Controversial Judge Dodges Not Only Critics, but Bullet : Courts: Assassination try follows Visalia jurist’s order that child abuser use birth control. He also is being sued by ex-client over property he gained by foreclosure.

Just when it seemed things couldn’t get any more tumultuous for Judge Howard R. Broadman, things did.

The Tulare County Superior Court judge already was the center of a national furor over his order that a child abuser submit to surgical implantation of a birth control device as a condition of probation. Broadman also had been named in a lawsuit claiming that he bilked a former legal client out of her home and land. And he had been the subject of both ridicule and praise for “creative” sentencing techniques, such as ordering a thief to wear a T-shirt proclaiming his guilt.

Indeed, controversies involving Broadman seemed to be on overload here in Visalia, a conservative farming town of 75,000 in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley. But last month, an ex-mental patient turned up the heat even further.

Ray Bodine was sitting in the spectator section of Broadman’s courtroom during a divorce case when he spotted a woman wearing red shoes. Bodine recognized the shoes as a signal from the Mother of God that he should go ahead with his plan to kill Broadman as part of his war on contraception. Bodine slipped a revolver from his briefcase, aimed at the middle of the judge’s forehead and fired. . . .

Howard Richard Broadman is a trim, dapper man who stands about 5 feet, 7 inches tall. His carefully groomed black beard is tipped with white at the chin and his dark eyes glance sharply about his courtroom from beneath bushy brows.

He was known as an energetic and aggressive divorce lawyer in Visalia when then-Gov. George Deukmejian appointed him to the Municipal Court in 1986. He was elevated to the Tulare County Superior Court in 1988.

His rulings have been the focus of almost constant controversy, and some critics question his fitness for the bench. The continuing furor over his birth control order and the related near-miss by an assassin’s bullet led Broadman to disqualify himself from further involvement in that case this month.

Broadman is viewed as both impetuous and likable, sometimes by the same person. He is called a “wild card” and a “loose cannon” as well as “innovative” and “courageous.”

His words from the bench are sometimes brusque and impatient.

“He doesn’t suffer fools well,” observed Joseph Altschule, who practices law in Visalia.

Altschule says he likes Broadman and considers him intelligent and sincere, but he routinely asks that the judge be disqualified from hearing his cases.

“He is tremendously stubborn and he has an ego as big as all outdoors,” Altschule said of Broadman. “And when you bring that mix to the bench you have some problems. . . . Howard’s attempt to be creative gets him in trouble, and in some ways he’s his own worst enemy.”

A prosecutor who asked not to be identified said of Broadman:

“He’s viewed as an unpredictable wild card. . . . You can go into court and you can’t know whether the defendant is going to walk out the door five minutes later or whether he’s going to get the absolute maximum (sentence).”

But Broadman has supporters in the legal profession.

Richard Cochran, president of the Tulare County Bar Assn., said that most of the directors of that organization agreed with Broadman’s controversial birth control order.

“I think the majority felt that he did something that was creative and innovative,” said Cochran. “A lot of the judges in the courthouse (give) the usual and conventional sentences. My feeling about his (sentences) is that he is courageous.”

Letters to the local newspaper, the Visalia Times-Delta, indicate that there is widespread community support for Broadman’s birth control decision.

Broadman first gained national attention as the result of a December, 1989, case in which he offered probation to a thief on the condition that the man agree to wear a T-shirt proclaiming his guilt. Russell Hackler, 30, had stolen two six packs of beer, but was on parole for robbery and faced the possibility of four years in prison as a repeat offender.

The front of the T-shirt read, “MY RECORD AND TWO SIX PACKS EQUAL FOUR YEARS.” The back said, “I AM ON FELONY PROBATION FOR THEFT.”

“I was kind of dumbfounded,” recalled Deputy Public Defender Berry Robinson, who represented Hackler. “I turned to my client and said, ‘You’d be real stupid to turn this down.’ ”

Some praised the sentence as creative, but eight months later Hackler was again before Broadman, charged with violating probation due to an arrest for burglary. A witness said Hackler bought beer with coins stolen in the burglary--he remembered him because the defendant was wearing his infamous T-shirt at the time.

Broadman sentenced Hackler to four years in prison.

In some other “creative” judicial actions, Broadman:

* Allowed a child molester to serve time at home on the condition that he post a sign outside his house reading, “Do not enter, I am under house arrest.”

* Required an alcoholic to stand in court and swallow Antabuse, a medication that causes violent nausea if alcohol is ingested.

* Ordered a husband and wife in a divorce case to take turns living in the family home so that the children would not have to shuttle back and forth.

* Ordered a young female drug addict convicted of narcotics possession not to get pregnant as a condition of probation. But when she was a half hour late to a subsequent hearing because she had taken her children to school, Broadman sent her to prison.

Such rulings have generated publicity, but last December the judge received media attention of another kind when a former divorce-case client sued him for allegedly bilking her out of her house and land.

Darleen Woods charged in a $1.5-million lawsuit filed Dec. 10 that Broadman--who represented her in a long and complicated divorce action in the early to mid 1980s--had improperly foreclosed on her property to satisfy a $58,000 legal bill. Woods maintains that she was left penniless when Broadman sold the real estate for $330,000 last summer and kept all the proceeds for himself.

Woods’ suit charges that Broadman pressured her into putting her property up for collateral against the legal bill and that he “laundered” the foreclosure proceedings by signing the lien over to his mother so his own name would not be involved.

Woods, 58, says she is broke, unskilled and living with a daughter and son-in-law. Broadman declined to be interviewed by The Times for this article, but he disputed Woods’ claims last December in the Visalia Times-Delta.

“I’m an ethical man,” he was quoted as saying in the Dec. 20 article. “I don’t swindle people.”

Oliver Wanger, a Fresno attorney representing Broadman, says the judge received the lien on Woods’ property through a normal business transaction and legally sold the lien to his mother, Margaret Drew of Gore, Okla.

“It wasn’t done to hide anything,” said Wanger. “It was a private transfer that is in no way against the law.”

Broadman’s mother reportedly paid her son $40,000 for the property in 1987. Drew foreclosed on the real estate in 1988 for the price of the debt which had by then reached about $58,000, with interest.

But Drew could not sell the property because the title was clouded and Broadman bought it back from his mother last year for $58,000, according to the Times-Delta. Broadman told the newspaper that he spent several months and $100,000 clearing the title. Records show that he sold the real estate for $330,000 last August.

If it did indeed cost Broadman $100,000 to clear the title, simple arithmetic indicates he collected his debt and made $200,000 or so on the foreclosure of Woods’ former home and land.

Even so, says Broadman’s attorney, the transaction was perfectly legal and Woods’ suit is without merit.

Less than a month after Woods’ suit was filed, the Broadman spotlight shifted away from that controversy to one which caused a national uproar.

On Jan. 2, Darlene Johnson, 27-year-old mother of four and nearly eight months pregnant, stood before Broadman to be sentenced for severely beating two of her daughters, ages 5 and 6.

Broadman asked the woman if she would be willing, as a condition of probation, to use a new long-term birth control device called Norplant, which is implanted under the arm. Other conditions of probation included a year in the county jail with credit for time served, and mandatory counseling and parenting classes. The prosecution was seeking a state prison sentence.

Johnson agreed to the terms of probation, but changed her mind about the birth control device after leaving the courtroom, maintaining that she agreed to it only because she was afraid of being sent to prison. A hearing to reconsider the Norplant order was set for Jan. 10.

By that time Broadman’s order was the subject of a national controversy over the morality and constitutionality of a judge requiring a woman to use a birth control device. Critics--pointing out that Johnson is a poor black woman and Broadman a well-to-do white man--also saw elements of class, race and sex discrimination.

In his argument on behalf of Johnson, attorney Charles Rothbaum compared Broadman’s Norplant order to an old science fiction film “in which these aliens came down to Earth and implanted these devices in the back of persons’ necks and used that to control their activity.”

But Broadman upheld his order in a prepared decision.

Johnson “has been convicted of brutally beating her children,” he said. “It is in the defendant’s best interest and certainly in any unconceived child’s interest that she not have any more children until she is mentally and emotionally prepared to do so.”

Rothbaum, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, is appealing the decision. In the meantime, Johnson is serving the county jail portion of her probation. Her fifth child was born in February.

A short, friendly woman, Johnson is afraid she will have to choose between prison and Norplant when she gets out of jail in June.

She has never been married, but says she plans to do so and says she does not believe in using birth control.

“If God blesses me to have more (children),” she said, “I’ll have more.”

Harry Raymond Bodine agrees with that point of view. Vehemently.

Bodine is in Tulare County Jail facing 15 years to life in prison on a charge of attempting to murder a public official. A hearing to determine his mental competency to stand trial is scheduled for May 17, according to his attorney, Michael Cross. Bodine, 45, is a muscular 5-feet, 11-inches tall and weighs 200 pounds. A small blue cross dangles over his red county jail T-shirt as he smiles pleasantly and talks about his life and beliefs.

Bodine is a second generation orchard grower in Tulare County. He was president of his high school class, attended Catholic seminaries, received a degree in philosophy, decided against the priesthood, married, was convicted of misdemeanor sexual molestation of his 10-year-old stepdaughter, divorced and was sent to the state mental hospital in Napa for seven months in 1987 after threatening to kill his wife’s new husband.

Bodine has been arrested at demonstrations protesting abortion clinics, but his goals were broader than other abortion opponents.

“I was helping,” he said, “with the idea that sooner or later I would convert them to a more dramatic civil war.”

Bodine believes he is on a holy mission to stamp out contraception and is guided by the Mother of God.

After hearing about Broadman’s ruling in the Johnson case, Bodine says he decided to kill the judge and began target practice with a revolver down by the river.

He was so nervous on the day that the Mother of God gave him the go-ahead sign to kill Broadman that he drank some Pepto-Bismol to quiet his stomach. The woman with red shoes was, for some reason, the signal that Our Lady chose.

When Bodine’s revolver went off in the courtroom, attorney Philip Bianco was representing a woman in a divorce case.

“My client went under the desk, holding onto her husband for the first time in three months,” said Bianco.

Bodine says he looked at the bench, saw that it was empty and thought he had killed the judge. There was no bailiff in the room, so Bodine placed his gun on a table and sat down to wait for someone to come arrest him for murder.

But Broadman was not dead. He was crouching behind the bench, wondering if he had been shot and checking himself for blood. There was none. The bullet missed Broadman’s head by inches and tore through the wall behind him.

In the meantime, bailiffs arrived, shoved the compliant Bodine to the floor and began handcuffing him.

Broadman, when he realized how close to death he had come, flew into a rage and--still wearing his black judicial robe--rushed at Bodine.

Bianco and two other men tried to hold Broadman back, but the judge lunged forward, sprawling across the bodies of the bailiffs and Bodine on the courtroom floor.

“All three of us couldn’t hold the guy,” said Bianco. “He was completely white. His heart was going as fast as it could go. He was like a bird dog that had just run a quarter of a mile.”

Prevented from getting at Bodine physically, Broadman subsequently filed a civil suit against his assailant, seeking to take away the man’s 29 acres of orchards as punishment for the shooting. That action caused still another controversy, this time over the propriety of a Superior Court judge suing a mentally ill person.

Bodine says he will not defend himself against Broadman’s suit.

“The Scriptures say if a man sues you for your jacket,” he explained, “give him your shirt, as well.”

Bodine says he might, however, be willing to punch it out with Broadman over the property if he were to meet him on the street.

Times staff writer Mark Stein contributed to this story