Doors Shut at Hearing on Schmidt

A disciplinary hearing into allegations of wrong-doing against Harbor Municipal Judge Calvin P. Schmidt opened this morning behind closed doors after the California Supreme Court rejected a bid to open the proceeding to the public.

Schmidt declined to comment on his case as he left the hearing this morning, the first in the state to test governmental power to open hearings into alleged judicial improprieties.

State lawyers had sought to make Schmidt’s the first hearing open to the public in the 28-year history of the California Commission on Judicial Performance, the agency charged with investigating misconduct among the state’s 1,400 judges.

But Superior Court and appellate judges had accepted Schmidt’s claim that no hearings may legally be opened until the commission adopts guidelines for implementing Proposition 92, an initiative passed last year that allows open hearings on issues of alleged dishonesty, corruption and moral turpitude.

Pattern of Treatment

Allegations against Schmidt, a 23-year veteran of the Harbor Municipal Court bench, include a pattern of preferential treatment for certain defendants.

The investigation also involves Schmidt’s alleged preferential treatment of Della Christine Johnson, a prostitute who told police in 1984 that she engaged in sex with a friend of Schmidt in return for special in treatment in handling traffic tickets.

In the dispute over whether the hearings may be open to the public, state lawyers for the commission argued that Proposition 92 clearly confers such authority.

Those lawyers quoted from the initiative: “Every public official, no matter how high the office, must ultimately be accountable to the public.”

Commission officials could not immediately be reached for comment.