Island Justice : On Catalina, Friday Is Court Day as Judge Arrives From Mainland

Call it “Catalina Law.”

Here in a one-room courthouse 26 miles across the sea, the bailiffs wear shorts, clerks greet residents by name, and the island’s only judge hops out by copter or ferry for one day a week.

Despite its sandal-clad informality, Catalina Municipal Court is a bustling outpost of law and order, where Judge Peter Mirich brings out all the accouterments of a courtroom--a prosecutor, a defense attorney, a court reporter--to dispense a day’s worth of island justice.

Doggedly committed to his job, Mirich, 44, wakes up every Friday at 4:30 a.m. to try and second-guess the fog, which has delayed many a hearing by grounding the county-paid helicopter that he usually takes to the island. A resident of Rancho Palos Verdes, Mirich jogs to San Pedro’s Point Fermin Park to view the weather. If a certain row of palm trees at the edge of the park is blanketed in fog, he knows the helicopters won’t fly.

“When I see the fog, I run down to the terminal [for San Pedro’s Catalina ferry] and reserve a ticket,” he said.

On one recent day, Mirich opts for the ferry and arrives about 7 a.m. at the terminal nestled beneath the sloping green spans of the Vincent Thomas Bridge. His buffalo-print tie and briefcase stand out markedly against the shorts and T-shirts sported by most other passengers.

Towering lights at the Port of Los Angeles splotch the fog with a hazy yellow hue as the boat pulls away from Berth 95 and begins the 70-minute voyage across the channel. The judge fears the day’s proceedings could be delayed given that neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys, nor even the court reporter, are aboard the ferry. “I don’t think they’re going to make it,” he says, eyeing the gray skies outside the starboard windows.

As the vessel hits the open sea, Mirich pops his briefcase to study the day’s calendar. There are 51 cases scheduled, an average load for late summer. Among them are 46 misdemeanors, three small claims, one unlawful detainer and one felony--a hearing for a man charged with cocaine possession. Most of the misdemeanors involve public drunkenness and disturbing the peace.

Although he has been voted in twice as Catalina’s presiding judge, Mirich sits four days a week in San Pedro Municipal Court as a “visiting” jurist.

In that court the day before, Mirich had handled about 40 cases, mostly felonies such as armed robbery, kidnaping and possessing explosives.

“Things are a lot quieter on Catalina,” he said.

The rocky, scrub-covered island of 3,000 year-round residents last year logged the fewest crimes (1,140) of any city or area patrolled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Even the Metrolink commuter train, which the department also serves, had more crimes (1,218).

In seven years as Catalina’s lone judge, Mirich has handled one murder--the island’s first in 40 years. Cases of armed robberies, assaults with guns and gang-related crimes--commonplace in the San Pedro courtroom--have never appeared on his court calendar in Catalina.

The boat chugs into Avalon Bay about 8:40 a.m., and Mirich sets off for the tiny courthouse. Along the way, merchants and townsfolk greet him with a cheerful “Hi, judge.”

“Hey, thanks for sitting on our last jury,” Mirich calls out to city worker Nick Flores, who is sweeping off the beachside boardwalk.

“I think he’s a great judge,” Flores said. “He really knows how to talk to people.”

Mirich, who once worked as a lifeguard on Catalina, slips through the back door of the courthouse with 10 minutes to spare before the court’s 9 o’clock start time. To his surprise and relief, the attorneys mill about in the courtroom discussing cases. The helicopter made it.

The whitewashed courtroom is utilitarian, softened by nautical prints.

Mirich helped modernize it, brought in padded chairs for jurors, had the ceiling leaks fixed and installed all sorts of modern office equipment. Court clerk Fern Whelan, however, still insists on typing minute orders and marriage certificates on the old Royal she bought when she got the job in 1950.

“The new electric one won’t stop where I want it to,” she complained.

Just after 9 a.m., Mirich, black robe rustling, emerges from his office and takes his seat.

In the gallery sit about 20 defendants and supporters--many in T-shirts and shorts--awaiting hearings on charges ranging from falsifying a fishing license and illegally landing a kelp bass to battery and forging a doctor’s name on a prescription.

One anxious defendant leans back and whispers to another, “Oh, great. He’s not in a good mood. You can tell by his expression.”

At one point or another, most islanders have come before Mirich as defendants, jurors or parties in small-claims disputes.

Waiting to confer with a public defender outside, islander Daniel Rodriguez, 18, puffs on a cigarette and recalls meeting Mirich last year during a civics class field trip to the courtroom. The judge, in fact, asked Rodriguez to fill in for the absent Spanish interpreter. “I talked to him afterward, and I really didn’t think of him as a judge. He was a cool guy,” Rodriguez said.

Now, Rodriguez must appear before Mirich and answer charges that he was caught drinking beer even though he is underage. Still, the teen-ager is not worried. “He understands your situation,” Rodriguez said. “He’s not up there sitting [on the bench] with a wall between you and him.”

Back inside, Mirich cancels a bench warrant for a no-show defendant after the man calls and explains that his wife is in labor.

A shuffle of paper later, Mirich calls the case of People vs. Rod Norwood, a Laguna Hills tourist charged with disturbing the peace after he was locked out of his hotel room during an argument with his girlfriend earlier this summer.

Norwood pleads no contest and Mirich imposes a fine of $189. Case closed. Time: one minute, five seconds.

Mirich calls a new case as court clerk Donna Lopez rings up Norwood’s payment at a cash register in a corner of the room.

Outside, Norwood deems the process fair. “[The judge] seems like a nice guy,” he said. “Of all the other times I’ve been in court, he seems to go out of his way to explain the procedures and how the judicial system works.”

When Rodriguez comes up, he too pleads no contest and Mirich sentences him to 50 hours of community service that could increase to 100 if the order is not completed by Nov. 17.

“That’s cool,” Rodriguez says, leaving the courthouse. “I mean, I was kicking back having a beer.”

The next case has Mirich waiting patiently by the phone. He’s expecting a call from Hayward, Calif., where a defendant and his lawyer intend to plead no contest to charges the man was trespassing in Avalon’s treasured Casino.

Mirich started the “telephonic arraignment” system in 1990 to simplify cases with out-of-town lawyers and defendants. “You don’t normally see that [on the mainland],” he said later.

Nor do you normally see a judge with a fax machine in his bedroom.

Mirich said he keeps one on the night stand in case deputies on the island have need for immediate search warrants. The home-based machine has also become well-known among other law enforcement agencies, and rarely a weekend goes by in which Mirich doesn’t receive a warrant request. “I have to put them under oath over the phone to swear the information on the warrant is true,” he said.

By noon, Mirich has dispensed with all but the afternoon small-claims cases, and the courtroom is empty except for the judge, court clerk Lopez, a newspaper reporter and photographer, and an Azusa couple about to be married.

Mirich frequently marries couples who choose Catalina for their nuptials to get a jump on their honeymoon. The judge’s record is four weddings in one day.

Norma Sandoval, 23, checks her pockets for her fiance’s wedding ring while Frank Garcia, 25, hands a video camera to the reporter to film the event. So small is the wedding party that the reporter and photographer end up as the ceremony’s witnesses.

Mirich calls the couple before him and discusses the responsibilities of marriage with his own words and passages from a book of secular wedding vows.

“I’ve sentenced a lot of people to jail today, but you’re going to get the life sentence,” he tells the couple just before inviting them to seal their union with a kiss.

Mirich turns to set down his book when yet a second couple enters in the courthouse to take the plunge.

“One thing about this job,” Mirich says with a wink. “It’s never boring.”