2 File Papers to Run Against Judge Karlin

Superior Court Judge Joyce A. Karlin, under fire for sentencing a Korean-born grocer to probation in the killing a black teen-ager, will face two challengers in the June primary election.

One challenger, Inglewood school board member and veteran lawyer Thomasina M. Reed, has been endorsed by leaders of a drive to recall Karlin for the remainder of her present term. In addition to Reed, Karlin will face Donald Barnett, another veteran lawyer who specializes in personal injury and workers’ compensation cases in Century City.

Compton City Councilwoman Patricia Moore and others spearheading the recall campaign said Wednesday that they have endorsed Reed, a divorce and real estate lawyer and vice president of the Inglewood Unified School District Board of Education.

Moore said she urged Reed to run so Karlin would have to campaign hard to retain the seat Gov. Pete Wilson appointed her to last summer.

“It gives us a chance to force Karlin to come before the community and face her accusers,” Moore said. “If no one had filed to run against her, her victory would have been a fait accompli. “

Danny Bakewell, president of the Brotherhood Crusade and a vocal critic of Karlin, said he has not decided whom to endorse. Bakewell said he does not consider himself a leader of the Karlin recall drive, although he supports it.

Both Reed and Barnett this week filed declarations of intent to run against Karlin on June 2, when she will go before voters for the first time, and paid the $992 filing fee. They must file formal nominating papers between Feb. 10 and March 6.

The recall campaign will be moot if Karlin, a former federal prosecutor who has never been elected to office, loses in the June primary. If she wins, the recall backers plan to try to get her off the bench for the rest of her current term, which ends in January, 1993, then mount a drive to recall her for the new, six-year term. The current recall backers have until July to collect the more-than 300,000 signatures needed to force a recall election.

The primary race pitting Karlin against Reed and Barnett is expected to be one of the most closely watched of the 82 judicial races scheduled in Los Angeles County this year.

Ricardo Torres, presiding judge of the Superior Court--and Karlin’s boss--also is the target of a recall drive by Moore and other Karlin critics, but no one had filed a declaration of intent to run against him by the 5 p.m. deadline Wednesday.

Torres was targeted for recall for his support of Karlin after she sentenced grocer Soon Ja Du to a 10-year suspended sentence, five years’ probation and 400 hours of community service in the killing of Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old who fought with the grocer over a $1.79 container of orange juice.

The girl was shot once in the back of the head after she put the juice on the counter in Du’s South-Central Los Angeles store and began to walk away.

The shooting inflamed existing tensions between customers and Korean grocers who do business in poor neighborhoods. Community activists, contending that the grocers often behaved in racist ways toward black customers, mounted a series of boycotts against some stores and vowed to see Du convicted.

They protested in November when the grocer, who was found guilty by a jury of voluntary manslaughter, was sentenced. Until late last month, when Torres transferred Karlin from the Compton courthouse to a downtown juvenile court, Moore and others led weekly protest marches.

Korean merchants have complained that their jobs are dangerous, customers threaten them and often shoplift. Their stores are frequent targets of armed robbery.

Karlin has repeatedly declined to talk about the case, but has portrayed the recall drive as an unconstitutional infringement upon the independence of the judiciary.

Barnett, 54, said the Du sentence “raised a large-scale perception” in the public mind that Karlin is insensitive or inept. He denounced the recall campaign, however, saying officials should only be ousted from office when they show a long term pattern of misconduct. Barnett is a graduate of UCLA Law School and has been practicing law for 30 years.

Reed, 43, the daughter of a judge, has been practicing law for 15 years. She has served as a judge pro-tem--a temporary appointed position--in the Superior Court Family Law Department and the Beverly Hills Municipal Court.