Once-Boycotted Judge to Be Transferred : Courts: Raymond D. Mireles asked to leave Van Nuys, but he says it’s not because public defenders had refused to appear in cases before him.

A Van Nuys Superior Court judge who until last month was boycotted by the public defender’s office because of an order that prompted two police officers to drag a deputy public defender into his courtroom, said Friday that he is being transferred.

Raymond D. Mireles, 57, said his rocky relations with the public defender’s office had nothing to do with his transfer to the downtown Criminal Courts Building.

Rather, Mireles said he requested the new job assignment because he “likes a bigger milieu” and because the downtown post is closer to his Glendale residence.

In late September, attorneys from the public defender’s office resumed trying cases before Mireles, ending a nine-month boycott that was unprecedented in the office’s 76-year history.

Mireles earned the office’s enmity Nov. 6 by asking two Los Angeles police officers appearing as witnesses in a drug case to bring Deputy Public Defender Howard C. Waco, the defendant’s attorney, into his courtroom.

“Bring me a piece” or “body part” of Waco, Mireles quipped, and the officers promptly hauled the veteran defender out of another judge’s court and into Mireles’ courtroom.

Mireles insisted that he did not mean for his request to be taken literally, but the public defender’s office tried to force his reassignment with the boycott. Instead, judicial officials reassigned Mireles’ caseload so that Mireles handled only those cases in which defendants were represented by private lawyers or the county-funded Alternate Defense Counsel.

The Commission on Judicial Performance, which monitors judicial conduct, publicly rebuked Mireles in June for his role in the incident.

The end to the boycott came after the judge who assigns criminal cases in Van Nuys asked public defender lawyers to consider appearing before Mireles when no other courtroom was available.