3 Appellate Judges Picked as Supreme Court Candidates : Judiciary: The governor’s selections for an impending vacancy are all described as moderate to conservative. He says he will also consider candidates evaluated by the State Bar for past openings.

Gov. George Deukmejian, acting quickly to fill an impending vacancy on the state Supreme Court, on Tuesday named three appeal court judges to be among the candidates to succeed Justice Marcus M. Kaufman, who is retiring at the end of January.

The governor said he will submit the names of Appellate Justices Carl West Anderson, 54, of the San Francisco area; Armand Arabian, 54, of Los Angeles, and Ronald M. George, 49, of Los Angeles to a special panel of the State Bar for a non-binding evaluation.

After a review by the Bar--a process that may take up to 90 days--the governor will select his nominee for the Supreme Court. That choice, in turn, will be subject to confirmation by the state Judicial Appointments Commission.

Deukmejian, in a two-page statement, said also that he is considering for the current vacancy “other jurists who have previously been evaluated” by the State Bar for a position on the high court.

That list would include Appellate Justices Patricia D. Benke, 40, of San Diego; H. Walter Croskey, 56, of Los Angeles, and Fred H. Marler, 57, of Sacramento. All three were considered for the post vacated by retiring Justice John A. Arguelles that was filled earlier this year by Appellate Justice Joyce L. Kennard of Los Angeles.

As in the past, the governor looked to established and experienced members of the judiciary as potential nominees. All are regarded as moderate to conservative in their judicial philosophies. They are thus not likely to alter the current balance of a high court that is generally seen as tough on crime, sympathetic to business and reluctant to blaze new judicial trails--all three hallmarks in sharp contrast to previous high courts that had been dominated by liberals for decades. The three named Tuesday are also all former prosecutors.

Thus far, Deukmejian has filled six vacancies on the state high court. Five of his appointees--including Kaufman, Kennard, Arguelles and Justices Edward A. Panelli and David N. Eagleson--were on the state Court of Appeal. The sixth--and the governor’s first appointment--was Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas, his former law partner and a one-time federal district judge in Los Angeles.

“The governor once again is looking for a track record on the bench so he knows what he’s getting,” said Santa Clara University School of Law Dean Gerald F. Uelmen, a close analyst of the court. “He’s looking this time obviously for some younger justices--someone who hopefully has a little more stamina. He’s looking for an appointment that will last.”

Deukmejian’s action came only four days after Kaufman, 60, announced his retirement from the judiciary as of Jan. 31, after serving less than three years on the Supreme Court. Earlier this year, Arguelles stepped down at age 62 after serving only two years on the high court.

In both instances, the retiring jurists cited personal considerations--such as wanting to spend more time with their families. And both had completed sufficient service on the judiciary to qualify for enhanced pension benefits.

Other jurists the governor has considered in the past, but who now are not considered among likely candidates for the high court, include Appellate Justices Hollis Best of Fresno and Lynn Compton of Los Angeles; now-retired Appellate Justices Gordon Cologne of San Diego and James Scott of San Francisco, and Pamela Ann Rymer of Los Angeles, now on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Following are brief portraits of the three appellate justices named Tuesday by the governor:

Anderson, a resident of Piedmont, was appointed to the state Court of Appeal by Deukmejian in March, 1984. From 1975 to 1984, he served as a Superior Court judge in Alameda County--a position to which he was named by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan and subsequently twice elected by the voters.

Before that, Anderson served as a deputy district attorney and was a lobbyist for the California District Attorneys, the California Peace Officers and the California State Sheriffs Assns.

In October of 1988, while participating by special assignment in a case before the state Supreme Court, Anderson rendered a vigorous dissent when the court ruled 6 to 1 that a religious organization can be sued for employing “coercive persuasion” or “brainwashing” to entice unknowing recruits into joining a church.

Anderson warned against a court treading into a “theological thicket” and said the ruling was a “bad legal policy . . . that unnecessarily projects the court into the arena of divining the truth or falsity of religious beliefs.”

In another high-court case in which he participated, Anderson joined with the 6-1 majority in July, 1988, in ruling that a defendant convicted of murder during commission of a felony could be sentenced to death even if he could not be prosecuted for the underlying crime.

On the Court of Appeal, Anderson in November, 1984, wrote one of the first opinions in the state concluding that under Proposition 8, the anti-crime initiative passed by the voters two years earlier, California courts must follow the less-restrictive rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court in the determining the admissibility of improperly obtained evidence against criminal defendants. The state high court itself reached the same conclusion in another case decided later.

Arabian, a resident of Tarzana and a friend of the governor, was named to the Court of Appeal by Deukmejian in 1983 after serving as a Municipal and Superior Court judge in Los Angeles as an appointee of Reagan. Before that, Arabian was an attorney in private practice for nine years and served two years as a deputy district attorney.

As a Superior Court judge, Arabian took a precedent-setting action during a rape trial by refusing to follow a requirement that judges instruct juries to view the victim’s testimony with caution. Arabian described the instruction as demeaning and arbitrary. Two years later, the state Supreme Court agreed, striking down the requirement.

On the Court of Appeal, Arabian concurred when the court last August upheld a provision of Proposition 73 banning off-year political contributions to state lawmakers--a ruling, now pending before the high court, that significantly tightened restrictions on campaign fund-raising.

Arabian wrote an opinion in May, 1987, upholding the state’s interest in preserving the integrity of the family and denying an unmarried man the right to visit a child he claimed he fathered.

George, who resides in Los Angeles, was named to the Court of Appeal in 1987 by Deukmejian after previous service for four years as a Superior Court judge--as an appointee of then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.--and five years on the Municipal Court. Before that, he served as a deputy attorney general, assigned to the criminal division of the state Department of Justice.

While in the attorney general’s office, George successfully defended the prosecution and conviction of Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. As a Superior Court judge, he presided over the “Hillside Strangler” case of Angelo Buono Jr., who in a two-year trial was convicted of the slayings of nine women and sentenced to life in prison.

George is a former president of the California Judges Assn. and is serving as head of a special task force of the state Judicial Council that is studying ways to reform the often time-consuming task of questioning prospective jurors.

On the Court of Appeal, George in 1988 dissented from a novel 2-1 ruling in which the court held that a patient retained the right to share in the profit from commercial products made from his blood and tissue. George argued that extracted blood and tissue should not be considered a patient’s property and that even if it was, the patient in this case had abandoned any claim to it. The case is pending before the state Supreme Court.