No Unanimous Verdict on Judge in Tuffree Trial

The murder trial of social studies teacher Daniel Allan Tuffree is no ordinary case, nor is the bearded jurist presiding over it an average Ventura County judge.

For Tuffree is the first defendant in 25 years to stand trial in Ventura County for killing a police officer.

And Superior Court Judge Allan L. Steele--unlike the majority of Ventura County’s judges--has never served as a prosecutor nor even practiced criminal law as a lawyer.

In fact, the 67-year-old Steele--a former divorce lawyer who worked his way through law school as a ballroom dance instructor and Borscht Belt joke writer and comedian--has served barely five years on Ventura County’s criminal bench.

Seasoned defense attorneys slam the genial Democrat and Ventura resident as being entirely too fond of backing the prosecution on objections and arguments over trial evidence.

But Steele also has won the respect and admiration of prosecutors, fellow judges and former family law colleagues, who praise his compassion, intellect and instincts about those he judges.

“I think he generally has compassion for people, and he has good insight and a lot of empathy,” said Superior Court Judge Lawrence Storch, who has served many years on Ventura County’s criminal and civil benches.

“If he can see a glimmer of hope for somebody in terms of future promise, I think that he’ll pick up on it and act accordingly--he might give them a break,” Storch said.

For his own part, Steele refuses to discuss the heaviest case on his calendar these days--the trial of Tuffree for the August 1995 slaying of Simi Valley Policeman Michael Clark.

But it is clear he relishes the job--if not the stress--of judging.

“I think the purpose of any judge is not to be a rubber-stamp for everybody, but to look at each individual case and deal with individuals as individuals,” he said. “I sleep well knowing some people are in state prison, and some of them I agonize over.”

Steele was appointed on New Year’s Eve 1982, the last day of Gov. Jerry Brown’s last term. His resume and case history outline a life seasoned by his New York roots and steeped in the law.

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Born in 1929, Steele grew up in Brooklyn.

He worked as a comedy writer and comic in the Catskills during summers while studying at Brooklyn College and Brooklyn Law School. And during the school year, he taught Arthur Murray instructors how to dance and performed dance exhibitions at El Morocco nightclub in New York City.

After passing the New York state bar, Steele went to work for plaintiffs’ personal injury lawyers in 1952--only to resign and move to California five years later after a string of jobs with small firms kept him trapped in pretrial work.

He was admitted to the California bar in 1958, and immediately went to work on trials. But after a tort-law partnership formed in 1963 with three other Ventura County lawyers fell apart in 1971, Steele began to grow weary of personal injury cases.

Civil law was frustrating. Plaintiffs often played amateur attorney, he said, and they ignored his learned professional advice by refusing to settle for less than an amount so high that a Ventura County jury would never grant the award.

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So in 1973, Steele switched to handling divorces and family law--a job he found more satisfying.

Steele--who saw his own 20-year marriage to his first wife fall apart in what he once termed “a very ugly divorce”--has said about practicing family law: “There is nothing these people can go through that I haven’t experienced.”

“When you’re doing family law, you’re dealing with people who are truly, temporarily, nuts,” Steele said recently. “They’ll get better, but for the time being, they’re crazy. You can’t just say, ‘Let him have the lamp,’ because the way they’re acting is not rational, it’s pretty emotional from their point of view.”

After his divorce, Steele remarried 13 years ago. His wife, Berta Steele, is an independent fund-raising consultant who is working by contract with the Ventura County Community Foundation.

She ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Ventura City Council in 1989, finishing eighth in a field of nine candidates vying for three seats. Berta Steele has one adult child by her first marriage, while her husband has three adult children by his first marriage.

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After nearly a dozen years at family law, Steele won an appointment to the Superior Court bench from departing Gov. Brown.

Ventura County Court Commissioner John Pattie--a former family lawyer who now presides over family cases--watched Steele settle in and shine at what many lawyers acknowledge can be truly painful work.

Steele quotes an old adage, which states that in criminal law you see bad people at their best, and in civil law you see good people at their worst.

“I think Allan’s always had a desire to be helpful to people,” Pattie said. “And I think he found the law a way to do that and not just earn a living.

“He applies the law to the situation, and at the same time he recognizes the human condition and tries to find a law that will come to a just result,” Pattie said. “He was willing to apply the law in imaginative ways for the benefit of individuals.”

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When a high school junior sought protection from her molesting father, Pattie recalled, Steele quickly agreed to shield the girl with a domestic restraining order. Steele also saw that she was rapidly lodged in a safe house. And he provided state financial support for her without going through the lengthy case review required of county social workers--an investigation that later took place and backed up his decisions, Pattie recalled.

But some critics say this sort of seat-of-the-pants jurisprudence also allows Steele to be biased in favor of prosecutors--even when legal precedent might support a ruling in favor of the defense.

Steele worked a variety of assignments--handling family law, civil trials and general trials--before he was assigned full time in 1991 to criminal trials.

There, Steele has gained a reputation among defense attorneys as being poorly read on the cases that govern criminal law--and as being overly pro-prosecution in his rulings.

‘It’s my feeling that Judge Steele is awe-struck by the authority of the district attorney in this county,” said James Farley, a veteran criminal defense attorney, who was Steele’s partner in the late ‘60s. “And as such, he leans towards them in all of his decisions.”

Defense attorney Timothy Quinn described sentencing hearings before Steele: First, the judge asks the defense to outline the defendant’s background, criminal history, facts of the case, sentencing possibilities and the request for a reasonable sentence, Quinn said.

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“Judge Steele then says, ‘I think that’s very reasonable, this is the kind of sentence that’s appropriate, but let’s hear from the district attorney,’ ” Quinn said.

But after the prosecutors argue, Quinn said, “It’s quite often that the sentence will be upped because of the influence that the district attorney’s office has” over Steele.

Many defense attorneys believe Steele sides with the prosecution “and goes out of his way not to anger the D.A.’s office,” Quinn said. That is because Steele does not want to be “papered into civil”--or reassigned to civil trials because too many prosecutors have moved to exclude him from their cases, Quinn said.

But prosecutors dismiss these criticisms as sour grapes.

“They’re used to getting away with murder in front of other judges, that’s why they make that complaint,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald Glynn, a veteran homicide prosecutor.

“I think his statements are well-thought out, well-balanced and fair.”

What’s more, Glynn said, Steele maintains a cool temper and good humor during long, passionate arguments by attorneys in the midst of difficult trials.

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Steele himself waved off the criticism as “nonsensical” and explained his personal mission on the bench.

“I think most people who work in my courtroom regularly will tell you I’m against violence of every kind. Violent, serious offenders are not treated kindly by me,” he said. “However, addicted people I have nothing but sympathy for. I’m very much in favor of programs for addicted people.”

Sentencing laws are but guidelines, open to interpretation, he said.

“Any judge can impose the sentences that are laid down for us by the Legislature,” Steele said. “But every now and then, I can save somebody. That’s the only thing that makes me come in here day in and day out is that some days I can save somebody.”

He picked up a glittering silver object from his desk--an Alcoholics Anonymous key chain awarded to a woman who had completed one year of sobriety.

When the woman first appeared in Steele’s courtroom on yet another in a string of petty crimes, “she was a poly-substance abuser, she was a thief, and she had some emotional problems and she was ill,” Steele said.

“The jail didn’t want her, they didn’t feel they had a place for her,” but her attorney pushed to get the woman enrolled in a substance-abuse program. And Steele said he postponed sentencing the woman several times until a vacancy opened.

The woman stayed in the program and got sober. One year later, Steele said, “she gave that to me for my birthday. That’s meaningful to me. That’s why I’m here.”

In his brief time on the criminal bench, Steele has served on his share of high-profile criminal cases.

He sentenced Edward “Tony” Throop to two concurrent life-without-parole prison terms for a 1991 drive-by shooting that killed two men outside a Saticoy baptism party. Throop was 17 at the time of the slayings, and Steele made him the first Californian to receive such a stiff sentence for a crime committed as a minor.

From the bench, Steele sympathized openly with Throop’s mother and the victim’s families: “The impact of this tragedy is so enormous that it has caused me to spend too many sleepless nights,” he said.

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Steele sent a California Youth Authority counselor to prison for six years and eight months in 1991 for raping and molesting a 16-year-old ward.

He convicted a Simi Valley eighth-grader in 1994 of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced him to four years in the California Youth Authority for the fatal stabbing of a 14-year-old classmate. The prosecution had wanted second-degree murder and a stiffer sentence.

And Steele presided over the scandalous embezzlement trial of Father David Dean Piroli, the Simi Valley priest who was acquitted of charges that he stole $60,000 in collection money from two Ventura County churches.

In the Tuffree trial, as in all his cases, Steele tries to govern his courtroom with a blend of businesslike brusqueness and affable humor.

He greets jurors with a warm “good morning,” and occasionally jokes with them.

During sidebar conferences with lawyers, Steele urges jurors to chat away so they will not overhear the arguments that attorneys must make outside their presence.

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Once, when the jurors’ nattering threatened to drown out the attorneys’ huddle, Steele joked, “You’re getting really good at that” and wondered aloud whether he had taught them too well.

During arguments over a minor evidentiary matter before trial began, Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter Kossoris began arguing a point before Deputy Public Defender Howard Asher had finished talking.

Asher’s co-counsel, Deputy Public Defender Richard Holly, jumped in with an “ExCUSE me . . . “ to protest Kossoris’ interruption.

“Excuse ME!” Steele roared. “I’M the one running this courtroom.”

He glared in the resulting silence. Then, as Holly apologized to say he was only trying to keep order, Steele softened and repeated with a sly smile, “I’m the one running this courtroom.”

And the argument continued in a more orderly fashion.