Judge Brings Dual Background to Bench

By day, Susan M. Speer was a tough prosecutor who implored juries to recommend the death penalty for convicted cop killers.

By night, she gently cradled sickly newborns as a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at Northridge Hospital Medical Center.

The link between her two professions was her compassion for crime victims and children.

Now Speer, who recently was appointed a Municipal Court judge by Gov. Pete Wilson, is a rookie again, learning to run a courtroom.

But the 45-year-old Woodland Hills resident expects her nursing skills to come into play when family law cases come before her court.

“As a district attorney, I specialized in neglected and abused children,” she said from a downtown courtroom, where she was shadowing a veteran jurist. “Being a nurse helped me in interviewing children, evaluating injuries and examining expert medical witnesses.”

The former head deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County only recently gave up her nursing job to accept the judgeship, which pays $98,000 a year.

“I didn’t want to have any conflicts of interest,” she said. “And I want to focus on becoming a good judge.”

Speer is getting much of her training by shadowing judges in municipal courts throughout the region. She expects to be assigned to a courtroom later this spring.

She said she wants to create an efficient, user-friendly courtroom atmosphere “where people want to testify, lawyers want to try cases and jurors feel comfortable.”

Speer embarked on her multi-career odyssey after receiving a bachelor’s degree from Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles in 1975. She later worked as a pediatric nurse at Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles, specializing in hematology and oncology.

Unable to decide whether to attend graduate school or medical school, Speer instead chose law school.

“I decided to apply on a whim,” she recalled. “Once I got in, I discovered I had an aptitude for it. I liked it better than I thought I would.”

But Speer was in for a long haul. She tended to sick children during the day while attending law classes at night.

“It was difficult physically,” she said. “I would have long shifts, standing on my feet all day. Everyone else would go home and I would sleep in my car until it was time to go to class.” Speer finished Southwestern University School of Law in 1980 while also working at a law firm that specialized in medical malpractice cases. Although the work was challenging, she said, most cases were settled through negotiations in lawyers’ offices. “I never got a chance to go to court,” she said.

Speer got more than her share of court time in the 16 years she spent in the district attorney’s office, beginning in 1981.

Thirteen years later, her prosecutorial skills resulted in the convictions of three suspects in the slayings of a Maywood police officer and a Van Nuys market owner in separate cases.

The same year, Speer also returned to nursing, which she had left for several years while pursuing her legal career. She had missed the children and wanted to keep her medical skills up to date so that she could return to that career someday.

All the while, she still managed to cook gourmet Italian dinners for her husband and two children.

Speer even found time in 1992 to start what is now the 700-member Southern California chapter of the American Assn. of Nurse Attorneys, a nonprofit group based in Baltimore.

Davia Solomon, national president of the 5,000-member association, said that in many ways a relationship between nursing and law enforcement is unavoidable.

“Nurses come into contact quite often with accident victims, medical malpractice cases and abused people,” Solomon said.

“I think what distinguishes Susan is that she listens very well,” Solomon said. “She doesn’t have an agenda.”

Speer said her new job is like an exciting next step.

“It’s funny to be middle-aged now and to start all over again,” she said, “to do something that’s new to you and something that is challenging.

“I feel like I’ve been beamed up and set down on another planet.”