Public Defender Supports Judge : Courts: Clayman asks officials to resist D. A.’s disqualification of Lawrence Storch from felony cases.

Public Defender Kenneth I. Clayman on Wednesday urged Ventura County court officials to resist pressure from Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury and allow the county’s most experienced Superior Court judge to continue to preside over criminal cases.

Clayman’s request comes one day after prosecutors moved to end Superior Court Judge Lawrence Storch’s career on the criminal bench by using a rare legal challenge to disqualify him from hearing any new felony cases.

Although Bradbury has successfully forced four other local jurists to be reassigned during his 16-year tenure, prosecutors in most other counties avoid using the legal maneuver, according to the statewide Judicial Council of California.

“It is pretty rare,” said Ellen McCarthy, a Judicial Council spokeswoman. She said the council is unaware of any other instance in which a district attorney’s office has effectively forced a judge to switch assignments by issuing a series of challenges.

But Storch, who began hearing a murder case Wednesday, may soon join four other jurists whose assignments were changed under such circumstances, Ventura County court officials said.

Henry F. Flitt said the district attorney’s office barred him from hearing all but traffic cases in the early 1980s, when he was a Juvenile Court referee.

The prosecutor’s office apparently objected to the fact that Flitt, now 78, did not have a law degree. He had served as an Oxnard police officer, a county probation officer and a Juvenile Court officer, he said in an interview Wednesday.

“I was just a Juvenile Court referee, and that didn’t require a law degree,” said Flitt, who retired in 1984. “They wanted lawyers to be involved.”

Superior Court Judge Robert Soares was barred from hearing vehicular manslaughter cases after the district attorney’s office objected to the way he handled a case in 1992, officials said. Soares could not be reached for comment. Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin J. McGee said he did not have any other information on that matter.

And current Superior Court Presiding Judge Melinda A. Johnson said she has not tried a felony case since 1985, when prosecutors banned her from hearing criminal matters.

“I remember it didn’t affect us very much because we had a lot of civil trials,” Johnson said Tuesday.

The fourth jurist was the late Commissioner John Sullivan.

On occasion, the public defender’s office has also executed legal maneuvers to disqualify judges from hearing certain cases. But Clayman said he has always left such decisions up to the discretion of attorneys handling a specific case instead of issuing a policy directive.

Under state law, neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys are required to state the reason for disqualifying a judge, officials said. Lawyers are also allowed to dismiss potential jurors before cases go to trial.

Superior Court Judge Charles W. Campbell Jr., felony division chief, said prosecutors have not given a reason for disqualifying Storch. Bradbury refused to comment. And his chief deputy McGee would only say that the judge’s decision to reduce a Newbury Park man’s first-degree murder conviction to second-degree murder is one of a variety of factors.

“But there was no one thing that was determinative,” McGee said.

Campbell said there is little court officials can do other than transfer Storch to the division that handles civil cases. He said Storch has an inventory of felony cases already assigned to him that would keep him busy for the next couple of months.

He declined to say whether Storch’s cases would be transferred to Johnson, since she has been previously disqualified by the prosecutor’s office. If that were to occur, prosecutors would be powerless to disqualify Johnson because they have only one disqualification per case.

“Certainly, that’s an option,” Campbell said, but stressed that that decision has not been made. Johnson, the presiding judge, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

In a memo to Johnson, Clayman said Storch should not be removed from the felony division.

If Storch is transferred to the civil division, as Johnson has said he would be, then prosecutors would not have to use their disqualifications on him and could use them on another judge, Clayman said.