Jurors May Lose Anonymity in Two Judges’ Courtrooms : Legal system: Appeals court signals that it may halt practice of Municipal Court jurists in Bellflower and Downey.

Two Municipal Court judges who have created controversy by keeping secret the names of all jurors in their criminal cases have received a strong signal from an appeals court that their practices might be halted.

Acting independently of each other in two cases, two judges from the Superior Court’s appellate department issued notices saying they “may” grant defense motions demanding the release of jurors’ names in cases before Judges Philip K. Mautino in Bellflower and David Lord in Downey.

Lawyers and judges familiar with the Superior Court’s appellate department, which resolves disputes in Municipal Court, say the notices are issued only when judges are inclined to grant what is requested and seek to give the potentially losing party the chance to persuade them otherwise.

The county counsel’s office, which is defending the Municipal Court judges’ right to use anonymous juries in all criminal cases, and the Los Angeles County public defender’s office, which seeks to halt the practice, have until Sept. 13 and Sept. 19, respectively, to file additional written arguments.

“This is a very strong signal that they are inclined to stop judges from having anonymous juries in these two cases, where there is no showing of a need for it,” said Alex Ricciardulli, who is handling the appeals for the public defender’s office.

The public defender has decided to challenge any judge who grants automatic anonymity to all jurors in criminal cases instead of evaluating the need for anonymity on a case-by-case basis.

The appellate department is likely to decide the issue before the Sept. 30 trial date set in the Downey case. But because the Bellflower case is set for trial today, Ricciardulli on Tuesday asked the appellate judge in that case, Barbara Jean Johnson, to decide the issue immediately. She declined to do so.

The Bellflower case may be postponed or dismissed for other reasons. But if it is held with an anonymous jury and the appellate department later decides that that was improper, the public defender can ask that the case be retried.

When the Superior Court judges make their rulings, they will apply only to the two cases at hand: the Downey case of Dennis Jansen, who is accused of violating a restraining order, and the Bellflower case of Patrick Chesney, who is charged with battery and annoying a child for allegedly touching a young boy’s buttocks at a public pool.

The two cases before the appellate court are the first to be appealed; other cases will be appealed until a state appeals court--whose rulings are binding on all California courts--decides the issue, said Steve Lund, deputy public defender in Bellflower.

When told Tuesday of the appellate department’s inclinations, Mautino and Lord said that if they lose in Superior Court, they plan to appeal.

Mautino, who is the presiding judge of Los Cerritos Municipal Court in Bellflower, and Lord, presiding judge of Downey Municipal Court, both said they would reveal jurors’ names in the Chesney and Jansen cases if ordered to do so.

In their other cases, Lord said the chances are “very high” that he would continue to use nameless panels until a higher court stopped him. Mautino said he would “continue to follow a policy of anonymity in every criminal case until ordered to do otherwise. I don’t intend to back down.”

Lord and one other judge in his courthouse withhold the names of jurors in all criminal cases. Mautino’s policy goes further: It extends to all five courtrooms in the courthouse he heads. Both judges began the policy this year to better implement, in their view, a section of the California Code of Civil Procedure that offers jurors anonymity at the end of a trial.

Both judges reasoned that if that section is aimed at protecting jurors from threats and harassment, it is meaningless unless anonymity is offered at the beginning of a trial. Mautino also believed that people are becoming increasingly nervous about jury duty and that having their names withheld might make them more comfortable.

But some legal scholars and defense attorneys criticized such blanket anonymity, saying it deprives defendants of public trials by shrouding the jurors in secrecy, and injects bias into cases by implying that defendants are dangerous because jurors need protection from them.