Juicy Justice

At the Malibu Courthouse, they are known as “Goldilocks” cases.

A man or woman scales the wall of a beach-or cliff-side mansion. Strolling into the house, the trespasser mixes up a stiff cocktail. Takes a dip in the pool. Maybe even slips between the sheets for a wee nap.

When caught, these intruders tell startled owners or police in perfectly lucid tones that they live there. That the owner invited them in. Or that they just wanted to look around.

Consider the man who broke into a famous Malibu landmark called “The Castle,” built by its eccentric owner to resemble a real fortress.

“He said it was his castle,” Commissioner Terry Adamson at the Malibu Courthouse says dryly, “and that he got it as a reward for balancing the national budget. I feel sorry for them. I’m empathetic. On the other hand, it’s a potentially dangerous situation because they can act on their delusion.”

Indeed. Earlier this year, a man who falsely told a judge he was married to actress Meg Ryan broke into a Malibu home he believed belonged to the actress. A female fan has repeatedly tried to break into Axl Rose’s Malibu estate, claiming she was married to the Guns N’ Roses rocker. Both were quickly apprehended.

“There aren’t a lot of exits here,” says Adamson, who has spent 13 years on the bench in the Malibu courthouse. “We’ve got the highway and the canyon. If people are going to commit crimes here, they’d better think twice.”

But if Malibu is a small, geographically isolated town, it is also a world-renowned haven for the rich and famous. Barbra Streisand, David Geffen, Cher, Courtney Love and Madonna are just a handful of celebrities who have called Malibu home.

These residents can’t help but inject the small town with a tabloid-ready flavor that is more reminiscent of Tinseltown than Mayberry. For starters, there are the misbehaviors of fans drawn to stars. Then there are the high-profile high jinks of the celebrities themselves. Finally, and much more common, are the crimes of lesser-known residents and those who are just passing through the rugged hillsides or 27 miles of oceanfront.

Whatever their transgressions, those who commit crimes are processed through the Malibu courthouse, whose modest, low-slung exterior gives no hint of the celebrities, playwrights, millionaires, moguls, CEOs and lesser mortals who prowl its halls.

If their transgressions are misdemeanors, defendants usually go up before Adamson. Felonies are handled by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lawrence J. Mira, Malibu’s presiding judge since 1987.

Mira, whose jurisdiction encompasses 186 square miles of expensive beachfront, rough canyon and dwindling farmland in Malibu, Topanga Canyon, Calabasas, Hidden Hills and Agoura, is said to have the best--and certainly one of the spiciest--judicial jobs around.

It was Mira who sentenced a tearful and pleading Robert Downey Jr. to three years in prison in 1999 for various drug and parole violations.

Unswayed by the Academy Award-nominated actor’s promises, Mira told Downey he was manipulative, had exhausted the court’s drug rehabilitation options and posed a threat to the public and himself.

“Is there any question that if this defendant continues to use drugs we’re going to be reading his name in an obituary?” Mira said. “We tried rehabilitation, and it simply hasn’t worked.”

And how many judges got to congratulate rocker Tommy Lee on reconciling with his pneumatic then-wife Pamela Anderson Lee after serving jail time for hitting her?

Mira did so in 1999. The judge also endeared himself to metal fans around the world when he lifted a prohibition against Lee playing in venues that sold alcohol.

But the following year, Lee served five days in Los Angeles County Jail for violating parole by drinking alcohol. Chided Mira: “[If you] do not commit to sobriety, then you’re going to come back to this court, and it’ll be a very unhappy experience for you.”

Mira wields carrots and sticks with equal vigor and must steep himself in pop culture as part of the job. Often his legal relationships with celebrities and their drug problems, sexcapades and assaults unfold over years of court appearances.

Consider the wrangles between Mira and onetime bad boy Charlie Sheen, who first appeared before Mira in the late 1990s when he was convicted of misdemeanor battery after attacking his then-girlfriend. The actor popped up again before Mira when he violated his probation by taking illegal drugs.

But in March 2000, Mira agreed to terminate Sheen’s probation 71 days early and wipe the misdemeanor battery conviction off his record, saying that as Michael J. Fox’s replacement on ABC’s “Spin City,” Sheen had “a unique opportunity to be a role model” for youth. “Everyone has their demons, and I believe you’re winning the battle, but you haven’t won yet. Still, you’ve made an enormous turnaround in your life and career. You don’t need me anymore.”

Perhaps wisely, Mira declined to be interviewed for this article. But Charles L. Lindner, past president of the Los Angeles Criminal Bar Assn., avowed in The Times several years ago that Mira had “the best judicial job in L.A. County” because he runs a one-judge courthouse, lives in Malibu, knows many of the people who appear before him and is his own presiding judge.

Like Mira, Adamson, the courthouse commissioner, is a longtime Malibu resident. Both are active in the community, raised children here, teach at Pepperdine School of Law and speak regularly to school and community groups, from Boy Scouts to Kiwanis.

“Judge Mira and I are more in touch with the priorities of the community because we live here. We love this community,” Adamson says.

(By ironic contrast, none of the 29 courthouse employees lives in Malibu. Many say they can’t afford it.)

But living where you judge can also lead to uncomfortable moments. Retired Malibu Judge John J. Merrick, who presided over the courthouse from 1964 to ’86 and has lived in the community for most of his life, says many acquaintances and neighbors came before him on DUI charges over the years. How did he handle it?

“I did my job and was always fair,” he says with equanimity. (Ann Madden, Malibu’s trial court administrator, says that judicial officers recuse themselves if friends, business partners or family come before them.)

Adamson, who processes up to 100 cases a day, recalls being out to dinner with her family in Malibu when their waiter came up and announced proudly that he was doing well on his probation.

“It turns out that I sentenced him,” said Adamson, who didn’t recall the defendant’s face. “I told him, ‘That’s nice.’ ”

Adamson also takes pains to point out that most Malibu cases don’t involve celebrities or even Malibu residents. Many defendants are just passing through and get arrested for drinking on the beach, drinking and driving, camping illegally or other vehicular infractions.

The court cracks down hard on these cases, since fires and car crashes are big problems locally. Adamson says there is an auto fatality almost every three-day weekend (though all was quiet this Labor Day holiday). More than 100 people have died in the last decade on the stretch of Pacific Coast Highway between Santa Monica and the Ventura County line.

But it’s undeniable that some Malibu cases read like sleazy beach thrillers, such as the 33-year-old woman charged in the fatal 1998 shooting of her aspiring actor boyfriend, whose body was found buried behind their rented Topanga Canyon home. She was also charged with marijuana cultivation and embezzling $800,000 from a Beverly Hills printing company and a Malibu businessman and was alleged to have spent the money making the high-society drug scene in Hawaii, London and Amsterdam. (She’s now serving a 40-years-to-life prison term.)

Then there was the surfer charged, a couple of years ago, with beating up an encroaching surfer over territory--the “Locals Only” case in which the courthouse morphed into a Beach Boys setting, complete with surfboards, diagrams of waves and blown-up photos of the beach.

Or the fellow who was arrested for repeatedly molesting horses and was ordered by the court to keep away from Malibu’s livestock.

This keeps things lively for jurors, whose civic participation is much higher than average for Los Angeles. At any given time, the jury pool may include studio heads, CEOs, playwrights, doctors and professors.

“The jurors are smart and unusually educated,” Adamson says. “And they want the experience. Maybe they are affluent enough that they can afford to take a week off work.”

But it’s the celebrity names, of course, that provide most of the glitter.

“When Pamela Anderson came, she was a big draw,” recalls Adamson, who is quick to point out that the blond bombshell wasn’t there as a defendant but to support her then-husband, the misbehaving Tommy Lee.

Some might wonder whether being well known affects a celebrity’s treatment in court. But the judicial officers insist that no bias comes into play.

“We didn’t treat them any differently than anyone else,” Judge Merrick said. “when they got into court they’d be represented by counsel, who would do most of the speaking for them.”

“We don’t put them on a pedestal, and we don’t make an example of them,” Adamson adds. “Celebrities are treated like anybody else. Besides, they’re so common in Malibu.”

And here on their home turf, celebrities generally don’t show up in court with an entourage. Some bring a bodyguard or two. Many come with only their lawyers.

Madden recalls that Carroll O’Connor came in solo to conduct some business.

“He was so polite. He came to the office and popped his head in and said he just wanted to say hello. It made my day.”

Madden admits she’s a bit fuzzy on some of the younger stars. But administrative assistant Misty Tisher lets her know when celebrities are sitting out on the bench and explains what shows they have been on.

“Misty’s our town crier,” Madden says. “She spots them.”

“I have a pretty good eye,” admits Tisher, who lives in Agoura. “We usually recognize them, but we don’t make a big deal about it.”

While Judge Mira may be bound by judicial restraint not to talk to the press, his predecessor, Judge Merrick, entertained a reporter in his Point Dume home for several hours one recent afternoon, reminiscing about all the trouble he’s seen.

Merrick signed the search warrant to gain access to the infamous Spahn Ranch and arrest Charles Manson. With 50 deputies guarding the courtroom, he presided over the preliminary hearing of Manson family member Susan Atkins, who was charged with the murder of Gary Hinman.

In the 1960s, after police arrested a number of people at a now-closed Topanga Canyon nudist club called Elysium, the deeply religious Merrick, who attends Mass daily, ruled in their favor, determining that the 30-year-old county ordinance under which they had been charged was overly broad and unconstitutional.

For this he was called a “pervert” and received hate mail, Merrick says with a laugh. One Malibu woman wrote angrily that he was turning Malibu into “Sodom and Gomorrah.”

But probably the biggest celebrity hurricane ever to hit Malibu was the wedding of Sean Penn and Madonna in 1985. Merrick--who was a friend of the groom’s father, director Leo Penn, a longtime Malibu resident--married the couple.

He recalls that Madonna and her first husband-to-be came to his home to discuss what they wanted to say in the nuptials. When a car came to fetch him, Merrick still didn’t know where he’d perform the ceremony and was surprised to find himself at a Point Dume estate he could have walked to.

“They took me into the room and Sean was cussing and swearing, he was so angry, because the paparazzi had found out and there was already a helicopter circling overhead. They had seen a Spago catering van driving up Pacific Coast Highway and figured all they had to do was follow Wolfgang Puck.”

Merrick, who has lived in Malibu since 1946, when he bought a beachfront lot for $2,300, recalls that in his early days as judge, he’d drive over the canyon road to Calabasas to hear cases at a small courthouse there, which doubled as a dance hall by night and has since closed.

Many other things have changed. The original 1916 one-room brick courthouse on Pacific Coast Highway is now a historic site. Originally Malibu was a circuit court--so called because judges would ride a circuit from one remote courthouse to the next to hear cases. According to a 1971 article in the defunct Santa Monica Evening Outlook, Malibu was the second-busiest circuit court in the state, with jury trials that went on into the wee hours of the night.

“Adjourning at midnight is nothing strange; in fact last month the jury cases concluded at 2 a.m.,” the paper reported.

The old brick building has given way to a sleek, modern courthouse in the Malibu Civic Center. And Malibu was upgraded to a municipal court in 1972 after the area it served hit 40,000 people and became a superior court in 2000. The late-night sessions are long vanished.

But there’s still plenty of action at the Malibu courthouse, which reflects the community it serves.

Says Judge Merrick: “It’s always been a kind of a playground.”