RAYMOND D. MIRELES : Friends Say Jurist Isn’t Malicious

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Raymond D. Mireles said he believes humor “alleviates some of the anxiety” naturally present in a courtroom. Hence the remark that sparked an unprecedented threatened boycott of his courtroom by the entire Los Angeles County public defender’s office.

Those who know Mireles well say they can easily imagine the 46-year-old criminal court judge quipping “Bring me a piece” or “body part” of a deputy public defender after telling two Los Angeles police officers to bring the attorney to his courtroom.

Those familiar with Mireles can also envision his frustration at having to wait for the deputy defender to be present so he could schedule a case for a hearing. The judge is an admitted stickler for punctuality.

What Mireles’ supporters can’t imagine is that he meant for the two officers to haul the deputy defender out of a neighboring court and hurl him into Mireles’ courtroom, bruising his leg.

“I can just see the little grin and the gleam in his eye” as he joked in gallows-humor tradition, said Van Nuys attorney Richard S. Plotin, a defense attorney and former deputy public defender who has appeared before Mireles on many occasions.

“He’s a decent human being, and somebody who is totally without malice,” Plotin said. “In all my dealings, personally and professionally with Ray Mireles, I thought he conducted himself in a fair and reasonable manner. Even if he was angry at someone, he wouldn’t display it or let it affect his judgment.”

Of his well-publicized flap with the public defender’s office, Mireles says wearily:”I’m tired of this, I really, really am. I just am real, real exhausted by this thing.

“I have no problems with the public defender’s office, frankly,” said the dark-haired, mustachioed former deputy district attorney. “They have a problem with me.”

Mireles said he did not mean for his courtroom remark to be taken literally. He said he thought the officers had left the courtroom by the time he made it.

The judge said he takes heart from a stack of letters from defense lawyers who support him.

“I take pride in what the defense lawyers think of me, quite frankly,” Mireles said. “There are quite a few who have written me letters or called me to say they’re standing by me.”

But Deputy Public Defender Thom Tibor, assigned to Mireles’ courtroom before his recent flap with the public defender’s office, said Mireles sometimes seems egotistical and carries his concern for punctuality to ridiculous extremes.

Tibor said Mireles sometimes upbraids lawyers “for being late when they show up at two minutes after 9 or five minutes after 9,” the hour that court begins. Tibor said he has seen Mireles get angry at defendants because their attorneys have not shown up in court.

Mireles notes that his Catholic school upbringing may account for his penchant for punctuality. It probably didn’t hurt that he joined the Army at 17 after graduating from high school. He was stationed in Germany when the Berlin Wall was built and is now eager to travel there.

After the service, he worked in a television-manufacturing factory “going nowhere, having no interests but in the back of my mind knowing I ultimately had to go to school.”

Mireles was the first one in his family to attend college but not the last. His mother went back to school and became a registered nurse in her late 40s after her four children were raised, he notes proudly.

After earning an undergraduate degree in political science at UCLA, Mireles worked two years as a social worker on Skid Row. He then returned to UCLA for law school, having decided that being a lawyer would make him “feel you’re doing something important.”

After graduating in 1972, he worked for Legal Aid and the Los Angeles city attorney’s office before joining the district attorney’s office in 1977. Gov. George Deukmejian appointed him to the Municipal Court bench in 1985 and elevated him to the Superior Court in 1987. Mireles and his wife, Dana, a social worker-turned-administrator with the county, have no children. Mireles’ passions are pickup basketball games, rock ‘n’ roll music and designing houses and overseeing their construction.