Judge Apologizes to Attorneys in McDougal Trial

The judge took center stage Friday at the Santa Monica embezzlement trial of Whitewater figure Susan McDougal, apologizing to exasperated attorneys for barging in on their questioning of witnesses.

“I’m an activist judge,” Superior Court Judge Leslie Light explained, moments after a defense attorney called him a curmudgeon. “I will do my best not to interrupt you gentlemen.”

The judge’s mea culpa came after defense attorney Mark Geragos vented his frustration at what he viewed as Light’s interference during his cross-examination of McDougal’s chief accuser, Nancy Mehta, wife of conductor Zubin Mehta. Mehta, who employed McDougal as an assistant from 1989 to 1992--says that her former employee bilked her of more than $150,000.

Light assured the jury that his questioning of Mehta did not mean he did not believe her. The judge said he merely was trying to clarify a point so jurors could better understand it.

So went Friday’s installment in the continuing sideshow involving two bickering lawyers, a voluble defendant with a loyal national following, a wealthy prosecuting witness who once appeared on “Bewitched” and a scolding judge who, before taking the bench in 1969, worked for three years as an actor on “Divorce Court.”

For now, however, the trial has been postponed by McDougal’s injured back. Court was recessed early Friday so she could seek medical treatment, and it remains unclear when testimony can resume.

From the bench, the bespectacled, owlish Light cuts an imposing figure, ruling over his courtroom with an authority drawn from his West Point background. Stern in demeanor, precise in language, this 68-year-old judge brooks no nonsense from the attorneys who appear before him.

But he does have a sense of humor, as well as a way with words. And he does have a fondness for pithy phrases and analogies featuring flying pigs, pink elephants and baseball.

“I certainly don’t consider myself to have the abilities of William F. Buckley to get shadings from the English language, but I don’t consider myself to express Yogi Berra-isms,” he said in court on Friday.

“He’s adorable,” whispered a white-haired woman seated in the spectator section during a courtroom soliloquy earlier in the week.

And, if he doesn’t like the way a lawyer puts a question to a witness, Light is not afraid to ask a better one himself.

The judge has frequently scolded McDougal for talking in court and making facial expressions that might be picked up by jurors.

“You have displayed yourself to be an equal opportunity curmudgeon,” Geragos said, noting that prosecutor Jeffrey Semow has experienced the same frustrations. The defense lawyer complained that the judge’s habit of injecting himself into the proceedings was giving him “a devil of a time” with cross-examination.

McDougal is charged with forging checks, making unauthorized credit card purchases and failing to file state tax returns while she worked for Mehta. The case is unrelated to the Whitewater investigation, which resulted in an Arkansas fraud conviction against McDougal. She gained national attention when she chose to spend 18 months in jail rather than testify about President Clinton’s involvement in the failed land deal.

If convicted of the dozen counts in the Santa Monica case, McDougal could face up to seven years in a California prison.

The issue of whether Mehta authorized her to sign checks and credit card receipts for various purchases lies at the center of the 5-year-old embezzlement case. It involves reams of paper, and a wealthy woman’s word against her former friend and employee’s.

Mehta insists that McDougal stole from her. She testified that she never gave McDougal permission to sign her name to checks or to charge food or merchandise in her name.

The judge’s controversial behavior began as Mehta was midway through her third day on the witness stand, poring through hundreds of checks and receipts. The volume of the paper in the case, and the lawyers’ bickering over what the jury can see and what it cannot, has bogged down the case with lengthy sidebar arguments.

At times, Mehta has been asked to give a check-by-check, receipt-by-receipt accounting of purchases ranging from a Barbie doll to koi to decorate a pond on the grounds of her Brentwood home during a cousin’s wedding.

Geragos confronted Mehta with a series of receipts signed by the cousin and employees, including McDougal and a houseman.

“I never instructed him to or anyone to sign the card,” Mehta said, but suggested that the houseman may have signed by mistake when he picked food up from restaurants. She said she believed that servants and others who ran errands for her needed only show her card when they picked up goods she ordered by telephone.

It was questioning about this arrangement that led to Light’s interruption and Geragos’ protest. Mehta testified that she “had an understanding” that her servants wouldn’t sign for her.

Light then cut in to parse words with the witness. What did she mean by an “understanding”? he asked. Did she mean she held a belief as to the nature of the arrangement? Or did she mean by “understanding” that she and certain staff members had an agreement?

The former, Mehta said.

“Objection!” Geragos said, adding, “Well, judge, it is my cross-examination.”

Earlier, Geragos had shown Mehta thousands of dollars worth of charges on a credit card she claimed to have canceled months earlier. She acknowledged that the charges were for items she should, would and could have used.