Injudicious Disparity

One of every three Ventura County residents is Latino.

Only one of Ventura County’s 27 judges is Latino.

We don’t think the disparity means that justice can’t be dispensed in an evenhanded way in Ventura County.

But if the concept of diversity has any value at all, we have to express our disappointment that Gov. Gray Davis didn’t take the opportunity last week to enhance it on the Ventura County bench.

For years, critics of the local judiciary have portrayed it as too white, too male and too laden with recent prosecutors.

Those criticisms are right on point.

In making two appointments this week, Davis did go outside the old-boy’s club of local prosecutors. That’s a good move, in our opinion, but nobody should be too surprised that the state’s top Democrat chose not to make his picks from a district attorney’s office run by the county’s most powerful Republican, Michael D. Bradbury.

For his first judicial appointments in Ventura County, the governor selected Frederick H. Bysshe and Tari L. Cody. Well-known around the courthouse, Bysshe owns a downtown Ventura law firm. Cody, who will become the fifth woman on the Ventura County bench, works for a Westlake Village law firm specializing in municipal matters.

We have no reason to think these two appointees won’t make good judges.

However, in naming them, the governor failed to address a serious imbalance in the scales of justice.

Twenty-five of those who sit on the local bench are white. One is African American and one is Latino.

Judges are immensely powerful, the only public servants who have the authority not only to alter lives but to end them. They have no term limits and, under a system where they stand for retention rather than run for reelection, their longevity is virtually assured. When attorneys are appointed to fill vacancies or rare new positions, they are likely to hold the jobs for the rest of their careers.

With glacial turnover on the bench, each opening represents a chance to better reflect the community over which the judges can exert such huge influence. In Ventura County jails, roughly half the inmates at any given time are Latino. As time goes on, Latinos will comprise an even greater percentage of the county’s population; they will become the majority, demographers predict, in 2037.

It would be naive and insulting to assume that minorities can get a fair hearing only from minority judges. But for people to have faith in the system that determines their fate, they must believe that no qualified person is excluded from its highest ranks on the basis of their color.

Besides, no judge can suffer from too much understanding. To the extent that a judge knows the community, he or she will be in a better position to serve it.

Critics of Gov. Davis say he requires prospective judges to express a strong belief in the death penalty. If that’s so, perhaps it knocked some qualified minority candidates out of the running in Ventura County, or dissuaded others from even applying.

As it is, we’re confident that the vast majority of people who come before local judges will receive a fair deal. In the governor’s next appointments, we hope he considers a fair deal for the community.