D.A.’s Actions Against Jurist Meet Resistance : Law: Court officials try to force prosecutors to abandon attempt to ban judge from hearing new felony cases.

Nearly four months after Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury first banned one of the county’s longest-serving judges from hearing new criminal cases, court officials are fighting back.

Effective Monday, they began assigning all new felony cases to the judge that Bradbury has tried to remove from felony cases: Lawrence Storch of the Superior Court.

Bradbury can still keep Storch off new cases, as he has since mid-April, by continuing to order his deputy prosecutors to sign affidavits alleging that the judge is biased against the district attorney’s office. Under the law, each side in a case has one chance to get rid of a judge without actually having to prove bias.

The judges say that if Bradbury insists on continuing his crusade, he will have to exhaust his one and only chance to disqualify a judge on Storch. That, in turn, will force the prosecutor to accept whatever judge is then assigned the case--one that might be equally unpalatable to Bradbury.

For example, cases removed from Storch’s court will be rerouted to the presiding judge, Melinda A. Johnson. She will keep a share of them and reassign the rest to the four remaining felony judges.

Several years ago, Johnson was the subject of a similar blanket disqualification, judges said. Now prosecutors who disqualify Storch will have to settle for Johnson in some cases, unless they can present evidence of bias.

“We figure you either take Judge Storch or you use your affidavit,” said Superior Court Judge Charles W. Campbell Jr., chief of the felony division.

Some defense attorneys applauded the judges’ decision to fight back on the Storch issue.

In the past, one said, the county’s judges were loath to take on the powerful and combative Bradbury. Veteran criminal defense attorney George Eskin said prosecutors apparently did not expect the judges to resist this time, either.

“What they expected was that they were going to just put Judge Storch out of business and tell us who to have sit on criminal cases,” Eskin said. “I can’t think of any precedent in this county where the court hasn’t just shrugged its shoulders and acquiesced in this kind of situation.”

Bradbury was out of the office and unavailable for comment Monday.

But his top aide maintained that the district attorney’s office will continue disqualifying Storch from criminal cases.

“That will not change our practice with respect to Judge Storch,” Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin J. McGee said. “We will continue to disqualify him.”

McGee also denied that the district attorney’s office, by disqualifying Storch, is trying to dictate who sits on the felony bench.

The judges’ move will have little impact, McGee said, because prosecutors rarely try to knock a judge off a case. Storch is an exception, he said, because prosecutors consider him unfair.

Prosecutors announced on April 19 that they would begin using affidavits to ban Storch from hearing new felony cases. The move came several weeks after Storch voided a jury’s first-degree murder conviction of a Newbury Park man and convicted him of second-degree murder.

Storch said the evidence did not support the more serious charge. It is one of several disagreements with Bradbury’s office since Storch was appointed to the Superior Court in 1977 by former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.

The action to disqualify Storch drew strong criticism, including disagreement from some of Bradbury’s own deputy prosecutors, who said they would refuse to follow the directive to disqualify Storch.

One reason for taking the retaliatory action announced Monday, judges said, was the need to rebuild Storch’s inventory of cases, which has diminished since the disqualifications began. As Storch’s caseload dropped, court officials have had to assign him some civil cases to keep him busy.

If prosecutors do not stop challenging Storch, judges said they will have to decide whether to permanently assign him to another section of the Superior Court.

“We’re trying to manage our caseload the best we can,” said Municipal Court Presiding Judge John R. Smiley.

“Because of the fact that the county’s biggest law firm, the district attorney’s office, has elected to uniformly use that (disqualification) rule as a way to keep Judge Storch from hearing criminal cases, we have no other alternative but to continue to (try) cases the best way we can.”