Low-Key Law Rules Catalina

Judge Peter J. Mirich heads to the beach at dawn on Friday mornings to check out his commute.

He’s not eyeballing crowded Los Angeles freeways. He’s studying the waves and the weather, the best way to tell how he will be traveling to his courthouse.

“If it’s foggy the helicopter won’t fly, so you have to take the boat,” the judge explains.

Since 1989, Mirich has been the symbol of justice on Santa Catalina Island, the resort 26 miles off the coast of Los Angeles.

Once a week, the San Pedro-based judge commutes from the mainland to preside over the island’s unusual court docket--from lobster poaching and unlicensed fishing to drunk driving in a golf cart.

Mirich is proud of the island’s low crime rate and its small-town charm, which he likens to Andy Griffith’s squeaky-clean Mayberry.

“I’ve never done a gang case here,” Mirich says. “In 13 years, I’ve done only one adult graffiti case--and it was not an islander.”

Most Catalina criminal cases are so minor they require neither a prosecutor nor a defense lawyer. He has presided over just one murder case on the island--the only one in almost half a century.

As summertime visitors fill the beaches and bars, some inevitably break the rules--receiving tickets for such offenses as riding a bike on busy Crescent Street. For more serious crimes, some tourists must make a return visit to the island to answer to Mirich.

On a recent Friday, the 49-year-old lifeguard-turned-lawyer-turned-judge began his day on his paddleboard before the sun was up, circling Angel’s Gate Lighthouse in Los Angeles Harbor.

When Mirich arrived at the helicopter pad under the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro a little before 8 a.m., his custom-made paddleboard was still strapped to the roof of his white Toyota 4Runner.

On the 14-minute helicopter trip, he caught up on local news by reading the island’s two weekly papers.

Minutes later, Mirich gaveled his court into session in a one-room building in Avalon, the island’s colorful, quaint town.

On this day, he faces a docket of 20 civil and criminal cases. One involves a young woman who has sued an ex-roommate over an unpaid $166 telephone bill.

Then there is the case of the apologetic captain who pleads no contest to a charge of illegal dumping from his boat’s holding tank into the bay.

“I am very, very embarrassed,” Francois Badeau tells Mirich. “It is as stupid as stupid can be. It is a new boat, and the light did not come on when the tank was filled.”

Mirich fines Badeau $60. Local authorities also have banned his vessel from Avalon Harbor for a year.

Also present in court is Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Tracy Sims, who negotiated a plea with a 19-year-old college student.

Jayson Cohen says he postponed a final exam at UC Santa Barbara to take the 6:30 a.m. boat to Catalina for his first court appearance on a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge.

Cohen leaves the courthouse satisfied--except for the $42 he spent to get back to the island by boat. “I think they should compensate you for your ticket price,” he says.

Mirich orders Cohen to pay $311 but says he can complete 50 hours of community service on the mainland instead.

For Sims, the case is “a nice break” from the violent crimes he typically deals with in court on the mainland.

Defense attorney William J. Weilbacher of Ventura notices the casual atmosphere after representing a man charged with driving on a golf course while drunk.

“Except for the people in here, I think I’m the only one of two or three people on this island in a suit and tie,” Weilbacher says.

Later, when Mirich yanks the driver’s license of an islander for driving a car while drunk, he tries to soften the blow.

“On Catalina that should not cause much of a problem,” Mirich tells the defendant, “because you can walk everywhere.”

In another case, the owner of Island Express Helicopter Service, which Mirich uses, has sued an employee to collect repayment of a $5,000 loan.

As the case is called, Mirich asks: “Do I know this person? Is that Mick in Long Beach?”

Mirich knows many of Catalina’s 3,000-plus residents, whose votes he sought when he campaigned in 1988 to become Los Angeles County’s last Justice Court judge, an elective position that no longer exists.

He now sits on the Los Angeles County Superior Court bench and is assigned to the courthouse in his hometown of San Pedro the other four days a week.

Familiarity is typical at the Catalina courthouse.

Once, during jury selection in a domestic violence case, a potential juror told the court he had watched the alleged crime from shore as the defendant struck his victim on a boat in the harbor.

“He turned out to be a star witness in the case,” court clerk Donna Lopez said.

With a part-time judge and limited jail space, in-custody defendants are usually flown to San Pedro so Mirich can arraign them. Sometimes they are returned to Catalina for court. But crime is so unusual on the island that Mirich estimates there are only three or four jury trials a year.

After court, Mirich walks across the street to the public plaza.

He is greeted with a big hug by 83-year-old Fern Whelan, who was court clerk for 46 years until she and her Royal manual typewriter retired in 1996.

At Lolo’s Plaza Barber Shop, Mirich chats with the regular patrons.

Barber Frank Saldana, 64, says he likes having Mirich on the island--if only on Friday.

But he fears that bragging too much about the judge will result in his transfer. The court, he says, is vital to this isolated community.

“Most people cannot afford to go back and forth,” Saldana says. “We’ve got to have a court.”