Bold Move in ’82 Leads to No. 2 Spot on D. A.’s Staff

It was 1982, and Kevin McGee was beginning to despise his job as an attorney with a Los Angeles insurance-defense firm.

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The Newbury Park husband and father decided on a bold move. He traded in his secure career for a lower-paying, temporary job as a Ventura County deputy prosecutor.

With no guarantee of permanent employment, McGee won several misdemeanor trials and earned the admiration of Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, who hired him full time.

That was just the beginning of his rise in the district attorney’s office. After a series of other promotions, McGee recently was named chief assistant district attorney, Bradbury’s second in command.

He now oversees 90 prosecutors and more than 300 other employees. And no less an authority than Bradbury, the four-term elected top prosecutor, predicts that McGee might some day fill his shoes.

“I can see Kevin either as a Superior Court judge or the district attorney of this county,” Bradbury mused. “I think he would excel at both.”

For McGee, an unassuming man who turns 42 Thursday, the ascent has come unexpectedly.

“I never would have predicted it,” he said in a recent interview. “I didn’t come here thinking, ‘I’m going to be chief deputy someday.’ ”

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He rose to chief deputy prosecutor, overseeing criminal trials, in 1992. In November, when then-Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Colleen Toy White earned a judgeship, Bradbury named McGee as her replacement without hesitation.

Supporters praise McGee as a natural leader. Not only is he well versed in criminal and civil law, but he also communicates well with both subordinates and opponents, both groups say.

“I’ve never seen Kevin go out of character, lose his temper, yell at anybody,” Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter D. Kossoris said. “He’s a straightforward guy. Totally honest. And I’ve never heard anybody claim to the contrary, either.”

Adversaries, however, say McGee has his faults.

His biggest drawback, some say, is an unwillingness to challenge Bradbury on tough issues of office policies such as which cases should be prosecuted and which should not. This is important, critics such as Ventura criminal defense attorney George C. Eskin contend, because Bradbury has so much power.

“He’s a company man,” Eskin said of McGee. “If he weren’t a company man, he wouldn’t be in the position he’s in.”

McGee, he added, is a nice fellow but no more than a mouthpiece for the district attorney.

“One of my complaints about Mr. Bradbury is he surrounds himself with sycophants,” said Eskin, a former deputy prosecutor. “He surrounds himself with yes men. And if you disagree, you’re sent to Siberia.”

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Assistant Public Defender Jean Farley echoed some of Eskin’s complaints. McGee, she said, often supports mean-spirited policies that are unfair to criminal suspects who have not been convicted of anything.

For instance, she said, district attorney investigators will often arrest nonviolent suspects at home in front of their children when the people would have voluntarily turned themselves in.

“Frankly, I think it’s a misuse of prosecutorial authority,” she said.

McGee and Bradbury scoff at the suggestion that McGee does not challenge the boss on tough decisions.

“I think I give him a run for his money,” said McGee, wearing his trademark dark suit and starched white shirt. “I’m not shy about telling him what I think about those issues.”

Bradbury said McGee has a non-abrasive way of confronting him. That style, he said, is much different from that of McGee’s predecessor, Toy White.

“Toy was pretty blunt. She’d come in, shut the door and read me the riot act,” Bradbury said. “Where she would use a meat ax, he uses a scalpel.”

And Bradbury believes that McGee has been effective in getting him to change his position on several major issues, although he would not specify them.

“He has probably changed my mind more than any other chief assistant I’ve had,” Bradbury said. “He’s influenced my decisions on everything from death penalty cases to personnel decisions.

“When he comes to speak to me about decisions I’ve made, he’s well-armed with facts, and I listen to him,” the top prosecutor added. “I value people who will come in and say, ‘Boss, I think we’re about to make the wrong decision.’ ”

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McGee has also impressed other leaders in the local criminal justice community.

“Some people can’t see broader issues other than what’s in their self-interest, but I think Kevin has the ability to look at the whole criminal justice system,” said Cal Remington, deputy director of the county Corrections Services Agency, which includes the Probation Department.

In his new role, McGee runs the day-to-day operations of the prosecutor’s office. That includes the child-support division and the bureau of investigation, as well felony and misdemeanor trials.

For several years, he has also been the office’s chief spokesman. He has addressed issues such as the prosecutor’s office’s refusal to bring criminal cases before one of the county’s longest-serving judges, the impact of the new “three-strikes” law and the bitter retirement of a top homicide prosecutor who was at odds with Bradbury.

In addition, he serves on a committee of prosecutors that decides when to seek the death penalty against murder defendants.

Privately, many line prosecutors complain about McGee’s support of an office policy that takes away their discretion to make deals to settle criminal cases.

McGee defends the system, saying it gives more consistency to the resolutions of felony cases and discourages judges from pressuring line prosecutors to bargain away cases.

Overall, many of McGee’s subordinates applaud his promotion. They note that off work, he spends most of his time with wife, Shelley, and their two sons, Brian, 13, and Danny, 11, and daughter, Katie, 7.

McGee said spending time with his family is his central hobby. Mostly, they bike and hike, and the children participate in community sports programs.

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McGee was born in Imperial County and grew up in tiny Palm Desert in Riverside County. The fourth of six children, he describes a working-class upbringing in which his family found Boy Scouts to be a luxury it could not afford.

After high school, McGee enrolled in junior college for one semester before dropping out. He took a job steam-cleaning carpet and upholstery.

“It took me five minutes on the job to realize that maybe I wanted to go back to school,” he recalled.

And that’s what he did. In 1976, he received his bachelor’s degree in history from Loyola University in Los Angeles. Because the job market for history teachers was tight, he decided to go to law school.

That is when he started clerking at Finn, Alsop & Silva, the Los Angeles insurance-defense firm where he was hired as an associate lawyer after passing the State Bar examination in 1979.

By 1982, he was fed up with the work, which involved settling personal injury lawsuits for big companies.

So he took the temporary job as “extra help” in the district attorney’s office.

Two years later, he was prosecuting felony sexual assault cases.

“Juries just loved him,” Bradbury recalled. “He’s like everyone’s son. He’s like the boy next door. He exudes trustworthiness. He is a born leader. He is tough-minded, but never tough acting.”

In all, McGee has prosecuted about 50 misdemeanor and felony trials. He is most proud of two in particular. He won a life prison sentence for recidivist child molester Larry Decker, who married a woman so he could sexually assault her 13-year-old son.

And he successfully prosecuted a man who molested his 3-year-old granddaughter. On the witness stand, the girl was more interested in playing a game, declining to answer unless McGee moved around the courtroom when she pointed her finger.

“Finally, she had me near the back of the court, and she said, ‘Now, if you will go out those doors.’ I had to draw the line,” he said.

Occasionally, he has had to draw the line in defending the policies and practices of the district attorney’s office. But he confirmed what others have said: He is never rude, no matter what the debate.

“There are times when perhaps that could be helpful,” McGee acknowledged of losing his cool. “But it’s not part of my personality.”