3 New Judges Take Oaths of Office

Before a standing-room-only crowd of family, friends and their black-robed colleagues, three Ventura County judges were formally sworn in for their new positions Friday.

The gathering of more than 300 spectators in the Ventura County Board of Supervisors chambers was so large that officials set up television sets and speakers in the lobby for the overflow crowd.

Vincent J. O’Neill took the oath of office for the Superior Court while Rebecca S. Riley and David W. Long were sworn in as Municipal Court judges, appointments made by Gov. Pete Wilson recently.

All three have already been hearing cases in their new posts. Friday’s event was pure ceremony.

All the judges were helped into their judicial robes by their spouses, including Riley, whose husband is a Ventura County Superior Court judge, Ken W. Riley. He also administered his wife’s oath of office.

“There is a very small percentage of people in the whole world who that could happen to,” Rebecca Riley said. “I feel very lucky.”

Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury dubbed his former prosecutor “the Honorable Judge Riley the Second,” and said she is only the fifth woman in Ventura County history to ascend to the bench. Rebecca S. Riley served as head of the district attorney’s fraud unit until her appointment to the bench.

O’Neill, who served as a Municipal Court judge for the past three years, was sworn in by state Justice Steven Stone of the 2nd District Court of Appeal, Division 6.

“The thing that stands out in my mind is that my kids were directly involved in both the phone calls” from the governor appointing him to the Municipal and Superior courts, O’Neill said.

When Wilson appointed him to the Municipal Court three years ago, he and his sons were camping, and O’Neill had to use a roadside pay phone to get the good news as his sons stood next to him. When O’Neill got word of his appointment to the Superior Court in October, his daughter answered the telephone and helped the governor’s aide track her father down at the office, he said.

Municipal Court Judge John R. Smiley issued Long’s oath and returned to the podium to deliver a hilarious and heartfelt tribute to his new colleague. Recalling Long’s up-by-the-bootstraps story of the former Marine who never went to a four-year university, Smiley compared Long to “Andrew Carnegie, Horatio Alger and Rocky Balboa.”