retirees who daily watch the court proceedings as if they were soap operas. In some cases, the accused attract groupies.

In Department 121, Dr. Milos Klvana, a Valencia obstetrician is accused of second-degree murder in the deaths of eight infants. Prosecutors are alleging that Klvana proceeded with high-risk deliveries and bungled them despite knowing that he did not have the skill or equipment to perform them safely at his clinic. The trial could last a year with 400 witnesses.

On this day, Dr. Schuyler Kohl of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y., is testifying about evaluations given Klvana during his residency. Several records are flashed on a video screen, and Kohl contends that Klvana received poor marks for cooperation and clinical work.

Klvana stares at the floor.

Two friends of the doctor get up and leave. Outside they explain they have sat in on trial since it began April 3, taking time out from work. One man says Klvana has delivered two of his children.

“He’s a brilliant man,” he asserts.

11:30 a.m.

In Judge Candace D. Cooper’s courtroom, a case refered to as both the “Yom Kippur Murders” and the “Ninja Case, has just begun. Stewart Woodman and Anthony Majoy are charged with murdering Woodman’s parents to collect on a $500,000 insurance policy.

The Woodmans were gunned down in 1985 as they returned to their condominium after a Yom Kippur celebration, and one of the assailants is said to have been dressed in black, like a Ninja warrior. Woodman’s brother Neil and another man will be tried separately in the slayings.

Jury selection is under way, and Cooper reminds the 125 candidates that “jury service is a duty and a service.”

Then she lets a bomb fall.

“This case will take seven to nine months.”

The prospective jurors collectively gasp.

Cooper asks for a show of hands of how many can serve that length of time without hardship. Only a couple dozen prospective jurors raise their hands, and the attorneys look on with a grim resignation. They figure it will take eight weeks just to pick a jury.

Noon

Nothing seems to get started on time in the criminal courts. Except lunch.

At noon, judges throughout the building halt proceedings. Bailiffs clear the courtrooms, lock the doors. Now the downward elevators are crammed. Many of the mob plunge into the noisy cafeteria, where each day 100 gallons of coffee, 600 hamburgers, three whole turkeys and two prime ribs roasts are consumed.

Jurors, instructed not to talk about their cases, talk about their cases. Attorneys eat over open briefcases on cafeteria tables, rummaging through notes. Upstairs, in the corridors, only a few stragglers remain. Some read books or snack on candy bars. Others sleep.

2 p.m.

The jurors in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case have just returned from lunch and, now entering their third year on the panel, they look bored.

Prosecutor Lael R. Rubin is pressing a witness to recall when she met with investigators. The witness keeps telling her she can’t recall times and dates, and the significance of the moment, if any, seems lost on all.

Several jurors are slumped in their chairs. Others cradle their heads. One yawns. Defendant Peggy McMartin Buckey has removed one of her long dangling earrings, and is trying to make a minor repair on it. There are less than a half dozen people in the audience. Even the customary gallery of authors and screenwriters has wandered off.

3 p.m.

The atmosphere in Judge Michael Tynan’s courtroom is tense. Richard Ramirez is being tried for 13 murders and 30 other felonies in the so-called Night Stalker case. The victims were shot, bludgeoned or stabbed, and several women were raped. One victim’s eyes were gouged out. The jurors, several of whom are leaning forward in their chairs, listen as Sheriff’s Deputy Hannah Woods testifies that fingerprints obtained by investigators matched those of Ramirez.

Ramirez cranes his neck and looks at someone in the audience. Only a handful of spectators are present, unlike the early days last July when every seat was taken. There are several young women in attendance, however, and the regulars say they often are there. One wears pentagram-shaped earrings and says she has become the defendant’s pen pal.

3:30 p.m.

Victor Gallegos is on trial for a gang murder. A former colleague is on the witness stand in Department 128, testifying that he saw the defendant in a park shortly before the murder occurred.

“How long had the Sawtelle gang been coming into your territory and committing shootings and beatings?” the district attorney asks.

“Forever,” the gang member replies.

4 p.m.

Prospective jurors, some of whom have waited days to be called on a case, are dismissed early and rush for the elevators.

For Dick Holmberg, who works for a movie studio, it is the end of his first day in the jury pool. He spent it reading a book in the jury room.

“It has been tiring,” Holmberg says. “You can’t go anywhere. It’s kind of boring.” The corridors are mostly deserted now. Trash and discarded newspapers litter the floors.

The day is done in most departments, but for three, it has just begun.

5:30 p.m.

Night Court is being held in Department 117.

“Tonight is pretty heavy, but he’s moving through them pretty good,” attorney Terrell D. Powell says of the judge.

Powell’s problem on this night is with his client, a man named Dwight Johnson, who is charged with selling drugs. Johnson has just informed Judge M. Michael Byrn he wants a new lawyer because Powell hasn’t been seeing him enough.

“Well, talk to him now, he’s a good attorney,” Byrn tells the client. “We’re all busy here, Mr. Johnson. We’re all very busy. That is a problem.”

There are three hours left before the scheduled 8:30 p.m. conclusion of night court, and 33 matters are stacked up on Byrn’s court calendar, awaiting a resolution that passes for justice.