Misconduct Complaint Leveled Against Judge

The Los Angeles County public defender is lodging a complaint with state officials charging Superior Court Judge Curtis Rappe with misconduct for delaying a lawyer’s departure from his courtroom to tend to a family medical crisis and for other alleged acts of misbehavior, according to an internal memo obtained by The Times.

“An investigation into the incidents has convinced me that the complaint is warranted and necessary to deter such abuses,” Public Defender Michael P. Judge said in a memo distributed Thursday to his 640 lawyers.

The complaint was mailed Thursday to the California Commission on Judicial Performance in San Francisco, the state’s watchdog on judicial misconduct, sources said.

Judge said in an interview that he decided to act because less serious efforts by his lawyers, such as trying to disqualify Rappe in specific cases, have failed to change his conduct.

Rappe declined to discuss Judge’s action Thursday. Rappe, 57, is a 1987 appointee of Gov. George Deukmejian.

Judge’s one-page memo to his staff refers to several courtroom incidents.

The latest happened during a July murder trial when Rappe refused to let Deputy Public Defender Jeffrey Gilliam leave the courtroom to rush to his wife’s side during a medical emergency involving her 8-month pregnancy until he confirmed a tentative plea bargain with his client.

Sources say Judge’s complaint also cites cases in which he charges that Rappe abused his power when he held a deputy public defender in contempt of court and when he refused to let another lawyer “make an appropriate record” to protect the interests of a defendant.

“The abuses are so profound that I felt that it is incumbent upon me to take the extraordinary step to file a formal complaint,” Judge said Thursday.

Commission officials do not comment on complaints or even acknowledge receiving them.

Gilliam’s encounter with Rappe took place July 5 while defending Adrian Valle on charges that Valle murdered a child. Before court convened that morning, Gilliam and Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephanie Mire had reached a tentative plea bargain calling for Valle to spend 30 years and 8 months in prison. Without the deal, he was facing life plus a second sentence of 25 years to life.

To go over the final details with Valle, Gilliam, 44, a deputy public defender for 14 years, asked Rappe for a brief delay. Rappe refused, telling him to discuss the matter with his client at the noon break.

During an 11:30 break, Gilliam answered an emergency page from his wife, Andrea, a diabetic who was in her eighth month of a high-risk pregnancy. She told him that the baby was in serious trouble and that she was being rushed across the street from the doctor’s office to Tarzana Regional Medical Center, which was at least an hour away from the courtroom in downtown Los Angeles. In another pregnancy a year earlier, she had lost an infant who was near full term.

Gilliam said that he explained the circumstances to Rappe and asked that the trial be recessed until the following morning so he could leave immediately. Prosecutor Mire did not oppose the delay.

Rappe refused to release Gilliam until Gilliam met with Valle in the lockup area near the courtroom to determine whether he would accept the plea arrangement. Gilliam strenuously objected to the delay, but Rappe would not relent. Gilliam complied and met with Valle, who accepted the plea arrangement. Gilliam said the dispute delayed him 20 to 30 minutes. After Gilliam joined his wife at the hospital, the baby, Trevor James, was born healthy.

Rappe has defended his actions, saying that he wasn’t aware of many of the circumstances involving Gilliam’s wife and that he was not told that Gilliam only wanted a recess until the next day.

However, several witnesses, including Mire, said Rappe was informed of the details.

Judge’s complaints against Rappe also involve conflicts in 1997 with two other deputy public defenders, sources said.

In one case, Rappe held Oksana Bihun in contempt of court during a robbery trial and fined her $500, actions that Judge’s complaint describes as an abuse of power, according to sources.

The dispute arose after Rappe issued an order prohibiting Bihun from raising questions about whether a trial witness had a sexual relationship with the victim, according to court records.

During closing arguments, the prosecutor in the trial made an allusion to that issue without prompting an objection from Rappe. But when Bihun referred to the prosecutor’s comments on that issue during her closing argument, Rappe alleged that she violated his court order. An appeals court later overturned Rappe’s contempt citation.

The other 1997 incident involved Deputy Public Defender Verah Bradford and allegations that Rappe made her put her objections in writing during the trial rather than let her make them verbally, as is customary.

She also complained that he frequently refused to let her “make a record,” an essential legal step that lawyers must take during trial to preserve their clients’ rights to challenge a judge’s decision on appeal.

At one point, a vitriolic exchange erupted when Bradford argued during a post-trial hearing that the official trial transcript failed to reflect that she had said in court that Rappe was “yelling” at her and treating her as “some piece of meat.” According to court records Rappe charged that her allegations were “contemptuous” and “perjurious,” and Bradford countered that the judge was being “dishonest” and was a “discredit to the bench.”