Rafeedie Portrayed as ‘Street Smart,’ Tough and Fair

Few federal jurists have the “street smarts” of U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie, who, in his youth, worked in the old Pacific Ocean Park carnival in the Santa Monica area.

Rafeedie, who has called himself “the only carny to ever get to the federal courts,” is now considered one of the most efficient and least reversed judges in the Federal Courthouse, a hands-on jurist who likes to closely administer a case from beginning to end.

“He’s somebody who was out in the world a long time before he was a lawyer,” said civil rights attorney Stephen Yagman, who was a plaintiff’s lawyer in the first case Rafeedie handled after being appointed to the federal bench in Los Angeles in 1982 by then-President Ronald Reagan.

“One of the benefits,” Yagman said, “is that your natural instincts would be better honed than they would be otherwise.”

“Gruff,” “tough” and “fair” are other characterizations used by government and private attorneys familiar with the 61-year-old jurist, a conservative who has often sided with the government--but also has a strong independent streak.

That sense of independence appeared Friday when Rafeedie ruled that the U.S. government’s kidnaping of a Mexican doctor in the Enrique Camarena murder case violated the nation’s extradition treaty with Mexico. Rafeedie discharged the defendant, Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain, and ordered his repatriation.

Rafeedie’s bulky, teddy-bear appearance and, as one lawyer described it, “cherubic round face,” might give unwary attorneys the impression that he is easygoing. In fact, he is by all accounts a no-nonsense judge.

“He’s tough and fair, which is probably the right combo for any judge,” said Los Angeles criminal attorney Leonard Levine.

He also has a wry sense of humor, but not “folksy,” as one lawyer mistakenly called him.

“I couldn’t think of a characterization more wrong than that,” Rafeedie said in an interview a few years ago with the Los Angeles Daily Journal. “I never was folksy. I was always very business-like and very professional when it came to running a court. It’s the only way you can get your business done.”

Still, Rafeedie is not above a little levity in the courtroom.

Yagman recalled that shortly after Rafeedie was appointed to the federal bench, a Los Angeles city attorney presented sloppily prepared papers to the judge during a court proceeding. Looking up, Rafeedie said: “The person who typed this was drunk.” The courtroom exploded in laughter.

Rafeedie’s parents were Lebanese immigrants. He was born in New Jersey and moved with his family to Santa Monica at the age of 7. Five years later, he was running rides at the carnival and, after World War II, traveling the nation’s carnival circuit with a portable horse-race game called Derby. He would return to the Ocean Park carnival in the winters to run the game there.

After military service in the Korean War, he returned to the carnival, where one of his employees, a law student, sold him on the idea of going to law school. He did, receiving his law degree from USC in 1959.

Rafeedie’s legal profile fits the judicial background of most Reagan judges. He was a top trial lawyer for a decade, a Municipal Court judge for two years and a Superior Court judge for another 11 years before being appointed to the federal bench.

His last Superior Court assignment was in Santa Monica, an area Rafeedie liked to call the “silk stocking district” of the Los Angeles region. During that time, he handled part of entertainer Bob Dylan’s divorce and sentenced motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel to jail for a baseball bat attack on a television executive.

One of his most publicized sentences was a 10-year prison term imposed in 1984 on James Marty Stafford, the central figure in a high-profile public corruption case in the City of Industry. The sentence underscored the fact that Rafeedie could be a tough jurist.

“There’s a perception . . . that white-collar offenders always get off,” he said. “I think that needs to be corrected.”

Rafeedie and his wife, Ruth Alice, have two children, Fredrick and Jennifer, and live in Malibu.