Judge Adamant About Closing Pretrial Conferences to Public

Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan refused Friday to back off from his newly announced policy of holding pretrial conferences on criminal trials behind closed doors, and lashed out at prosecutors for implying that he was trying to hide something from the public or crime victims.

The district attorney’s office, however, joined by the two leading newspapers in the county, plans to carry its fight against Ryan to the 4th District Court of Appeal next week.

“It looks like the judge has dug in his heels,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Wally Wade. “I wasn’t implying he was hiding anything, but I am saying there is no reason not to do these things in public.”

Ryan took over the criminal calendar courtroom--Department 5--in January on a routine rotation of judicial assignments. Department 5 is where almost all criminal trials are either settled or sent out for trial. The vast majority are settled with some kind of guilty plea.

Ryan’s predecessor, Judge Myron B. Brown, had conducted those hearings in the courtroom with a court reporter present. Ryan has reverted back to the old policy of holding these sessions in his chambers without a court reporter.

Prosecutor Wade and lawyers for the Times Orange County Edition and Orange County Register argued Friday that the public has a right to know how such plea bargains in chambers are arrived at.

But Ryan, angry at times, countered to Wade that “this judge does not plea bargain” in these private sessions.

The vast majority of guilty pleas, the judge said, are the result of private conferences between prosecutors and defense attorneys before they even get to his courtroom. Ryan said his role is usually to ask “can this case be resolved.”

“I had hoped that the district attorney would wait for a problem to occur instead of creating one,” Ryan said. “It is most inappropriate to suggest to the citizens of this county that this court is not following the law.”

Prosecutors know they will be fighting an uphill battle to overturn Ryan’s decision. The same issue came up two years ago when the public defender’s office wanted a guarantee that all sessions be closed when Brown was on the bench.

The 4th District Court of Appeal essentially ruled then that the decision was up to the judge who runs the courtroom. That’s when Brown came up with a compromise solution: He held the sessions in open court, but he conducted them in the well in front of the judge’s bench, out of earshot of the public. They were on the record, however, and the judge permitted the news media and anyone else to sit in if they requested it.

Ryan, a former prosecutor himself and a judge for 10 years, had ruled against prosecutors on the issue two weeks ago, but said he would be glad to hold a hearing on it. Friday’s hearing started out friendly enough, but before it ended, Ryan’s disagreements with prosecutor Wade were sharply worded.

The judge said he believed attorneys could be more candid in chambers than in the open courtroom when discussing the merits of a case. When Wade said he respectfully disagreed, Ryan shot back: “Come on, Mr. Wade. You know better than that. That’s not fair.”