Wilson Names L.A. Justice to High Court

Gov. Pete Wilson, making his first appointment to the state Supreme Court, on Monday named Appellate Justice Ronald M. George of Los Angeles to succeed retiring Justice Allen E. Broussard.

George, 51, is a former prosecutor and Superior Court judge who presided over the two-year trial of convicted Hillside Strangler Angelo Buono Jr.

Named to the state Court of Appeal by then-Gov. George Deukmejian in 1987, George, a graduate of Princeton and Stanford universities and an accomplished marathon runner, is known as a conservative on the bench. His nomination is subject to confirmation by the state Judicial Appointments Commission.

Wilson had been under some pressure to name a black or member of another racial minority to replace Broussard, 62, a court liberal who is black. Broussard, who is retiring at the end of August, publicly urged that the governor select a black replacement. George is white.

The Republican governor told reporters Monday that George received the highest rating among a group of candidates reviewed by a special commission of the State Bar.

Wilson also cited a comment made this year by retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall, the U.S. Supreme Court’s only black member, that Marshall’s place on the court should not be viewed as a “black seat” and that his successor should be “the best person available.”

Wilson pointed to his recommendations of minority-group members for the federal bench while he was a U.S. senator and denied that he is insensitive to minority aspirations. George, he said, “is someone who understands the need for fair and vigorous law enforcement--and minority Californians very clearly, more than the rest of us, have experienced criminal and violent crime.”

George, in a telephone interview, said: “My record shows a sensitivity to the concerns of all Californians and I would recognize that a state Supreme Court justice has an even greater responsibility to be sensitive to the needs of all citizens of the state.”

Nonetheless, there was immediate criticism of the governor’s decision not to name a minority. Now, aside from Broussard, five court members are white and one, Justice Joyce L. Kennard, is of Dutch and Indonesian descent.

“I am disappointed,” said Santa Clara University law dean Gerald F. Uelmen, who had urged that Broussard be replaced by a minority. “For the first time in 14 years, we will have a court without representation from either of California’s largest minority groups (blacks and Latinos). This will make a significant difference, both in the process of the court’s deliberations and in the outward perception of the court.”

Uelmen called George a “clone” of Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas, known as a law-and-order jurist and perhaps the most conservative member of the court. Wilson’s failure to seek out a minority appointee, Uelmen said, “isn’t very presidential”--a reference to speculation that the governor may aspire to higher office.

Emma H. Pendergrass of Oakland, past president of the California Assn. of Black Lawyers, said he was “very, very disappointed in this nomination. We’ve had a black on the court since the mid-1970s, and now there is a void. There is no one to speak for us.”

The first black member of the high court was the late Wiley W. Manuel, named in 1977 by then-Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.

At a dinner in Sacramento last May, Broussard noted that there were only 13 states whose highest courts include blacks, and that each of the three blacks who left the bench were replaced with blacks.

“Tell the governor that we know that California is a state that knows how and that California will show the way,” Broussard told members of the Wiley W. Manuel Bar Assn. “We would ask that he consider very favorably the opportunity that we have to maintain that tradition.”

Broussard could not be reached for comment Monday.

George’s selection won praise from former Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Robert H. Philibosian. “His concerns run to all people--black, brown, Asian,” he said. “The mere placement of a minority group member on the court does not assure equal justice or assure that the highest-caliber appointment has been made.”

The appointment of George is not likely to result in a sharp shift in the philosophical balance of the court.

At present, the court generally is controlled by a conservative four-member majority of Deukmejian appointees, including Lucas and Justices Edward A. Panelli, Armand Arabian and Marvin R. Baxter. A fifth Deukmejian appointee, Kennard, is viewed as a more moderate conservative, sometimes siding with court liberals.

The liberal minority includes Broussard, an appointee of Jerry Brown, and Justice Stanley Mosk, the court’s senior member who was appointed by Democratic former Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown.

George’s nomination must be reviewed by the judicial appointments commission, made up of Lucas, senior Court of Appeal Justice Lester W. Roth and state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren. The commission is expected to convene within a month, and George, if approved, could take the bench immediately.

The state high court has been plagued in recent years by relatively high turnover, with four members, including Broussard, retiring since 1989. George noted Monday that he would not be eligible to obtain a judicial pension until he had reached 60, and would expect to remain on the court “a good many years beyond that.”

While the new nominee has written more than 400 opinions as an appellate justice, he perhaps is best known as the judge who presided over the arduous Hillside Strangler case. A jury convicted Buono of sexually torturing and murdering nine women in 1977 and 1978.

Before the case went to trial, then-Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. John K. Van de Kamp had sought to have it dismissed because of the potentially vulnerable testimony of key prosecution witness Kenneth Bianchi. George, in an unusual move, refused to drop the case.

In the interview Monday, George recalled that decision as being particularly difficult. “I was loath to second-guess the prosecutors,” he said. “But (the law) required that I make my own independent decision.”

George and his wife, Barbara, have three sons, Eric, 22; Andrew, 20, and Christopher, 18. A graduate of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Stanford Law School, he has served as a state deputy attorney general and argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on death penalty and other cases.

He was named to the Los Angeles Municipal Court in 1972 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, selected as a Superior Court judge in 1977 by Jerry Brown and then elevated to the state Court of Appeal in Los Angeles by Deukmejian in 1987.

Known as a dedicated long-distance runner, George has completed the Boston, New York, San Francisco and Big Sur marathons, clocking a personal best 3 hours, 26 minutes in New York. He noted Monday that the state high court, long beset by a heavy caseload, had been described to him as “a marathon without a finish line.”

George had been among the candidates for the state Supreme Court considered by Deukmejian last year to succeed retiring Justice David N. Eagleson. That post went to Appellate Justice Marvin R. Baxter of Fresno, Deukmejian’s former appointments secretary.

On the Court of Appeal, George has written opinions allowing consecutive full-term prison sentences for multiple sex offenses resulting from a “single transaction,” holding that the procedural provisions of Proposition 103 relating to rates and hearings do not apply to the state’s assigned-risk auto insurance program, and ruling that a defense lawyer’s inability to confer with a suspect does not invalidate the suspect’s statements to police if he waived his right to counsel.

George dissented when the appeals court invalidated Los Angeles Police Department arraignment procedures for city jail inmates, when the court held that a cancer patient may sue researchers for any profits from a drug developed from his blood-cell line, and when the court ruled that a criminal law prohibiting annoying telephone calls violated the 1st Amendment right to freedom of expression.

Ronald M. George

Gov. Pete Wilson on Monday nominated George as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court. * Age: 51, and a Los Angeles native

* Schooling: A graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and Stanford Law School.

* Career: A former deputy attorney general who defended convictions of, among others, Robert F. Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan, George was appointed to the Los Angeles Municipal Court in 1972 by Gov. Ronald Reagan, elevated to the Superior Court in 1977, and named to 2nd District Court of Appeal by Gov. George Deukmejian in 1987.

* Avocation: Took up marathon running as a release from the stress of presiding over the two-year Hillside Strangler trial.

* Quote: As appellate court judge: “You have the luxury of being able to sit back and look at things . . . to have a broader impact on the development of the law.”