Judge Denies Simpson Got Special Treatment in ’89 : Courts: Sentence for assaulting wife was the one prosecutors urged, he says. Transcripts seem to back him.

Breaking a week of silence, the judge who has come under fire for allegedly letting O.J. Simpson off too easily on a 1989 charge of wife beating defended himself Wednesday, saying he gave the football star-turned-murder-suspect “almost exactly” what prosecutors asked for and was not “star-struck.”

Municipal Judge Ronald R. Schoenberg--who has become a lightning rod for criticism of the judicial system’s handling of domestic violence--said he did not give Simpson jail time because the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case, did not ask for it.

Moreover, contrary to the angry assertions of prosecutors, Schoenberg said Simpson was not initially allowed to undergo counseling by telephone. But the judge acknowledged that he permitted Simpson to continue his sessions by phone when the retired running back moved to New York to work as a football broadcaster.

Partial transcripts of the case, made public after Schoenberg called a news conference in his Downtown Los Angeles courtroom, appeared to support the judge, adding yet another bizarre twist to the unfolding drama surrounding Simpson--charged in the slayings of his former wife, Nicole, and her waiter friend, Ronald Goldman--and his previous brushes with the law.

Now, instead of prosecutors pointing fingers at a silent judge, the judge and prosecutors are pointing fingers at one another. A matter that seemed clear-cut now turns on semantics, with prosecutors continuing to insist that they did ask for jail time--albeit not publicly--and the veteran judge complaining that critics are smearing his good name.

“Up until now, I have sat quietly by as the district attorney, members of the city attorney’s office, legislators and reporters questioned my integrity and judgment based on false and inaccurate statements,” Schoenberg said. “The sentence I gave Mr. Simpson was almost exactly the punishment recommended by the city attorney.”

The bespectacled 56-year-old jurist, who was elected to the bench in 1978, spoke for just five minutes, reading aloud from a three-page typewritten statement. He said he had remained silent because he “wanted to make sure that my recollection of what happened was correct and that I could prove it.”

When he was through, he announced that he would not take any questions and referred reporters to the transcripts.

Several hours later, the court made partial transcripts public--26 pages documenting bits and pieces of three 1989 hearings held before Schoenberg, one on May 22, another May 24 and a third Sept. 1. The records reflect a give-and-take between the judge and his celebrity defendant, with the judge at times complaining that Simpson was not carrying out his sentence properly.

“I’m in a position of being mean,” Schoenberg tells the former football star at one point, “of making you do something that you don’t like to do.”

But the records do not tell the whole story, according to Deputy City Atty. Robert Pingel, who prosecuted the case. Pingel said that in discussions before the open-court proceedings, he argued repeatedly that Simpson should be jailed “due to the violent nature of the battery incident” and because police reports indicated this was not the first time Simpson had abused his wife.

In a prepared statement, Pingel said Wednesday that he also asked for a fine, for Simpson to contribute money to a shelter for battered women and for him to perform community service and undergo therapy at a program designed to curb domestic violence.

“Throughout those discussions,” the statement said, “the judge was unreceptive to those arguments.”

The transcripts, however, document only what happened in open court, and not behind closed doors.

According to the transcripts, when Simpson was sentenced in May, prosecutors asked that he be fined $200, plus a penalty, that he perform 120 hours of community service, that he give $500 to a shelter for battered women and that he attend a counseling program for men who batter their wives. Pingel also asked the judge to place Simpson on 24 months probation, and to have him report to the court every six months to see if he had fulfilled the terms of the sentence.

The judge did order the $200 fine, plus a $270 penalty, as well as the $500 payment and 120 hours of community service.

To complete the community service requirement, Simpson worked raising money for a charity--Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times. In September, when Simpson reported back to the judge, the volunteer coordinator responsible for supervising Simpson’s case said she approved the work, even though the charity was not registered with her agency and it was Simpson--and not she--who selected the project.

Describing his efforts to seek corporate sponsorship for the event, Simpson told the judge that he flew to Atlanta to meet with Coca-Cola executives, to Boston to meet with officials from Reebok and to New York to talk to representatives of Hertz, whose car rental commercials he appeared in.

But the judge was not impressed. “This is business. This is just not community service,” he complained to Simpson’s lawyer, Howard Weitzman. “. . . That’s part of what he does as a celebrity.” He also complained that Simpson had not paid his fines on time--a lapse for which Weitzman claimed responsibility. The judge then ordered Simpson to perform an additional 32 hours of “regular community service.”

The transcripts also show that, at the May sentencing, prosecutors asked Schoenberg to order Simpson to attend a special state program for men who abuse their spouses. Simpson balked at the program. Weitzman told the judge that the former football player was already undergoing counseling “not just simply for this situation, but also to get to the cause behind the problem.”

Denying the prosecution’s request, the judge permitted Simpson to remain with the therapist he was using. He instructed Simpson to continue his therapy. In September, when Simpson moved to New York, the judge permitted him to continue the sessions by telephone.

Pingel has complained in interviews that the therapist Simpson used was not trained to help violent spouses. On Tuesday, Deputy City Atty. Alana Bowman, who heads the unit that handles domestic violence, declared that out of the 20,000 cases her office handles each year, in only one--Simpson’s--was a defendant allowed to undergo counseling by phone. “Something happened,” she said, “that is not common.”

The transcripts also reveal that by September, Simpson was tired of the counseling, saying he had overcome whatever problem he had.

“I don’t even know what else to talk about. I come in. I sit down with him (the therapist),” Simpson told the judge, who was ordering him to continue the sessions. “We start talking about other things that are happening in my life at this point. . . . I mean, I just don’t know how long, sir, I can talk about one incident in my entire life.

“I think I’ve been a great citizen,” Simpson continued. “My wife has indicated we have a great marriage. We had one bad night in our life. . . . I think we all understand what happened that night, why it happened and have taken steps to see to it that it can never happen again.”

With Simpson facing double murder charges, the nation’s attention has now been riveted on the issue of domestic violence and the court’s handling of the 1989 battery charge.

The charge stemmed from a New Year’s Eve incident in which Simpson beat his former wife so badly that she sought hospital treatment. Police records reveal that Simpson stormed out of the house and drove off in his Bentley when it appeared police were going to arrest him.

“The police have been out here eight times before, and now you’re going to arrest me for this?” Simpson is quoted in one report as yelling to two police officers who were responding to a 911 call. “This is a family matter. Why do you want to make a big deal out of it when we can handle it?”

Nicole Simpson, bruised and scratched, ran out of bushes crying: “He’s going to kill me, he’s going to kill me,” one of the officers wrote. “She kept saying: ‘You never do anything about him. You talk to him and then leave.’ ”

As details of the beating emerged, Judge Schoenberg came under intense criticism not only from prosecutors in the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, but also from victims rights advocates, the news media, and Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, who called his sentencing “inappropriate and ineffective.”

The case has been portrayed as an example of how the judicial system fails to protect abused women and how celebrities receive favored treatment in the courtroom. The sentence imposed by Schoenberg has already sparked a wave of reform efforts.

In California, the Assembly has approved a resolution requiring judges to attend annual training sessions to learn more about domestic violence. And in New York, legislative leaders have agreed on a bill that would require police officers to arrest anyone suspected of seriously beating a spouse. Although the measure was in the works before the Simpson case, Gov. Mario Cuomo acknowledged that the case is likely to spur activity on the bill.

Meanwhile, Schoenberg has kept out of the spotlight. A Santa Monica native, he is the son of the renowned Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg. The younger Schoenberg worked as a public defender for three years after graduating from law school at UC Berkeley and worked in private practice for a few years before being elected to the bench.

In recent days he has refused to talk to reporters, even as he was being vilified in the media.

Saturday night, a reporter visited Schoenberg’s Brentwood home, which is on the same street and a few blocks away from Simpson’s house. The judge would only say “No!” when asked if he would comment on his handling of the Simpson case or whether he knows the football star.

In another connection, the judge’s son works for the same law firm as Weitzman, the high-profile criminal defense attorney who represented Simpson in the 1989 spousal abuse charge and served as his lawyer in the first few days after the double murders.

Sources said that Schoenberg’s son, E. Randol Schoenberg, began working at Weitzman’s previous firm as a clerk some time after the judge sentenced Simpson, and was hired as a lawyer at Weitzman’s current firm after graduation from USC Law School in 1991. Contacted by The Times, the son refused to discuss the matter. Weitzman did not return telephone calls seeking comment on how Schoenberg’s son came to work at his firm.

Schoenberg receives mixed reviews from prosecutors and defense lawyers.

Michael Guarino, a former deputy city attorney who teaches law in San Francisco and who ran for office against incumbent City Atty. James Hahn, praised Schoenberg as “bright and fair and a very decent man.”

Guarino, who once was at odds with Schoenberg over a sentence he considered too lenient, nonetheless complained that prosecutors have been protecting themselves through their harsh criticism of the judge. Guarino said that if the city attorney’s office was so insistent on jail time for Simpson, prosecutors should have demanded it in open court.

“What we’re trying to do,” he said, using the pronoun we even though he no longer works there, “is get our own office off the hook.”

But Deputy City Atty. Pat Milne, acting supervisor of the West Los Angeles office, was one of several prosecutors openly critical of Schoenberg. “He was a very lenient sentencer,” Milne said. “We had a lot of disagreements with him where we wanted jail time and he just wouldn’t do it.”