Judge Gives No Hints About Keating Sentencing : Court: Lance A. Ito will announce today the punishment that the ex-S&L; chief will receive for fraud.

In the last 18 months, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito has kept a poker face.

Moving with care and consideration, he has never given prosecutors or defense lawyers a clue about what he thinks of Charles H. Keating Jr. or his role in the collapse of Lincoln Savings & Loan and its parent company three years ago.

Today, his sentencing of Keating on 17 counts of state securities fraud should speak for itself.

Keating faces up to 10 years in state prison and a $250,000 fine. He was convicted in December of failing to disclose to small investors just how risky Lincoln and its parent company, American Continental Corp., had become.

The thrift’s failure is the biggest in the nation’s history, with a cost to taxpayers of $2.6 billion. And Keating, 68, an outspoken critic of thrift regulators, has become the symbol of the S&L; industry’s greed and arrogance.

It is perhaps ironic that judgment of the high-profile Keating falls on the shoulders of the low-key Ito.

Affable and approachable with an appetite for pulling pranks, the judge nevertheless maintains a quiet authority and professionalism that serves to keep order and decorum in an otherwise casual courtroom. He rarely raises his voice in anger and sometimes apologizes when he does.

At one point in Keating’s four-month trial last fall, Ito sent the jury out of the court and threatened a government witness with contempt of court for giving long-winded, self-serving answers that weren’t pertinent. But he ended on a friendlier note: “Don’t take my admonition too seriously. I’ve never held anyone in contempt yet.”

No one doubts that Ito is prepared for the task of sentencing Keating, even though the 41-year-old jurist had been appointed to the Superior Court bench only 14 months before he was assigned the much-publicized case.

“Most lawyers, both prosecutors and defense attorneys, feel Lance has integrity and is hard-working and fair,” said Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter Berman. He once shared an office with Ito, who was a prosecutor for 10 years.

It may take every ounce of Ito’s integrity to remain fair in sentencing Keating, especially with Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner going to the media on the eve of sentencing to call for the maximum term. Anything less than 10 years in prison for Keating would “diminish the gravity” of his securities fraud scheme, Reiner told reporters Thursday.

But Ito is no shrinking violet, Berman said.

“When somebody really deserves a heavy sentence, he gives it,” Berman said. “On the other hand, I’ve seen him show compassion and treat some defendants lighter.”

Deputy Public Defender David Delgado, assigned to cases in Ito’s court since last October, considers him one of the top Superior Court judges.

“I believe he makes every good-faith effort to do what’s fair,” Delgado said. “He listens and takes into account all reasonable human errors.”

Ito, typically prompt and well-prepared for even minor cases, is also cautious. He declined interviews this week.

Born in Los Angeles, Ito is the son of school teachers who were imprisoned in a relocation camp for people of Japanese ancestry during World War II. Interested in law at an early age, he moved through John Marshall High School in Los Angeles and college with a purpose.

“He was organized, thoughtful and pretty much had a general plan about how he was going about his college education,” said Robert D. Rose, a San Diego lawyer who roomed on the same floor with Ito in a UCLA dormitory 20 years ago.

Ito moved easily among diverse groups of students and was one of the all-time pranksters, Rose said. From putting firecrackers in clothes dryers to switching furniture between dorms, Ito was a ringleader.

The pranks continued through Boalt Hall Law School at UC Berkeley, from which he graduated in 1975, and in the prosecutor’s office, which he joined in 1977 after two years in private practice.

Though a Democrat, Ito was tapped in December, 1987, by then Gov. George Deukmejian, a Republican, to become a Municipal Court judge. In July, 1989, Deukmejian appointed him to the Superior Court bench.