Court to Assign All Capital Cases to 3 Judges Only

Aiming to develop death case specialists, the San Diego Superior Court has adopted a program to assign capital cases to three judges rather than dealing them around the bench, apparently becoming the first California court to try such a system.

The court--in a far more routine move--also has switched the judge in charge of hearing confidential requests for the public funds available to the defense in death penalty cases.

The changes in the court’s capital case procedures began last fall and were formally completed Tuesday. The three-judge plan means the San Diego bench will be embarking on yet another pilot program in hopes of saving time and money.

The San Diego court was the first Superior Court in the state to implement the “fast-track” program, which speedily pushes civil cases to trial by fixing dates that lawyers must meet or risk sanctions. Fast-track, which began in San Diego in 1987, is now a statewide fixture.

The court was also the first in California to unveil a plan that will deliver a civil case to one judge for the duration of that case. The so-called “independent calendar” plan, which will replace the traditional system of rotating a case among judges until a trial, is due to go into effect for all civil cases filed after July 1.

The independent calendar plan evolved from an eight-judge experiment last year that showed that assigning a case to a sole judge--who becomes intimately familiar with it--sweeps the case toward resolution much faster than the traditional way. The same basic idea is behind the plan to assign capital cases to just three judges, the court’s presiding judge said Wednesday.

“We felt, if we could develop some expertise, that these cases would take less court time,” said Judge Judith McConnell, who came up with the new scheme while talking with Judge Jesus Rodriguez, who coordinates criminal assignments.

Since every capital case is automatically reviewed by the state Supreme Court, a judge must know precisely how to pick the jury when the sentence could be death, which instructions are right to give to a jury and how to consider various technical problems of legal procedure, McConnell said.

A judge who has only one death penalty case in a career--often the practical effect of the traditional system--can spend an inordinate amount of time getting up to speed on those complex matters, McConnell said.

Since this is an era of tight court budgets, it makes sense to take advantage of judges who already have gained--or are willing to acquire--an expert’s perspective, she said.

“If you haven’t done it once, it’s normal to be cautious and take it much slower,” Rodriguez said. “Once you’ve done it once or twice, you’re computerized, you’ve done it, you can process that case, select the jury, much faster. You just know where the critical aspects of the case are and where to concentrate.”

Judges J. Perry Langford and Raymond Edwards Jr., two of the three judges who volunteered for the panel, each recently handled a capital trial, Rodriguez said. Judge Melinda Lasater, the third volunteer, has already been assigned a capital case under the new system, which was announced in October, he said.

“We’re just going to see if it works,” McConnell said of the project. “Fortunately, there have not been a flood of death penalty cases in recent years, but every one is so significant in terms of time consumed that we felt this might be a good way to deal with the caseload.”

About 20 death penalty cases have come through the San Diego court in the past 10 years, officials at the court and the district attorney’s office said.

Since there are not apt to be enough death penalty cases to make hearing them a full-time job, each of the three judges will continue to take other criminal cases, and perhaps some civil matters, McConnell said.

Langford, due this month to sentence triple killer Christopher Box, said he is far more ready for a second capital case now that he has been through one.

In the computer, ready to go, are the outlines he developed in the Box case for questions to ask prospective jurors in capital cases, he said.

The computer now also holds jury instructions for the sort of “special circumstances”--such as death by bomb or the killing of a police officer--that the law requires a jury must find before it can consider a death sentence.

“I’ve been over a lot of ground in just this one case,” Langford said. “Next time it will take less time to listen to the lawyers, less time for me to decide, and I’ll have to do less research.”

Box, 21, was convicted of the 1989 slayings of a woman, her 3-year-old son and their roommate in Clairemont. A jury recommended Dec. 18 that Box receive the death penalty. Langford is scheduled to sentence him Jan. 18.

McConnell said she is concerned that the new plan might have a significant downside--that the three judges might burn out on the often-gruesome nature of capital cases. But she said the continued exposure to other sorts of cases should keep them fresh.

Langford, 64, has been on the bench since 1979. He was a criminal defense lawyer, specializing in appeals, before he took the bench.

Lasater, 42, was a deputy district attorney and former San Diego County Bar Assn. president. She was appointed to the Municipal Court in 1987 and to the Superior Court last May 8.

Edwards, 44, was a federal prosecutor before taking the Municipal Court bench in 1985. He moved to the Superior Court bench in 1989, and both prosecutors and defense attorneys consider him tough.

Edwards, however, did not impose the death sentence in the capital case he wrapped up last September. Instead, following a jury’s recommendation, he sentenced Toufic Naddi, 49, convicted of killing five relatives, to life in prison.

“The only thing I can say is that I should not strike fear and loathing in their hearts,” Edwards said Wednesday, referring to defense attorneys. “I pride myself on giving everybody who goes through this door--black, white, green, pink or purple--a fair trial.”

Alex Landon, a veteran criminal defense lawyer, said he wondered not about Edwards but about a bigger picture.

“Just like you don’t want to have one lawyer handling great numbers of these types of cases, I think it would be very difficult for one or three judges to handle all of them,” Landon said.

“There’s a broad spectrum of backgrounds and viewpoints and experience on the Superior Court bench,” Landon said. “I just don’t see that it’s in the best interests of all the parties to limit the numbers of judges who will handle these types of cases.”

Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller said he is willing to wait and see how the project works out.

“I think that only time will tell,” Miller said. “At this juncture, I hesitate to make any predictions. But I think, on balance, all three judges have an excellent record.”

In the court’s other change in capital case procedure, effective Jan. 1, Judge James R. Milliken took over from Judge Michael I. Greer the job of hearing requests for public funds, McConnell said.

Earlier last year, McConnell said, the court used a three-judge panel to hear those requests--Greer and Judges Barbara Gamer and Robert O’Neill. That didn’t work, though, because it was too hard to get all three in the same room at the same time, so Greer took it on himself, she said.

Greer, the presiding judge in 1988 and 1989, has tired of the task, McConnell said, so she chose Milliken, who has been on the bench for about two years and normally hears civil cases. She tabbed him to avoid disqualifying any criminal judge from hearing a capital case.

Milliken will rule on defense requests for public funds to pay for “investigators, experts and others” the lawyers feel would be helpful. The cash is available under a 1977 state law that keeps all cost requests, and hearings for those funds, secret.