Judicial L.A.: South Africa Without the Formality : Law: From Municipal Court on up to the state Supreme Court, there are virtually no black judges. Wilson has yet to appoint an African-American.

Every day on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, vendors sell T-shirts with the logo, “White Men Can’t Judge.” Actually, they can and do. For Los Angeles County’s 1 million African-Americans, it is black peo ple who cannot judge--because the governor will not appoint them.

Forty-six percent of California’s blacks live in L.A. County. They are governed by slightly more than 280 Superior Court judges, most of whom were appointed in the ‘80s. In the 11 years that George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson have sat in the governor’s chair, only seven African-Americans have been appointed to the L.A. Superior Court--all by Deukmejian. Wilson has passed up 25 opportunities to name an African-American to the local Superior Court bench. All but one of the blacks (Reginald Dunn) were elevated from the Municipal Court and replaced by non-blacks.

This cannot be explained by a lack of qualified African-American candidates. Starting in the 1960s, blacks began entering the legal profession in sizable numbers. Los Angeles, for example, has hundreds of black lawyers, many with substantial credentials.

The virtual absence of black judges has created a few problems. An African-American seeking a divorce or involved in a child-custody dispute may safely assume that the judge deciding the case will not be an African-American. None are assigned to the Family Law courts. Nor can any be found in the Probate courts, “Law and Motion” courts or “Writs and Receivers” courts.

The criminal courts are no better. Los Angeles County is divided into 10 judicial districts that hear criminal cases. Each of the districts serve, on average, a population about the size of Wilson’s hometown of San Diego, or about 1.1. million people. A black charged with a felony in seven of the districts--Long Beach, Santa Monica, Van Nuys, San Fernando, Pasadena, Pomona or Norwalk--has no chance whatsoever of having a black judge try his case, because there are no black Superior Court judges in any of those courthouses. In the Central District, where the population is overwhelmingly black and Latino, the odds of drawing an African-American trial judge in the 19-story Criminal Courts Building is 1 in 34.

The most serious criminal cases also are tried at the Criminal Courts Building in high-security courtrooms dubbed the “Long Cause” courts. These are mostly the death-penalty cases that rarely have white defendants. With the exception of one white woman, every judge hearing these cases is a former career prosecutor or police officer. No blacks or Latinos sit on the Long Cause courts.

Incredibly, the record is worse at the the appellate level. No African-American has been appointed to the state Court of Appeal for the 2nd, 4th and 5th Districts (all of Southern California) since 1982, when Deukmejian took office. In the 2nd District, a court with seven divisions of four justices each covering the coastal counties from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo, two black justices remain from previous Democratic administrations in Sacramento. The 4th and 5th Districts--everything else from Fresno to the Mexican border--have no black justices.

At the state Court of Appeal, only three of the court’s four justices hear any given case. So even if an appeal reaches an appellate division with one of the two African-American justices, there is a 1 in 4 chance that the black justice will not be assigned to the case. Thus, the average African-American charged with a felony criminal offense in America’s largest county near the end of the 20th Century has a statistically insignificant chance of having his case tried or reviewed by a black jurist unless it reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, where Justice Clarence Thomas sits. (Justice Allen E. Broussard’s retirement last year left the California Supreme Court without an African-American. He was replaced by a white.)

Black judges use their seniority differently than their white counterparts. Since there are barely more than a dozen of them, following their career tracks is not difficult. A majority have chosen an assignment that ranks at the bottom of the judicial pecking order--Juvenile Court.

In the white world, which is the “real world” in which the judiciary functions despite its minority status, the movers and shakers fight about money, and money is the holy grail of the civil-trial courts. To get elevated, a Superior Court judge must have a firm grasp of “money law”--torts, contracts, property, etc. Whites who have not developed enough seniority to reach the “money courts,” or simply like criminal law, will continue to judge blacks and other minorities until they are replaced by other whites.

Since seniority largely governs assignments, the phenomenon of black judges choosing Juvenile Court over the higher-status civil trials is nonsensical to many white judges--there is no judicial future in “crack babies” and juvenile delinquents. What appears to attract black jurists to Juvenile Court is the simple belief that children are the future, and that the future must be ensured by the broad protective powers of Juvenile Court judges. Thus, H. Randolph Moore Jr., a highly respected black judge with much seniority, chose to return to the Kenyon Juvenile Justice Center in South-Central Los Angeles, while Charles Scarlett, one of the most formidable litigators of his day, decided to remain at the Inglewood Juvenile Court. Presumably, Emily Stephens, one of only two black Superior Court judges under age 50, chooses to remain in Dependency Court, despite plum assignments available elsewhere, for similar reasons.

So how is justice not being served? A system of justice must not only be fair, it must appear to be fair. If all the Afrikaaner judges in Johannesberg swore an oath that they was absolutely impartial, nobody in Soweto would believe them. History gets in their way.

Or put it another way. If you are white, assume that almost every judge is black, that virtually all courthouse power is held by blacks, that you are frisked very carefully simply because of your skin color and that much of what you say is greeted with automatic skepticism. Assume also that you can safely expect that your jury will have a majority of black members. Comfortable?

Judicial Los Angeles is South Africa without the formality. Whatever the law may say, its implementation is controlled by white judges. Either the system will change or they will be the Lords of Rubble.