Court Inquiry One of Largest Ever Conducted

The public upbraiding of Harbor Municipal Court Judge Calvin P. Schmidt on Thursday ends a wide-ranging state investigation into a sex and influence scandal that entangled six judges at the Newport Beach courthouse.

In one of its largest investigations ever conducted, the Commission on Judicial Performance for almost two years looked into a host of misconduct allegations against Judges Schmidt, Russell A. Bostrom, Brian R. Carter, Selim (Bud) Franklin, Christopher Strople and Susanne Shaw.

Included were allegations of being rude to Latinos in court, trying to influence a police investigation, preferential treatment for friends, political activity in violation of state judicial canons and granting court favors to prostitutes in exchange for sex.

Amid the investigation, Carter and Bostrom, the presiding judge, stepped down from the bench, citing personal reasons. Judges Strople and Shaw said they were cleared of any impropriety. Franklin has denied any wrongdoing, and the commission has taken no public action against him.

Schmidt’s public reproval, reached after a five-day hearing, is the only formal punishment meted out in the long-running case. Peter Gubbins, an investigating attorney for the commission, said the discipline amounts to a public scolding and allows Schmidt to stay on the bench.

As an arm of the state Supreme Court, the commission monitors the ethics and performance of more than 1,460 jurists. Depending on the severity of misconduct, judges face private admonishments, public reprovals, public censures, removal, and removal and disbarment.

“The Commission on Judicial Performance proceedings have had minimal impact on the operation and efficiency of the court,” Glenn A. Mahler, the presiding judge of Harbor Municipal Court, said in a prepared statement. “However, it is preferable to have the matter finally resolved so that the court may continue its work unimpeded.”

Mahler declined to comment further.

Schmidt, 59, the longest-sitting judge in Orange County, was publicly scolded for giving preferential treatment to a wealthy friend’s stepdaughter and making improper campaign contributions. He was cleared of doing legal favors for a prostitute.

In 1988, Schmidt handled the case of Terri Ann McMullen, the stepdaughter of longtime friend Robert Guggenheim of Newport Beach. McMullen, 28, was arrested twice on cocaine charges, and twice Schmidt called detention officials and ordered her freed without bail.

According to the investigation, he continually ordered her released despite her repeated failures to appear in court and another judge’s order that she be held on bond.

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 judicial canon of ethics limits the amount a judge may contribute to political candidates. Carpenter received $10,000 in campaign funds from Schmidt.

The commission leveled some of the most serious charges against Judge Carter, who was appointed to the Harbor Court bench in 1982 by former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.

Carter, 63, retired in February, a few months after the commission announced that it would hold formal disciplinary hearings against him. He stepped down, saying he was grateful for the opportunity to serve the community but did not want “to live in the fish bowl which the public now seems to require” of elected officials.

At the time, Carter had been under scrutiny by law enforcement agencies for four of the six years he was on the bench. He has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing.

The judge first came under investigation by Fullerton police and the Orange County district attorney’s office in 1984 when an arrested prostitute, Della Christine Johnson, claimed that Carter and Schmidt offered her favors in court in exchange for sex.

Johnson told police that Carter had hired her as a prostitute several times and took her once on a boat trip to Santa Catalina Island. During a telephone conversation taped by police, she discussed her traffic tickets with Carter and arranged a rendezvous with him.

She also said that she had performed an act of prostitution with Carter in exchange for having her driver’s license reinstated by Schmidt.

When Johnson refused to cooperate with police any longer, the district attorney’s office dropped its investigation of Carter, but the files of the case eventually were turned over to the Commission on Judicial Performance.