Guilty of Courting Nap Time : Judges, Juries Fight the Urge to Sleep

Deputy Public Defender Thom Tibor doesn’t like to sit down in court while waiting for his cases to be called for fear he will fall asleep. Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Alan B. Haber swears off large lunches and alcohol lest he find himself dozing for God, country and jurors to see.

As these courthouse figures and more will testify, courtrooms are the scene of battles over more than legal issues. Almost everybody who spends time in court occasionally has to fight to stay awake.

The irresistible urge to sleep has been known to overtake attorneys, bailiffs, court watchers, jurors, judges--even defendants.

“People go to sleep in courtrooms all the time,” said Joe Campbell, recently retired presiding justice of the 4th District Court of Appeal’s 2nd Division.

“I think it’s pretty common knowledge that it’s an occupational hazard,” Haber said.

“Everybody tends to be a little sleepy after lunch,” agreed his colleague, Judge Raymond Mireles. “You’d be surprised how fast after you sit down lethargy takes over.”

There are certain things about the human body and courtrooms that conspire to put people to sleep, experts say.

Take a warm, stuffy, windowless room with dim fluorescent lighting and poor air circulation. Add an attorney droning on and on in hushed tones about an esoteric legal technicality. Factor in physical inactivity, a full stomach and the body’s natural desire for an afternoon siesta, and sleepiness is almost inevitable, said Donna L. Arand, director of the UCLA Sleep Laboratory.

A former longtime San Bernardino Superior Court judge, Campbell can attest to the phenomenon from personal experience. To court spectators, Campbell might have appeared studious and judicial as he sat writing notes on a yellow legal pad one warm day in May many years ago. He was listening to what he called the “almost interminable closing arguments” in a routine felony jury trial.

But Campbell’s clerk was puzzled; she’d never seen him take notes during final arguments, a time when the judge basically is a silent referee as attorneys address jurors. When Campbell left the bench, his curious clerk took the legal pad and saw that Campbell had written the following:

“Don’t go to sleep, don’t go to sleep! Don’t go to sleep, do not go to sleep! Do not go back to sleep again. Remember not to doze off anymore! Dozing off would be very nice. Dozing off was very nice. I will doze off again unless I keep busy writing notes to myself! Is it possible to write and sleep at the same time? 16:18 hours: nap time. 16:19 hours: nap time!”

“The lawyers were droning on and on, the courtroom was very warm and I’d had a large lunch. As I sat there, I got more and more bored and more and more sleepy,” recalled Campbell, whose clerk and staff later presented him with a plaque engraved with a verbatim transcript of the notes he took in that desperate--and futile--attempt to stay awake.

“During my first trial my client fell asleep,” said Deputy Public Defender Leslie Ann Glick. “I just kept pinching him and trying to wake him up. He was on trial for being under the influence of heroin. It was a little embarrassing, particularly since one of the symptoms of heroin is going on the nod and he was going on the nod during the trial.”

Van Nuys Deputy Public Defender Randall Megee’s first felony trial--about a theft of plywood with dull testimony from a certified public accountant--put the judge to sleep, sparking a five-minute debate as to who would wake him up.

Los Angeles County Public Defender Wilbur Littlefield remembers one elderly Superior Court judge who had a reciprocal arrangement with his clerk to avoid such embarrassment.

“If a lawyer made an objection and the judge was asleep, the clerk would take the calendar book and slam it on the desk,” Littlefield recalled. Roused, the judge would ask to have the question repeated as if he had simply been deep in thought. The judge, in turn, kept a lawbook handy to drop when his clerk fell asleep. It’s not known if both of them ever fell asleep at the same time, Littlefield said.

Care also is taken not to embarrass jurors who fall asleep. Van Nuys Municipal Court bailiff Jerry Kearns used to wake sleeping jurors by walking along the rail in front of the jury box so that the keys on his belt clanged against the metal. If that failed, he lightly tapped the sleeping juror, Kearns said.

Bailiffs, who frequently work late hours at extra jobs or overtime on the night shift, recall a former colleague in Van Nuys who kept falling asleep in his chair. Perturbed, the judge ordered the bailiff to stand in the back of the courtroom. The bailiff did--against a door--which suddenly opened and sent him sprawling onto the floor when he fell asleep.

Aside from the time spent waiting for their cases to be called, attorneys generally are more alert than anybody else in court because they are direct participants in verbal combat and must think on their feet, said Mike Carroll, head of the district attorney’s Santa Monica branch office.

But some lawyers even doze off at the counsel table, as happened recently in Van Nuys Superior Court during a civil trial. The lawyer was jolted awake by a colleague’s elbow and later sheepishly explained, “I had a big lunch. I’ve also got a 1-year-old baby who’s teething who kept me up half the night.”

Even California Supreme Court justices are not immune to judicial drowsiness. Noted Justice Allen Broussard: “Sure, sometimes you get sleepy. You just fight it off.” Justice Stanley Mosk recalled a former colleague who “did doze off from time to time during oral arguments. We used to poke him in the ribs to wake him up.” The justice, Marshall McComb, was ousted in 1977 at the age of 82 because of senility.

At least one mistrial has resulted from a judge dozing on the bench. In March, 1989, San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge James P. Darrah declared a mistrial after admitting he nodded off during key testimony in a non-jury murder case.

“I looked at the clock and it was 2:05. The next thing I know I look at the clock, it’s 2:20.” said Darrah. Darrah found the defendant guilty in January, 1989, but later granted a defense motion for a mistrial.

“I just have this one 30-minute spot I have to look out for between 2 or 2:30,” said Darrah, 57, a 19-year veteran of the bench, who now swears off coffee and sweets, opts for light lunches and has rearranged his court schedule so he can sit quietly in his chambers during the half hour he typically gets drowsy.

Darrah received a letter from the Commission on Judicial Performance, the state agency that investigates complaints against judges, warning him that sleeping on the bench was inappropriate for a judge.

Jack E. Frankel, the commission’s director and chief counsel, said no statistics are kept but judges are rarely disciplined for falling asleep.

Even the Hillside Strangler case, which featured sex, death and drama enough to inspire two television movies, put an alternate juror to sleep enough times that he was dismissed from the panel, said defense attorney Gerald Chaleff--who himself admits feeling drowsy at times in court.

“Unfortunately or fortunately, trials are not like television,” Chaleff said.