Jurist Alleges Deputy D.A. Threatened Job : Trials: San Fernando Municipal Court commissioner says the chief prosecutor warned him not to reduce drug charge to a misdemeanor.

A San Fernando Municipal Court commissioner, who contends that the chief prosecutor there threatened his job if he reduced a felony drug charge to a misdemeanor, Tuesday withdrew from the case.

Commissioner Gerald Richardson declined to comment on the matter. But Deputy Public Defender Nancy S. Pogue, who is representing the defendant in the drug case, said Richardson attributed his withdrawal to a threat by Deputy Dist. Atty. Billy Webb.

“The commissioner said that Webb made an ex parte communication, which he interpreted as a threat,” Pogue said. Richardson reportedly said he could no longer be objective in the case.

Webb, who has been involved in a controversial campaign to stiffen the drug penalties handed out in the San Fernando Courthouse, denies he threatened Richardson, or even that he discussed the facts of the case with the commissioner.

Webb admitted, however, that he spoke to Richardson and tried to explain to the commissioner that he did not have the legal authority to reduce the charge.

“I told him it was a total waste of time because no judge has that authority,” Webb said. “I told him that unless you learn the law, I can’t stipulate to you hearing cases. But that was not a threat.”

Under state law, the prosecutor and the defense attorney must agree on having a particular commissioner hear a case. Commissioners have the same qualifications as judges but are appointed by the courts rather than elected by the people or appointed by the governor. Richardson is substituting for Municipal Judge Juelann Cathey, who is on medical leave.

Webb said Richardson may have misunderstood him. But he also asserted that the public defender’s office is exploiting the matter because of his tough stance on repeat drug-dealing suspects.

“Richardson is a good commissioner,” Webb said. “But I know that the defense bar will do anything to get me out. They would like nothing better than to get me out of here.”

Acrimony developed between prosecutors and defense attorneys at the courthouse in May when Webb issued a memo forbidding his staff from accepting the standard three-year sentence for repeat offenders in drug-selling cases. Webb said later that the policy was needed to prevent drug dealers from being put back on the street too quickly.

In response, the public defender’s office in San Fernando tried to have Webb’s office barred from such cases, arguing that the stance on sentencing was an abuse of discretion.

The request was denied by San Fernando Superior Court Judge Malcolm Mackey.

Bill Weiss, head of the public defender’s office in San Fernando, said that if Webb had threatened Richardson, it would be “improper and unethical” and would mean that Webb had “certainly gone too far in his efforts to get tough on drug dealers.”

Pogue, the deputy public defender in the case, said that clearly Richardson had interpreted Webb’s conversation as a threat.

“He told us in court that he has notified management about the threat,” Pogue said. “He told us that Webb told him that unless he changes his tentative ruling, he will not sit in this courtroom.”

The case at the center of this dispute involves a Van Nuys man charged with a felony for allegedly introducing an undercover police officer, who said he wanted to buy drugs, to a drug dealer. Craig S. Cooper, 32, was charged because it is a crime to aid and abet the sale of drugs.

Webb’s effort to prevent Richardson from reducing the charge was actually the second attempt by prosecutors to make the felony charge stick.

In a preliminary hearing Sept. 15, Municipal Judge Nora M. Manella indicated that a lack of evidence in the case made it likely that she would reduce the charge from a felony to a misdemeanor. However, at that point, the prosecutor said she would rather dismiss the charges and refile the felony charge.

Manella also was assigned to hear the new case, but the prosecutor exercised her onetime right to dismiss Manella without cause. Both sides agreed to have Richardson hear the case, but he indicated Monday that after reading the transcript from the first case, he, too, was inclined to reduce the charge.

It was then that Webb allegedly threatened Richardson.