Bribery Probe Frays Close-Knit Legal Community in San Diego

The defendants are pillars of the local legal establishment, with long ties to the community and lots of friends in high places. Their accusers, for the most part, are outsiders, newly arrived from out of town and still eyed with some suspicion by the clubby San Diegans.

For 18 months, while federal prosecutors and FBI agents probed the illicit links between three former San Diego judges and a prominent trial attorney, there had been sub rosa grumbling among other judges and lawyers.

The investigation, it was said, was too long, too heavy-handed, and bent on rehashing charges for which the judges had already been punished with the loss of their jobs.

And, worse yet, the investigation was being run by prosecutors and FBI agents who had no appreciation for the collegial nature of bench-bar relations in this sunny city and were just looking to rack up some career-boosting convictions.

Last week, when the grand jury phase of the case ended in a second set of indictments, U.S. Atty. Alan Bersin conceded that he was aware of such grumbling. Other officials smiled wryly.

“None of us took it personally,” Bersin said.

Now that the evidence will be presented, Bersin said he hoped it “will cast an entirely different light on what had become accepted wisdom about this investigation.”

The evidence led the grand jury Tuesday to indict two former judges, G. Dennis Adams and James Malkus, and attorney Patrick Frega Jr. for an alleged bribery scheme whereby the judges received more than $25,000 in gifts and gratuities to assist Frega with his cases. Ex-judge Michael Greer, indicted earlier, pleaded guilty March 11 to receiving $75,000 from Frega.

Much of the evidence had to be amassed through a “paper trail” of checks, phone records and court documents and from testimony extracted from witnesses who were reluctant, and sometimes resentful, at being asked to give damaging information.

The federal investigation seemed to strike at the heart of the San Diego ethos, the kind of boosterism that has led to the civic motto “America’s Finest City” and a feeling that attorneys and judges can be friends outside the courtroom and still remain scrupulously proper professionally.

The argument at trial might well be that San Diego’s easygoing history of informality and friendliness between lawyers and judges created an atmosphere that Frega, a self-described “street fighter” from Newark, exploited bit by bit until he had three judges doing his bidding under the guise of friendship.

Hayden Trubitt, president of the 6,000-member San Diego County Bar Assn., said that a good many lawyers had been upset as the investigation, cloaked in secrecy, seemed to drag on without end.

“People were assuming, incorrectly, that they [the judges] were being challenged for having accepted financially trivial courtesies,” Trubitt said.

“People were very concerned to have this sore festering for that period of time,” said attorney Michael McDade, an insider with three San Diego mayors.

For Trubitt, any doubts disappeared after Greer pleaded guilty. “Before that, we didn’t know the truth,” he said. “We didn’t know that there was serious money involved and obviously deep corruption. That’s not what we had been told before.”

McDade is still not so sure.

“I think they [the federal investigators] were looking for criminality in what was, at worst, horribly indiscreet behavior,” he said. “Knowing all three judges, particularly Adams and Malkus, I find it difficult to believe they could do anything corrupt.”

Part of the annoyance at the investigation was that it came on top of a probe by the state Commission on Judicial Performance. That probe prompted Greer and Malkus to resign in 1993. Adams fought a losing battle to avoid ouster by the state Supreme Court.

But nothing in the aborted probe of Greer and Malkus or the ouster of Adams suggested the scope of the alleged bribery--$100,000 in gifts and favoritism in more than 40 cases--later to be contained in the indictments. To much of the public, the commission’s concerns seemed almost picayune--some car repairs, a computer and other small things--and there was no indication of the judges helping with Frega’s court cases.

“After all, the judges were already gone, so there was a lot of feeling of, ‘Hey, what the hell is going on here?’ ” said one lawyer. “And the feds can be very intimidating. Sending two FBI agents to interview small-fry like clerks and bailiffs, that’s very heavy.”

Greer, Adams and Malkus were tenured members of the local establishment, appointed to the bench by then-Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr. Frega, who arrived in the late 1970s, was widely admired for his million-dollar victories.

Greer had served as presiding judge of the Superior Court and was respected statewide for developing a “fast-tracking” system for civil cases. Malkus was esteemed for his tenacity in unraveling complex cases, particularly in arriving at settlements to avoid trial. Adams was noted for his expertise in cases of construction defects.

Adams is married to Superior Court Judge Barbara Gamer. On Thursday, after her husband’s arraignment, she sent an e-mail message to her fellow judges:

“Dennis is not guilty. During these difficult times for us personally and for the bench, please give us the benefit of the presumption of innocence. Please keep us in your thoughts.”

If the defendants were well-known and well-connected in San Diego, the lead prosecutors and FBI agents were definitely not.

Bersin was named U.S. attorney for San Diego and Imperial counties in 1993; most of his career had been spent as a civil attorney in Los Angeles. Charles G. La Bella, chief assistant U.S. attorney, was transferred in 1993 from New York, where he headed an investigation into corruption in the government of former Philippine leader Ferdinand Marcos.

Robert Walsh, special agent in charge of the San Diego office of the FBI, came to San Diego in 1994 from Washington, and Grant Ashley, the assistant agent in charge, was assigned here in September, also from Washington.

Walsh and Ashley were leaders in the FBI’s “Greylord” sting operation in Chicago that led to corruption convictions of a dozen judges in the 1980s for fixing criminal cases. That, too, rankled San Diegans.

“There was a lot of thought that these were outsiders, carpetbaggers, looking to make a case in San Diego that would help their careers,” said one lawyer. “When word got out that these were ‘Greylord’ guys, a lot of people were offended that the feds would somehow think that the San Diego courts, in any way, shape or form, are similar to the Chicago courts.”

Jerry Coughlan, attorney for Malkus, complained that the FBI and U.S. attorney seemed to have “a presumption of guilt” during their investigation.

Elisabeth Semel, a noted San Diego criminal defense attorney, said that the subtext of the story is the difficulty judges face in keeping a proper distance from practicing attorneys, particularly in San Diego.

“This town grew very quickly,” she said. “While the population of the town grew, the legal community has maintained a closeness--or smallness, for lack of a better word; perhaps it’s nostalgia--that belies its size.”

Many lawyers in San Diego have chosen to practice here--some forsaking more money and the grind of big-firm practice in Los Angeles and San Francisco--because of the easier San Diego lifestyle. And unlike the enormous maw that is the Los Angeles judicial system, most lawyers in San Diego know that they are bound to run across a colleague at the downtown courthouse or a restaurant.

A few years ago, several San Diego judges received scolding letters from the judicial commission for letting law firms pay their greens fees at an annual golf tournament. The practice was halted.

Robert Simmons, professor of law at the University of San Diego, said he has been surprised to find judges at Christmas parties thrown by attorneys “and being made much of by the attorneys.” Still, he thinks San Diego judges are careful to prevent any socializing from influencing their official duties.

“San Diego is a unique place,” said Howard Wiener, a former justice on the San Diego-based 4th District Court of Appeal. “It’s the sixth-largest city in the nation, yet it retains a small-town flavor.”

“The town is small enough that bad apples stick out like sore thumbs,” said lawyer Michael T. Thorsnes. “In my 28 years of practice, I have never once felt in any circumstance that I got less than a fair shake in court.”

After Greer was indicted and pleaded guilty, the San Diego Union-Tribune wrote that the investigation was being broadened to include other judges and lawyers besides Adams, Malkus and Frega. An already shaken legal establishment was increasingly agitated.

Bersin asked the newspaper for a correction but the paper refused.

In the Wednesday news conference, Bersin said that “no other judges or attorneys are now, or have ever been, targets of the investigation. The judges and attorneys serving the public in San Diego do so with distinction.”

Walsh struck a similar tone. “These indictments do not suggest that corruption is systemic in the San Diego judiciary,” he said.

Their conciliatory tone may have reduced the angst among attorneys who believed that the investigation put a cloud over the entire San Diego legal system.

“I am saddened by [the indictments] for sure,” said John Seitman, former president of the State Bar of California. “On the other hand, I am not walking around with my head down because I’m a San Diego lawyer.”