Superior Court Race Pits a Pair of Opposites : Campaign: Prosecutor Colleen Toy White and criminal lawyer James Farley may be alike in only one way: They both want seat on the bench.

Colleen Toy White is a career prosecutor and outspoken advocate of victims’ rights. As Ventura County’s chief assistant district attorney, she also helps decide who faces the death penalty.

James Matthew Farley is a veteran criminal attorney and passionate guardian of defendants’ rights. As one of the county’s most notable defense lawyers, he has defended numerous murder suspects, including one facing capital punishment.

Unlike many elections--in which candidates appear more alike than different--the June 7 race for the county’s only contested judicial vacancy pits a pair of legal opposites.

“These are two people who hold different beliefs, who bring different qualifications to the job,” observed Deputy Dist. Atty. Matthew J. Hardy, who backs Farley, his longtime confidante. “It seems to me that the public has to decide which qualifications they want.”

White and Farley can’t even agree on what the public is looking for in a judge.

Farley says a judge should be someone who understands how a trial court operates, who is aware of the various maneuvers and who knows the pressures trial attorneys face.

“I don’t think Toy has that capability, and that’s the issue in the race,” said Farley, 59. “She’s proven herself to be a capable administrator and, hopefully, she’ll continue doing that.”

He said White is not qualified to sit on the lower Municipal Court, let alone fill the vacancy on the Superior Court bench.

White agreed that the public wants a judge who is competent and who knows the law. But she also said it wants a judge who truly understands the fear of crime.

“People ask me, ‘Do you believe in the death penalty? What do you think of these gangs?’ I think people are ready to hold the people who have authority in their lives accountable,” the 49-year-old prosecutor said.

“They want to know, do I get it? Do I understand they are afraid to walk the streets at night? Do I understand they are afraid to send their kids to school?”

White has received endorsements so far from the Ventura County Deputy Sheriff’s Assn. and police chiefs from Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Paula, Simi Valley and Port Hueneme. She is also supported by Superior Court Judges Ken Riley, Charles W. Campbell and Barbara Lane.

Farley’s endorsements include the Service Employees International Union Local 998, the Mexican-American Political Forum of Ventura County and Superior Court Judges Lawrence Storch, William Peck and James McNally.

Deputy Public Defender Todd R. Howeth said Farley is the best candidate “because he is a man of impeccable moral authority.”

“He has more trial experience probably than anybody in Ventura County,” Howeth added. “I can’t think of anybody who would be a better candidate for a Superior Court judge.”

Before he learned that Farley would make the race, Hardy had compared running against White to running against Mother Teresa. But Hardy is now enthusiastically supporting Farley.

“He’s always there for anybody who needs him,” Hardy said. “Whether it’s a cop, district attorney, defense lawyer, crook, judge or anybody else. I’m not ashamed to admit that I love the man.”

White’s supporters see things differently.

“Jim comes with less quality experience to be a judge than Toy White,” said Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, honorary chairman of White’s campaign. “As an example, prosecutors make quasi-judicial decisions day in and day out on civil and criminal cases. Experience as a prosecutor probably is the best experience for a position on the bench.”

He called the race a classic matchup.

“You’ve got a candidate who has spent her career putting crooks in jail,” Bradbury said. “On the other hand, you’ve got a defense attorney who has spent his career trying to keep crooks out of jail.”

Judge Campbell, a White supporter, said the fact that White has been an administrator and out of the courtroom for more than 11 years is not significant.

“That’s a very small part of what a judge has to do,” Campbell said. “Her opponent has a lot more jury trial experience, but you can quickly pick up how to handle a trial. I think what’s more important is the person underneath.”

White has been in the district attorney’s office for 17 years, rising from law clerk to second-in-command.

“I’ve really spent my career trying to put people in jail,” White said. “If the public is convinced you know the law, you’re honest and you’re not going to be afraid to make the tough decisions, then you’re qualified.”

She credited her drive to protect victims’ rights to her upbringing. Raised in Wetumka, Okla., a town of about 1,000, White--who picked up the nickname Toy as an infant--said she grew up without much in terms of material possessions. She learned to deal with adversity, she said, and relates that to the problems crime victims endure.

Many girls in her town married as teen-agers, and White was no exception, tying the knot at age 16 while a high-school junior. By 1968, she had two children (a third was killed as an infant in an auto crash), a struggling marriage and no diploma.

After obtaining a high-school equivalency diploma at age 24, White earned an associate’s degree before enrolling in the Ventura College of Law at 28--an age when most lawyers have several years of practice already under their belts.

By the time White took the state bar exam, she was a single mother of two with $800 in her pocket and the rent overdue.

She passed and was promoted from the law-clerk job to deputy prosecutor.

She soon formed the office’s Consumer Mediation Unit, along with now-Municipal Judge Barry Klopfer.

Once, when a con man was about to trick an elderly Fillmore couple out of $6,000 to research an alleged cure for cancer, White got into her car and met the man at the victims’ goat farm.

She arrived at the ramshackle house and stepped from her car, the heels of her boots mired in goat droppings. The couple, who had lost a daughter to cancer, had already handed the man the check.

Not even knowing for sure that she had a legal right to intervene, White, by rattling off a business and professional code, persuaded the man that he was breaking the law.

“I just buffaloed him into giving me that check back, and then I literally ordered him out of town,” she recalled. “You know, like you would see in some B movie, ‘Get out of this town and don’t come back.’ ”

She said the man was later convicted in Los Angeles County for another scam.

Seven years later, Bradbury asked her to be his chief assistant, although there were others with more experience who wanted the job.

Today, she often goes to schools across the county to share with students the story of her rise from poor farm girl to a top county prosecutor.

The students at first are skeptical of taking advice from her, she said. But their jaws drop, eyes water and minds open up when they learn of the path she had to take to get where she is.

After a newspaper profiled White several years ago, a local woman who had been thinking of going to law school clipped the article and put it on her refrigerator. Then the woman enrolled in Ventura College of Law, glancing at the news clipping every day for inspiration.

The woman recently graduated and capped her experience off with a call to White, her role model. “The message is, if Toy White can make it, I can make it,” White said, recalling the story.

White believes she would be able to have an even bigger impact on people and the law as a judge.

“Being a judge and really being involved in the day-to-day operation gives you a chance to make a difference on a different level,” she said.

“As chief assistant, I’ve been making quasi-judicial decisions over some of the most important cases that the office has filed in the past 11 years,” White said.

She recently oversaw an investigation that led to the county’s largest ever civil settlement. AT&T; agreed to pay the district attorney’s office $1.25 million after prosecutors accused the telecommunications giant of allowing its authorized dealers to use illegal tactics to sell home-security systems to the elderly.

“She personally spearheaded that and is the person we can thank for grinding out an extraordinary settlement for this county,” said Bradbury. He also said that despite Farley’s criticisms, White excelled as a trial attorney.

“Juries used to love her,” Bradbury said. “I would be comfortable sending Toy White in tomorrow to try a death-penalty case.”

Farley has been a local defense attorney for 24 years. He ties many of the principles that guide his life to the Roman Catholic church, which he serves as a deacon. His position allows him to celebrate Holy Communion, marry, bury, proclaim the gospel and assist at Mass.

His church roots go back to his religious upbringing in Albany, N.Y. He came to Los Angeles in 1961 to study law and, after considering an acting career, thought about becoming a priest.

“I toyed with the idea for a while,” he said. But he got married instead.

Farley became a church official anyway when the Vatican permitted married men to become deacons in the early 1970s. He spent two years studying theology and other subjects before being ordained.

As an attorney, Farley serves as one of the county’s few “defenders of the bond” for the Marriage Tribunal in the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. In about 60 cases a year, he argues on behalf of the church against annulling marriages. Instead of a prosecutor, he faces a procurator advocate, or the lawyer who argues for annulment. A judge in the church court decides the final outcome.

Farley said he is against annulment in all but the most clear-cut cases in which “there was never a marriage in the first place.”

An example would be a 16-year-old girl who marries at the behest of her parents because she is pregnant or a person who married while psychologically ill or chemically dependent. He takes a harder approach toward people who simply want to break up after a decade or more of being man and wife.

Farley received his law degree from Southwestern University in 1966 and was admitted to the California Bar a year later.

In 1969, he was looking for a change from the big-city pace. Then, while trying a case in Ventura County, he encountered then-Public Defender Richard Erwin. Erwin liked Farley’s style and offered him a job.

Farley said he accepted without so much as a second thought. “I wanted to get out of Los Angeles desperately,” he recalled.

He eventually went into private practice and helped found Criminal Defense Associates, a group of lawyers appointed by the court to defend the poor when the public defender’s office has a conflict of interest.

CDA is where Farley picks up many of his high-profile clients. Many admirers point to the case of 16-year-old Gilbert Martinez when they talk about Farley’s skills.

Prosecutors accused Martinez of being the triggerman in the 1992 shooting death of Port Hueneme landlord Richard Schell.

Three accomplices who were not accused of actually firing the shots that killed Schell were convicted of murder. But Martinez, with Farley arguing on his behalf, was acquitted of murder in favor of a conviction on the lesser charge of attempted robbery.

Farley, however, said he does not coddle criminals. He said that he would “slam” defendants who were convicted in his court of violent crimes.

“I don’t like violence,” he said, adding that he could issue a death sentence if the evidence supported it.

Farley said the publicity he receives from some cases has its downside, particularly when it is connected to a case that might have outraged the public. “We’ve gotten some strange calls,” he said.

Some parishioners, he conceded, find it contradictory that Farley defends suspected criminals.

“The individuals who I represent who have been notorious, I can’t hate the people for what they’ve done. But I can hate what they did. What I can’t understand is how people can be Christians and condemn someone for doing what Jesus did,” he said, meaning Christ defended unpopular causes.”

He said he hopes the judicial campaign does not turn into what he called “one of these good-guy, bad-guy things.” But he says he believes it will.

“First of all, I’m not a bad guy, and she’s not a good guy. We’re two lawyers looking for a job.

“I expect the D.A.’s office, as time goes on, to get more and more desperate and to say, ‘Jim Farley is a real slime ball,’ ” Farley predicted. “I’ve already been told by some people in the D.A.’s office I don’t have a prayer. They’re wrong. I have plenty of prayers.”

Superior Court judges are elected for a six-year term and earn $104,262 a year. The nonpartisan election will be held June 7.