Judge Is Scolded for Giving Special Treatment in Case

Municipal Judge Calvin P. Schmidt of Newport Beach was publicly scolded by state judicial authorities Thursday for giving preferential treatment to a friend’s stepdaughter and making improper campaign contributions. But he was cleared of doing legal favors for a prostitute.

In a sharply worded decision, the San Francisco-based judicial watchdog agency announced that Schmidt, 59, had “undermined public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

The action by the Commission on Judicial Performance appeared to be the final chapter in the sex and influence scandal that has embroiled several judges for more than two years at Harbor Municipal Court in Newport Beach.

Only two of the judges--Schmidt and Municipal Judge Brian R. Carter--were targeted in formal disciplinary proceedings. Similar allegations against Carter, 63, were dropped by the commission after he retired from the bench in February.

“This exoneration by my judicial peers ends what has been for me the most painful time both professionally and personally in my 23-year career as a judge and community servant,” Schmidt said in a prepared statement.

In its action against Schmidt, the commission chose one of the mildest forms of discipline available to it. It declined several tougher punishments, including recommendations that the state Supreme Court censure him, remove him from office or disbar him.

But Deputy Atty. Gen. Roy Hewitt, who presented the case to the commission, said the action still carries a strong message.

“The message is clear that some of his conduct is not to be condoned or practiced by other judges,” Hewitt said.

Most of the commission’s two-page ruling dealt with the way Schmidt handled the 1988 case of Terri Ann McMullen, the stepdaughter of a longtime friend of the judge.

McMullen, 28, was arrested twice on cocaine charges. Twice Schmidt called detention officials and ordered her freed on her own recognizance, despite another judge’s order that she be held on bond and despite her failure to appear in court between her first and second arrests.

“The obvious and sole reason for Judge Schmidt’s actions was his friendship with McMullen’s stepfather,” the commission wrote. “Judge Schmidt’s releases of McMullen were arbitrary and capricious exercises of (his) judicial discretion and undermined public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

The commission found that Schmidt acted “in patent violation” of the judicial canon of ethics when he contributed money from his own campaign to candidates for political office, including former Democratic state Sen. Paul Carpenter of Cypress.

The panel, however, found no evidence to support the allegation that Schmidt offered to reinstate the driver’s license of convicted prostitute Della Christine Johnson in 1984 in exchange for a promise of sex. She told police that Carter called her later and collected on that promise by having sex with her, an allegation Carter denies. But the commission said it heard no evidence on the alleged exchange of sexual favors and determined that Johnson’s “case disposition was not unusual.”

The commission also rejected another accusation that Schmidt intervened on behalf of a friend whose marriage ceremony he had performed, using his influence to help the friend obtain a good plea bargain in a criminal case.