Anti-Abortion Group’s Lawyer Gets Jail Term

Lawyer Cyrus Zal was sentenced Friday to 90 days in jail and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine for repeatedly ignoring a judge’s orders not to discuss abortion at a recent trial in which Zal represented six anti-abortion activists convicted of trespass.

At a lengthy hearing before he sentenced Zal for contempt of court, El Cajon Municipal Court Judge Larrie R. Brainard Jr. also sent one of Zal’s six clients, James Holman, 43, the publisher of the Reader, a San Diego weekly newspaper, to jail for 30 days.

Zal, 42, a Folsom-based lawyer dispatched to the El Cajon court by the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, said he planned an immediate appeal of Brainard’s order to the 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego.

The judge ordered Zal, cited 20 times for contempt, to report to the downtown San Diego County Jail late Monday afternoon to begin serving the sentence. However, Brainard gave him until then to try to persuade the 4th District court that it should delay the imposition of sentence while he wages his appeal.

Brainard hit Zal with the contempt citations each time the lawyer ignored his order not to discuss abortion. The judge condemned the “self-righteous arrogance of (the protesters) and Mr. Zal” at Friday’s hearing, saying the lawyer and the activists, who wanted to argue that their Oct. 21 blockade at a suburban San Diego clinic saved lives, missed the point at a trespass trial.

“They confuse intent with motive,” Brainard said. “Their motive is to further the pro-life cause. Their intent was to blockade.”

Zal is known not only for his ever-present Bible, but also for making it clear he wishes to use the trials of anti-abortion protesters as a platform for debating and condemning abortion. Last year, in successfully defending Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry and four others of two dozen charges stemming from an Easter weekend blockade of a Los Angeles women’s clinic, Zal repeatedly challenged Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge Richard A. Paez to throw him in jail.

In another trial last fall in Fresno, Zal was handed a 16-day jail term for contempt but never served it, winning an appeal. Zal said Friday he thought he had an “excellent” chance of reversing Brainard’s sentence, saying the judge made procedural mistakes in issuing the contempt citations.

Zal’s sentence could reach 290 days. The lawyer told the judge he couldn’t afford the $10,000 fine--and wouldn’t pay even if he could--so Brainard gave him the option of paying it off at $50 for each additional day in jail, or 200 days.

Brainard said he had not cited anyone for contempt in his 11 years on the bench--until Zal. Zal was the second attorney sentenced to a jail term in as many days by an El Cajon judge presiding over the trial of anti-abortion activists charged with trespass at the Oct. 21 protest at the Family Planning Associates clinic in La Mesa. At a hearing Thursday, Municipal Court Judge Victor E. Bianchini sentenced defense lawyer Colette Gonzalez to 10 days in jail for two contempt citations.

Holman, publisher of the Reader, was led to jail immediately after Brainard sentenced him. Four other protesters convicted Wednesday of trespass also received 30-day jail terms. Besides Holman, three of those four were Zal’s clients--Carla Bulitsma, 49, of Pomona; Miles Robinson, 41, of Santa Barbara; and Gary Schuberg, 36, of Moorpark.

The fourth, Marshall Wilson, 52, of Santee, served as his own attorney.

Brainard sentenced two more activists, Zal clients who had prior convictions stemming from anti-abortion protests, to 10 days in county jail, a 25-day stint on a county work crew and three years probation. A condition of that probation is that the two--David Leland, 37, of Laguna Hills, and Jeffrey Olkie, 28, of Carson--not participate in future blockades.