Davis Selects Nominee for High Court

Gov. Gray Davis has scheduled the announcement of his first appointment to the California Supreme Court today amid expectations that his choice will be U.S. District Judge Carlos Moreno.

Moreno, 52, is considered a cautious, middle-of-the-road judge who would be somewhat more conservative than the man he would replace, Justice Stanley Mosk.

Until his death in June, Mosk was generally regarded as the court’s most liberal justice. Like Mosk, Moreno would be the only Democrat on the seven-member court.

Born and reared in Los Angeles, Moreno, a graduate of Yale and Stanford Law School, would become the only Latino member of the court and the third in its history.

Moreno was appointed to the Los Angeles County Municipal Court by former Republican Gov. George Deukmejian and then to the Superior Court by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. Former President Bill Clinton named him to the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in 1998.

A spokeswoman for Davis refused Tuesday to reveal the governor’s choice, but judges on both the state and federal bench said they expect Moreno to win the job.

“I would bet the farm on it,” said one state judge.

Similarly, U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter said he spoke to Burt Pines, Davis’ judicial appointments secretary, earlier this week and had “the distinct impression” that Moreno would get the nod. Hatter until recently was the presiding judge of the federal district bench in Los Angeles.

Latino lawyers groups have pressured Davis to appoint a member of their community to the high court, and many of them are counting on Davis to name Moreno. The court has not had a Latino member since Justice Cruz Reynoso was defeated for retention in 1986.

Hatter said he suspects that Davis worries that some Californians will think Moreno was appointed simply because of his ethnic background.

“But what we have is the best-qualified candidate, who happens to be a minority,” Hatter said. “Anybody looking at Judge Moreno, at his career and entire background, will know how well-qualified he is.”

A clerk in Moreno’s courtroom said late Tuesday afternoon that Davis had not called the judge. She said the jurist had learned that the governor was to announce his choice at a news conference in Los Angeles today only from reporters.

Other candidates Davis has considered include Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dennis Perluss and state Court of Appeal Justices Steven Perren and Dennis Cornell.

Judges describe Moreno as a quiet, friendly man with a good sense of humor. Colleagues from the Superior Court said litigants rarely, if ever, have complained about him. One judge said defense lawyers and prosecutors sometimes have agreed to let Moreno, instead of a jury, make the call in a case, a sign of confidence in his abilities and fairness.

“It means that they could trust him,” said Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Steve Marcus.

Several jurists said they did not know Moreno’s views on abortion or the death penalty. Aides to Davis have said he would appoint a judge who favored abortion rights and capital punishment.

In judging him more conservative than Mosk, legal analysts note that the late jurist often ruled in favor of consumers in business disputes.

Mosk, however, was not uniformly liberal in his decisions. He strongly opposed affirmative action. And when the court voted 4 to 3 to strike down a state law that would have required teenage girls to get permission from a parent or a judge before having an abortion, Mosk was in the minority.

Liberal court watchers have hoped that Davis would appoint Perluss. He has relatively little judicial experience but is described by supporters as intellectually brilliant.

The most conservative of the four considered by Davis is Cornell, who is from Fresno.

Professor J. Clark Kelso of McGeorge School of Law, who has read some of Moreno’s rulings, found them to be “very mainstream, centrist opinions.”

“I don’t see any ideological tilt, either pro-business or pro-consumer,” Kelso said. “He is a judge who knows how to write very clearly. All of his opinions are tightly reasoned. If I had to choose one word to characterize him by, it would be cautious.”

Moreno, president of the Mexican American Bar Assn. in 1982, was born in East Los Angeles. After obtaining his law degree, he returned to Los Angeles to practice. He worked as a prosecutor in the city attorney’s office from 1975 to 1979 and practiced civil law in the Los Angeles firm of Kelley, Drye & Warren for seven years.