Assistant D.A. Will Help Evaluate Judicial Ratings

The county’s chief assistant district attorney has been appointed to a committee to evaluate the way judicial candidates are rated, a procedure criticized earlier this year after one of Gov. Pete Wilson’s nominees was deemed unqualified, officials announced Wednesday.

Maurice Evans is among seven people statewide appointed to make suggestions for improving the candidate-rating process used by the Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation.

“I am very pleased to be appointed and I’m looking forward to working with the other committee members on this,” Evans said after receiving news of his appointment Wednesday.

The committee was formed in response to charges that the commission was biased against conservative nominees following Wilson’s nomination of Janice Rogers Brown to the California Supreme Court. The commission gave Brown a rating of unqualified, but she was appointed by the governor anyway. Others say the commission’s secretive procedures result in a lack of accountability.

The review panel will be led by California Court of Appeal Associate Justice James D. Ward, who served as a district attorney in Riverside County before being appointed to the bench in 1993.

Also on the committee are Rex Heinke, a partner at the Los Angeles law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; Peter F. Kaye, the editorial director of KNSD-TV in San Diego and a former press secretary for President Ford; Ophelia Basgal, executive director for Alameda County’s Housing Authority; Terrance Flanigan, a partner in The Flanigan Law Firm; and Ann Ravel, Santa Clara’s chief assistant county counsel.

The committee is expected to present its final report by the end of the year.