GLENDALE : Judge Candidates Get Ratings Upgraded

Two candidates for the Glendale Municipal Court bench have succeeded in upgrading their ratings by a panel of lawyers that ranks prospective judges as a service to voters.

The Los Angeles County Bar Assn.’s judicial advisory committee issues one of three ratings to candidates for judicial office: well-qualified, qualified or not qualified.

The panel initially rated Deputy Dist. Atty. James Simpson and Glendale Municipal Court Commissioner Donna Bracke as qualified, but both appealed their cases and had their rating upgraded to well-qualified, officials said.

“The committee interviews each candidate; they talk to their references and there is a very extensive process of checking and cross-checking,” said Eric Roy, a spokesman for the bar association.

“But if any candidate feels their rating was in error, they have the option to make an appeal and the committee will check into it.”

Both Simpson, who reportedly received less than the highest rating for lack of recent jury trial experience, and Bracke did just that, going before the full 51-member committee earlier this month and persuading the panel to change their ratings.

Of the other candidates competing for the judgeship, attorneys Stephen Lubell and Harvey Goldhammer received ratings of qualified, while attorneys Edmund Kellogg and Robert Yanez were rated not qualified. Yanez reportedly declined to participate in the interviewing and evaluation proceedings.

Simpson could not be reached for comment on why he appealed his rating, But Bracke said Thursday that, as a sitting court commissioner, she was not only required to submit references and be interviewed, but also to ask the public defenders and district attorneys working in her courtroom to evaluate her.

Bracke said she appealed her case because she felt her rating was unfairly downgraded by the comments of a member of the public defender’s office who had painted a “twisted picture” of her and “impugned” her integrity.

“I was able to round up enough letters from members of the Alternate Defense Counsel and people who had appeared in my courtroom, and they were able to straighten it out,” Bracke said.

The six candidates in the Nov. 8 election are running for the bench seat formerly held by Judge James Rogan, who left the court when he was elected in May to the state Assembly. Rogan replaced Glendale Assemblyman Pat Nolan, who was jailed on a corruption charge.