2 Municipal Judges to Go to Superior Court

Gov. George Deukmejian on Wednesday elevated Orange County Municipal Judges Marvin G. Weeks and Kazuharu Makino to posts on the Orange County Superior Court.

Weeks, 58, of Laguna Niguel, fills a newly created position. Makino, 38, of Fullerton, replaces Judge Lloyd E. Blanpied Jr., who retired.

“I’m very happy and very grateful I could be appointed to the Superior Court,” Makino said Wednesday. “I hope I can do a good job here.”

Makino, who was appointed by the governor to the North Orange County Municipal Court in Fullerton in June, 1986, has been assistant presiding judge. Last week, he was elected presiding judge of that district for the coming year.

Before his appointment to the bench, Makino served for nine years as a deputy district attorney in the major fraud, sexual assault and child abuse units of the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Makino received his law degrees from the University of the Pacific and McGeorge School of Law. He is a member of the Japanese American Lawyers Assn., He is married and has two sons.

Weeks has been assistant presiding judge of Municipal Court in Westminster. He was appointed to the Municipal bench by Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. in December 1975.

Weeks served as a referee in Orange County Superior Court from 1974 to 1976 and as deputy county counsel from 1971 to 1974. He was in private practice in Los Angeles from 1965 to 1971.

Before receiving his law degree from Southwestern University Law School, Weeks worked as a deputy sheriff and court bailiff in Los Angeles and before that, as a truck driver and salesman.

Weeks is married and has a son and two daughters. He was not available for comment on his elevation.

Municipal Court judges earn an annual salary of $82,054. Superior Court judges earn $89,851 a year.