Well, some members of the bar have right to be scared enough to stay silent. The lawyers I hired for 14k were scared enough and then dirty enough to take the money but not do any of the work they were paid for.
Judge Manuel Real had a storied history of intimidating lawyers into submission and getting away with it for years. He jailed many lawyers who sought to use their education and skills to protect the rights of their clients, and he made them know not to fight for their clients or else. The "or else" is jaling and professional ruin. Pretty Serious stuff. It is no wonder that the lawyers in my case ran off, but it is a wonder that they saw fit to take the money and run.
Despite some recent censure and the vast familiarity so many in the L.A legal world have of Manuel Real's cruelty and lawlessness, Judge Real still sits smirking on the bench. There on a federal bench, he is perched, and ready to dole out more and more injustice till his dying day. What a screwy system. Judges commit treason and crimes against humanity, and they can't be removed. It's bad in all courts but it's really bad in the Federal Courts. There they have judgeship for life, and the bad judges take full advantage of this lifetime pass. In my case, there is some small(very small solace) that such trespassers of law such as Judge Maria Stratton, Judge Karla Kerlin, and Judge Samantha Jessner, have been moved to other courts for the time being. Unfortunately, I recently discovered that Judge Jessner might have been moved to the Mental Health Court not as a punishment but as a reward. So, it goes. And, so absolute powers are absolutely awful to behold when so abused.
The law just doesn't apply to judges and they steal liberty and even life, and get away with it . It's a national tragedy that too few know of. But, one where everyone seems powerless to change it.
Back to Manuel Real and why I even am privy to this dastardly bastard.
For many years while Manny was up to NO GOOD, Maria Elena Stratton was there in that very courthouse. Her alleged role: To protect the rights of those too indigent to pay for top flight attorneys(the type you would need if facing a federal charge,)
Judge Maria Stratton was the first female federal Public Defender. How prestigious. Her and her husband, Paul Sadowsky, are quite the power couple. Maria Stratton was the last line of defense between a defendant having rights or having those rights "waived." The last line between justice and injustice, liberty and confinement.
And, I shudder at this thought. I shudder too at the thought of Judge Maria Stratton running for office or pursuing a federal judgeship. It is bad enough that Judge Maria Stratton is on the loose, at all. The fact that she might try to attain even more power is something that should be a national concern. Shudder.
I shouldn't be shuddering alone. This is very scary. Why? Because, Judge Maria Stratton is a true blue human monster who has the power to destroy. She followed no law and was a willing and gleeful conspirator when she lorded over the poor souls who might find themselves in Division 95 of the L.A Superior Court, a few years back. Her actions leave not one doubt that she is a vicious opportunist masquerading as a public servant.
She denied any bail in my case in contravention to all known law, and she worked hand in hand with malicous shleppers like Martin Boags and Richard Vagnozzi to decimate me and my family . She did so because she strove to help the prosecution avoid a trial that they would lose, if any law was considered. She did so because she is corrupted to the extreme, and is willing to do things we'd only expect from Hiteler or Stalin or other ruthless demagogues. Even many ruthless demogues would not sink so low as did Judge Maria Stratton.Well, guess what? Judge Maria Stratton got foiled. And, the her cronies in the prosecution and police got foiled too . At the last minute, a Dr. Suzanne Dupee, came and saved the day
Very strange that the commitment papers prepared by the clerk have no date of printing or preperation. No?
Recently, I found out that Tig Notaro, in order to pursue her cancer hoaxes and other malfeasances, is telling a Zeke Iddon, and others that I was "committed" in order to have others not listen to what I have to say. Thanks Judge Maria Stratton et al for allowing her lies to live and even thrive.
Well, Tig Notaro is as low as it gets, and that's no surprise. Why this Zeke Iddon wart sees fit to defame me in this way all over the internet is another stupid mystery.
But, Zeke Iddon, and anyone else who might see this: No, I was never comitted though such an ominous ploy was in the works.The same ploy then used on Melissa Balin.
Evidence? This is all I have in document form.
But, Judge Maria Stratton was not satisfied and only after DA Mathew Byrne told her to set any bail she wanted cause he didn't know about the case would she even then suddenly come up with the random figure of 10k. This make no sense. If you consider that I never did one thing to compromise the Own recognizance release I had maintained for 15 months then it really makes no sense and shows that the lawyer I had retained is not doing his job and that Judge Maria is a sociopath who is very knowingly conspiring in this dark ages ploy.
Flash Forward to 4 months later and being left at the mercy of a political minded public defender named Alissa Malzman Sterling who didn't want to lose it all but didn't want to win it all and upset those she would work with everyday. She was happy to win 6 and throw one to the prosecution. I was not. Neverthless, these were the disposition, Judge Jessner and Kerlin and Stratton and the Mayor's dim looking sister, and Robert Vanderet, and all you shmucks who see every defendant as guilty no matter what.
SEVEN CHARGES EITHER DISMISSED OR AQUITTED. FOUR CHARGES ADDED A MONTH BEFORE TRIAL AS A MEANS TO TERRORIZE ME INTO A PLEA, DISMISSED BY THE PROSECUTORS IN THE "FURTHERANCE OF JUSTICE." This was done right before trial. The nature and addition of the charges are too obscene to believe. I'll get to that later. 2 CHARGES ACQUITTED BY THE HONORABLE JUDGE MOORE ON AN ORAL MOTION FROM THE DEFENSE. VERY VERY RARE DISPOSITIONS, MARIA THE MONSTER. I wish I could think that you feel awful about what you did, but you wouldn't do it in the first place if you weren't a sociopath.
I'll start shouting. Then, one charge, which the public defender threw, in order to make nice with the prosecution ended in a hung jury. If any effort was made on this charge it would have been acquitted but as Alissa Malzman Sterling admitted, " I work for the city."So it was hung 11-1 for guilt. And, Judge Randolph Moore, saw enough,and understood enough, and immediately dismissed it in the interests of justice. Hmmmmm! Lawyely types know what that means, and how very rare and telling is such a disposition. No retrial for you, Freulein Katie Ford. Bernie Brown is going to be so angry with you. Carmen Trutanich won't invite you to any parties, Los Angeles City Attorney Katie Ford. You tried so hard and you lied so hard and you still lost. You were a good nazi but god was on our side. Too bad so sad etc.
This is the utterly baseless and wasteful trial that Judge Maria Stratton tried to derail by participating in a Stalin Era Competency Scheme. She is evil, plain and simple and she must not attain higher office. This would pose an even more serious danger to society. Ironically, Judge Maria Stratton is a danger to others and should be forcibly medicated with potent anti- corruption medicines. I suggest that the doctors at Patton be on high alert as she is as dangerous as it gets.
So, I know of such judges like Manny" the monster" Real. So many it's too scary to recount. The most wicked were Judge Samantha Jessner, Judge Maria Stratton, and Judge Karla Kerlin.
Judge Richard Fruin, Judge Gerald Rosenberg, Judge Mark Mooney, Dennis Landin, and Robert Vanderet are all complicit and corrupt bastards but the three ladies mentioned above are just even more chilling to behold. The jury is still out on the Mayor's dim seeming sister, Mary Lou Villar De Longoria(such a fancy name for such a shabby idiot) A virtual coven of judges, those three. Samantha Jessner, Kerlin, and Stratton are darkhearted characters who blatantly conspire with malicious prosecutions and are willing to utilize tactics from the dark ages to assist their voting base i.e prosecutors and police. They don't even pretend. It's astounding to see them grinning, as they ignore every right you were taught existed, and make a joke out of every amendment known to man.
Kerlin looking kind of evil, on second thought. She was a cutthroat Vegas show girl before being a dirtbag legal professional. Tragic. Go back to dancing, Karlatini. PLEASE.
Samantha "Satan" Jessner playing at judge while quietly stewing in evil juice. Run children, run. This Poly Parent is perverted!!! She was a corrupt federal prosecutor before becoming a filthy judge . I'd bet she and Maria Stratton strategize ways to screw people over Lattes at Starbucks.
Me, looking at some motion I had to write to stave off these nutjobs. I'm better looking but this will do ;(
Ugly Maria's husband, Paul Sadowsky, must know. I'd bet Gregory Jessner is just as bad as his vile wife too. One wouldn't want Paul Sadowsky as their civil rights lawyer. He cannot be a good man if he married a monster like Maria. Maria Elana "the Sharma loving ogre" Stratton won't allow any bail for no legal reason and she ordered notoriously greedy doctors to falsify reports when she was the lord of Division 95. She broke all laws and her Hipaa violations are obscene. What a disgusting display of absolute corruption masquerading as some elite of the legal world. So much dirt on that evil bitch, and soon it will be presented. But, in the meantime, those who may google Judge Maria Stratton, look at this article, and note this pearl from the diseased viper that is "Judge Maria Stratton."
“Everybody has a horror story about a trial they had with Judge Real,” says Maria Stratton, laughing because she thinks well of him. She was the public defender for the Central District of California from 1993 to 2006 and is now a judge in Los Angeles Superior Court
Stay strong Mr. Gary Dubin.You won't be seen as a kook some fine day soon. Maybe your enemies will get stricken as Tig Notaro was. Justice must come somehow.
Features
Real Trouble
A federal
judge's behavior could move the line between judicial freedom and misconduct
Posted Sep 1,
2008 7:10 AM CST
By Terry Carter
By Terry Carter
Judge Real
Photo by Virginia Lee Hunter
Photo by Virginia Lee Hunter
Gary Dubin spent
19½ months in a California federal prison and returned to Hawaii in October
1996 to practice law. The state’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, in an
extremely unusual decision concerning a matter of moral turpitude, determined
that a finding of professional misconduct was “not warranted.” Later, even the
U.S. Internal Revenue Service reversed itself, saying he didn’t owe the $1.5
million that was the basis of his three misdemeanor convictions for failure to
file tax returns.
In fact, the
agency gave him nearly $100,000, including interest, from payment in an earlier
tax year. The IRS had found that he indeed had substantial business losses and
deductions for the years in question, and that they could be carried back.
He can’t recoup
the time behind bars; the same goes, thus far, for the $131,000 the judge fined
him. In 2006, the IRS looked into the possibility of crediting the fine to his
next tax liability, but found it couldn’t because the money went to the court.
Dubin still
seeks redress beyond his vindication from the bar and the IRS. He has filed
complaint after complaint in venue after venue against the man who sentenced
him—including a 2006 mandamus petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, where cert
was denied.
Dubin had been
Hawaii’s example in “Project Esquire,” a nationwide dragnet by the IRS to snare
lawyers for failure to file tax returns. Dubin’s case had been scheduled for a
bench trial with a magistrate there.
But on short
notice, it found its way to the docket of U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real—a
jurist known for a heavy hand with errant lawyers in the Central District of
California—who was visiting on the bench from Los Angeles.
Gary Dubin
Photo by Chris McDonough
Photo by Chris McDonough
Dubin claims
Real, now 84, railroaded him 14 years ago. It is a rare federal judge who
hasn’t attracted such complaints. But there have been many similar complaints
about Real (the judge pronounces it “reel”) over four decades by plaintiffs,
defendants and lawyers alike, as well as appellate decisions occasionally
attacking the judge’s handling of cases. Three times this year, cases have been
summarily removed from Real’s docket.
In one decision
by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March, U.S.
v. Hall, the court remanded the case of two men convicted of securities
fraud and ordered that it be given to a different judge.
The opinion
noted “the catalog of inappropriate behavior by the trial court is long, so we
merely summarize it here.” One example: “Sua sponte interposing adverse
evidentiary rulings with such frequency that the government was effectively
relieved of its responsibility to make objections.”
“That’s what he
did to me, among other things,” says Dubin. In May he reworked his detailed,
document-rich petition and filed it with the Judicial Conference of the United
States, which recently expressed serious concerns about the judge’s actions in
scores of cases going back to the mid-1980s.
Since his
conviction was upheld on appeal (though the 9th Circuit accepted on its face a
crucial finding of fact that seems indisputably erroneous), Dubin knows he is
seen by some—especially since serving as his own lawyer—as a kook wearing a
tinfoil hat.
“I have to
pursue it,” the 69-year-old Dubin still says. “It was wrong.”
JUDICIAL REVIEW
The Judicial Conduct and Disability Committee of the U.S.
Judicial Conference asked (PDF) the 9th Circuit Judicial Council in
January to review 89 of Real’s cases in which the appeals court found problems.
(The number reportedly has been cut somewhat. And the review would not include
Dubin’s conviction, because it was upheld on appeal.)
Judge Real did
not respond to requests for an interview. He has granted them a number of times
over the years with various publications. But he lately has hunkered down and
lawyered up to battle investigations into whether he has a “pattern and
practice” of not giving reasons for his decisions when required and whether it
is “willful.”
“The most
interesting and far-reaching question is what are the limits? Where do you draw
the line between judicial freedom to make mistakes—wrong decisions—which is
protected, and judicial misconduct, which isn’t?” says Arthur Hellman, a
professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and a leading authority
on federal judicial ethics.
“Does there
come a point where a willful pattern and practice becomes misconduct?” Hellman
continues. “This touches closely on the substance of judicial decision-making,
which is off-limits from disciplinary proceedings. It could be a major test
case of where that line is.”
David Oswalt, a
senior counsel in the Los Angeles office of Arnold & Porter, heads Real’s
team of lawyers, which draws from other firms as well as academia, but says he
cannot comment given the nature of the proceedings.
After
congressional rumblings in recent years about replacing the judiciary’s
self-regulation with an inspector general, the U.S. Judicial Conference is
pushing harder for circuits to deal more forcefully with errant judges. Real
became a prominent example in this effort. He was called to appear at a 2006
hearing of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, which was considering his
possible impeachment.
“If the
Democrats had not taken back control of the Congress shortly after that, he
might have been impeached,” says Henry Weinstein, who for many years covered
the 9th Circuit for the Los Angeles Times before recently leaving.
On the heels of
such criticism, the U.S. Judicial Conference implemented in April the
first-ever nationwide rules and procedures for all circuits’ handling of
judicial misconduct complaints. It’s a step away from the decentralization
that has given the circuits wide latitude in dealing with their own.
And one element
in the new disciplinary procedures was clearly tailored to address the kinds
of issues that have come up with respect to Real.
The changes
resulted from recommendations by a committee headed by Supreme Court Justice
Stephen G. Breyer. In 2004, partly responding to complaints from Congress,
then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist created the committee to study whether
the 1980 Judicial Conduct and Disability Act had been effective in dealing with
complaints against judges.
The Breyer
committee found that while for the most part the law was effective, there were
significant shortcomings in high-profile matters. The report detailed several
instances without naming names, but one could be clearly identified as Real.
The report said that actions by the chief judge and circuit council in dealing
with a complaint against him were “inconsistent with the law.”
The rules
declare that a “chief judge shall not undertake to make findings of fact about
any matter that is reasonably in dispute.” Still, the complaint against Real
was twice dismissed by Chief Judge Mary Schroeder based on her own findings—and
upheld by the 9th Circuit council.
Likewise, the
Judicial Conference’s conduct committee found its hands tied when considering
an appeal by the complainant: It could review only matters in which a chief
judge named a special investigative committee, which Judge Schroeder had not
done.
Under the new
rules suggested by the Breyer committee, the conduct committee now can request
that a circuit appoint one.
Compared to
federal rules for judges, state canons for judicial ethics are more specific as
to what judges can and cannot do. And it has been a long-held belief in the
federal circuits that they could, and should, effectively police their
own—often with a quiet, personal touch.
In the early
1990s, Charles Geyh, a professor at the Indiana University School of Law,
interviewed more than 30 current and former chief judges in the circuits to
study how they handled complaints against judges. He found that informal measures
for dealing with abusive or troubled judges seemed to work.
“But as I’ve
gotten farther down the road and also studied judicial discipline at the state
level, I’ve begun to appreciate that even if federal judges take keeping a
clean shop seriously, there still are two problems: The public doesn’t know
that they’re doing so, so they suspect nothing is happening; and federal judges
take pride in collegiality, making it very hard for them to deal with their own
dirty laundry.”
REAL’S MODEL
Gregory Ellis
Photo by Thomas Broening
Photo by Thomas Broening
Over the years,
Manuel Real has told a story about a case he had as a young prosecutor in the
early 1950s in front of a judge who became his judicial role model.
Real was prosecuting
two men charged with sending pornography through the mail—nothing more than
bare breasts; it was the early 1950s. One pleaded guilty before Judge Peirson
Hall, who promptly acquitted the other in a bench trial. The first man then
asked to withdraw his plea and go to trial with Hall. The judge agreed.
That piqued
Real, who demanded a jury trial. The judge obliged, telling his courtroom clerk
to call a jury for 10 p.m. Real said he couldn’t prepare that soon.
Hall’s reply:
Case dismissed for lack of prosecution.
The story
brings smiles to most who hear it. But if adopted generally, such an approach
in the courtroom could free the guilty or send the innocent to prison.
Los Angeles
criminal defense lawyer Stanley Greenberg believes one of his clients spent
more than a year behind bars, fully innocent, before the case, U.S. v.
Mayans, was remanded and later dropped.
On appeal, the
9th Circuit found Real made four reversible rulings concerning testimony and
evidence. But the circuit was particularly rankled about what it viewed as the
unconstitutional denial of an interpreter for the defendant, who had come from
Cuba and struggled with English.
The remand
opinion noted that “we find ourselves in the peculiar situation of being unable
to review the district court’s determination that appellant did not need an interpreter.
The trial judge never conclusively made that determination, but rather urged
appellant over and over to try testifying in English—to ‘try it.’ ”
Otherwise, Real
had said from the bench, the testimony “takes twice as long.”
Although
Greenberg, who was a federal prosecutor in L.A. in the early 1970s, is
reluctant to criticize Real, others familiar with the case say he’s still
dismayed nearly 16 years later. At trial, instead of asking whether the
prosecution had any more questions for a witness, an exasperated Greenberg is
said to have asked if Real had anything further to add.
“He’s a complex
person and there is another side to him,” Greenberg says now. “I’ve seen him do
extraordinarily compassionate things from time to time, taking great interest
in probationers and actually reading whatever I submitted—which you don’t
always expect with other judges.
“But given a
choice, it’s not a courtroom I’d ever choose. It’s very unpleasant because he
makes it very unpleasant.”
Off the bench,
Real is described by most who know him—including some who try to avoid his
courtroom—as a caring gentleman and a charming, pleasant figure at social and
professional gatherings.
Manny Real, as
many call him, grew up in San Pedro, Calif., where he lives today. His parents
emigrated from Spain and his father was a grocer.
For decades, he
has insisted his law clerks live near enough to him that they can ride together
for the 35- to 45-minute drives to and from the courthouse.
“It was our
alone time with the judge,” says Gregory Ellis, who clerked with the judge from
1999 to 2000. “We would listen to NPR and discuss the news, or we could talk to
him about pending cases, what he thought of them, any motions we had heard; and
if he had them, he’d ask us questions.”
Real takes an
interest in staff throughout the courthouse, Ellis says: “He tries to create a
family atmosphere for everybody.”
After finishing
at Loyola Law School of Los Angeles in 1951, Real spent four years as an
assistant U.S. attorney there and then 10 years in private practice with his
brother in San Pedro.
In 1964, a
close friend who was an influential Democrat recommended him to be U.S.
attorney in Los Angeles. Just two years into the job, Real was appointed to
the federal bench by President Lyndon Johnson.
Probably Real’s
most significant judicial decision came early in his career. In 1970, he
ordered busing to desegregate the Pasadena public schools. It was the first
such order outside the South. A Perris, Calif., elementary school was later
named for him.
His most
notorious decision was in 1985, after Hustler magazine publisher Larry
Flynt appeared before him on a contempt charge from another judge in U.S. v.
Flynt.
At sentencing,
Flynt repeatedly taunted Real: “Motherf-----, is that the best you can do?”
Not to be
outdone, Real upped the ante each time: from six months to 12 months to 15
months. The scene was in the 1996 movie The People vs. Larry Flynt.
In real life,
Real was reversed; the 9th Circuit ruled Real did not take into account Flynt’s
mental competency.
PERSONAL TOUCH
Victor Sherman
Photo by Thomas Broening
Photo by Thomas Broening
With more
normal defendants, Real is often known for his compassion, and—sentencing
guidelines be damned—if he thinks a person is salvageable, he crafts unique
remedies, often with thousands of hours of community service in lieu of doing
time. He monitors each of these probationers personally.
In a case in
2000, he went too far to help one of his probationers. On his own motion, Real
seized her personal bankruptcy case and, based on ex parte communication with
her, stopped her landlord (former in-laws) from evicting her or even collecting
rent.
It is the
matter that found its way into the Breyer committee’s report for having been
mishandled by the 9th Circuit.
“Because he
cares so much and gets personally involved in cases, I think that sometimes
backfires on him,” says Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles
and now a professor at Loyola Law School there.
Real received a public
reprimand (PDF) in January for his handling of the bankruptcy
matter, though it took five years after the initial complaint was filed in
2003. Interestingly, the complaint came from Stephen Yagman, a lawyer with no
interest in the case—other than a grudge against Real.
It is a grudge
Yagman has carried since 1984, when Real fined him $250,000 for unprofessional
conduct in a civil suit. Yagman was a prominent civil rights lawyer with a
specialty in police misconduct.
Yagman said at
the time that Real “is a tyrant who is a disgrace to democracy—he is a
modern-day Torquemada. He suffers from boredom and indulges himself in infantile
and harsh behavior to create situations to alleviate his boredom.”
The 9th Circuit
reversed the ruling and remanded the case for another judge. Real refused to
let it go and instead sat on it—he was waiting for a ruling in another case in
which he asked the appellate court to vacate an order taking that matter from
him.
Real then did
the unthinkable.
He filed
personal petitions for certiorari with the Supreme Court, in 1986 and 1987,
asking that the two cases be returned to him. Cert was denied on both In re
Real and Real v. Yagman.
Earlier this
year, Yagman went to prison, convicted of tax fraud. And there is no word on
the source of a more recent and more significant complaint about the judge. But
Yagman’s case drew so much scrutiny that other complaints were bound to gain
traction.
When the
Judicial Conference’s conduct committee upheld a public reprimand of Real in
the probationer’s bankruptcy matter, it also issued another opinion concerning
Real that was a bombshell: It asked the 9th Circuit council to review scores of
cases for a willful pattern and practice of not giving reasons for decisions.
The matter had
not previously been disclosed.
Real has found
himself, in effect, on the receiving end of advice he is famous for giving
lawyers in his court: “This isn’t Burger King. We don’t do it your way here.”
Pittsburgh’s
Hellman says, “There has been evidence of problems with Judge Real for a long
time, and the fact they are acting now in this way may be tied to the higher
level of congressional interest and the raising of doubts whether the judiciary
successfully policed misconduct in its ranks.”
Yagman was just
one on a long list of lawyers who Real has jailed or tried to jail over the
years.
“Everybody has a horror story about a
trial they had with Judge Real,” says Maria Stratton, laughing because she
thinks well of him. She was the public defender for the Central District of
California from 1993 to 2006 and is now a judge in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Real once
insisted she be in his courtroom at 9 a.m. rather than first appearing at the
9th Circuit, nearby. Protocol defers to the higher court.
“He threatened
to hold me in contempt,” says Stratton, who said she rushed and was only a few
minutes late to Real’s courtroom. “Then that night at a bar function, after I’d
gotten an acquittal in his court and he seemed upset about it, he couldn’t have
been nicer.”
JEKYLL OR HYDE?
Gary Lincenberg
Photo by Thomas Broening
Photo by Thomas Broening
Others say they
never see Dr. Jekyll, only Mr. Hyde, when dealing with Real.
In 1971, Santa
Monica criminal defense lawyer Victor Sherman was ordered to jail for four days
over a routine evidentiary question.
“But it was
really because he found out from a marshal that I gave him the finger as he
stepped from the bench in another case shortly before that,” says Sherman, who
had been exasperated by the judge’s refusal to allow him to examine a witness
on a particular point.
The 9th Circuit
knocked down the jail term. “And I got him reversed on the evidentiary matter,”
Sherman says. “At one point, I got him reversed six times in a row.
“Lots of
lawyers have these kinds of stories about Judge Real, but not many of them will
talk about it publicly,” he adds.
Indeed, a dozen
Los Angeles lawyers contacted for this story, some of them well-known, were
eager to talk about bitter experiences in Real’s court, but not for the record.
One who has spoken out in the past, and is known for his collection of negative
information and court decisions about the judge, declined to go on the record
now because he has a client awaiting sentencing before Real.
Real’s
defenders, and he has plenty (though some of them, too, declined either to be
interviewed or to speak on the record), say his motives are not malevolent.
The president
of the Los Angeles chapter of the Federal Bar Association, Gary Lincenberg,
does speak out and disagrees with the mounting criticism of Real. The jurist
has long been on the association’s board and, while others occasionally miss
meetings, he is always there, says Lincenberg. The judge is particularly
interested in helping younger lawyers, he adds.
“Given the
controversy he is in the middle of, I think that other judges might be bitter,
but he stays very focused on the big picture,” says Lincenberg. “It’s fine if
somebody wants to criticize his decisions—that’s what law is all about.
I don’t think
criticism of his good faith is warranted.”
Says former
clerk Ellis, now a Los Angeles litigator: “He’s very good at sniffing out
people who are unprepared and sniffing out witnesses not telling the truth. The
accuracy of his BS detector was off the charts. Typically, if lawyers were
prepared and knew the papers, they did OK in his courtroom, even if he didn’t
agree with them.”
The celebrity
lawyer Howard Weitzman says he always came prepared and still had difficulties
peculiar to Real. In the 1970s he defended a lawyer in a criminal case who was
convicted in a trial before Real. The case was remanded and tried again before
Real. On the second remand, the case was heard before another judge. The lawyer
was acquitted.
Weitzman has
tried a half-dozen or more jury trials in front of Real, observed a number of
others and found the judge’s behavior problematic in all of them.
“I’ve seen him
make it clear to jurors he doesn’t agree with the direction of your questioning
or doesn’t believe your client,” Weitzman says. “And I saw him take over
questioning of witnesses if the side he prefers wasn’t doing well. He
continually demeans and puts down lawyers in front of juries in such a way that
I think it averts a fair trial.”
It was this
sort of courtroom in which Dubin says he found himself in 1994.
His story in
brief: Just before his trial, a psychiatrist was having Dubin admitted to a
psychiatric hospital for depression over both the slow death of his son two
years earlier from AIDS and the whirlwind of events that led to his case being
moved suddenly to a bench trial by Real.
Dubin, a
respected litigator and appellate attorney, had been scrambling, with the help
of others, to get a top-notch lawyer—specifically, Richard Ben-Veniste of
Washington, D.C.—to represent him. Real denied a continuance.
Real sent U.S.
marshals to bring him to court for trial, just as he was being admitted to the
hospital. Dubin was forced to defend himself for the next day and a half while
sluggish with newly prescribed anti-depression and anti-anxiety medications,
and without the letters and tax records he needed to make his case—including
proof of extensive deductions and business losses, and a letter from the IRS
saying he did not have to file yet for some of the years in question because he
was already being audited before the dragnet.
When Dubin—who
Real kept in lockup when he wasn’t in court—complained that the evidence was at
his home, the judge dispatched an acquaintance of Dubin’s to obtain the files.
“The room at
Dubin’s home was wall-to-wall boxes of documents,” says James Clement, the
now-retired tax lawyer who ran the errand. “I came across some that looked
right, but when I took them to the courthouse they turned out to be copies of
the prosecution’s exhibits.
“It is my
understanding that everyone knew at the time that he didn’t have the records he
needed for trial, and that the judge just wouldn’t be bothered with it,” says
Clement.
Despite this,
in his finding of fact No. 11, Real said the defendant had his records “brought
to him ... by a friend, also a lawyer, and those records were available to
Dubin throughout the trial.”
Real even
tacked on four months extra under the sentencing guidelines he often openly
eschews, for obstruction of justice—because Dubin was at the hospital instead
of court.
Clement later
wrote in a signed declaration: “I know of my own personal knowledge that
finding of fact No. 11 is absolutely false.”
At the
appellate level, there is a presumption that findings of fact are just
that—fact. And in the 9th Circuit, Real’s findings went unchallenged.
“What is
disturbing about [Dubin’s complaint] is that quite a bit of evidence seems to
have been available to the judiciary—long before the impeachment proceeding or
misconduct proceedings that resulted in reprimands—that suggested the judge is
really a danger on the bench,” says Hellman, who has not studied the Dubin
case.
The judiciary
is now taking what many believe is a long-overdue, in-depth look at whether
Real’s decision-making runs so far afoul of law and procedure that he is
engaging in misconduct.
As Hellman
says, the result could draw a new line of demarcation between independence and
discipline—one of the touchiest areas for the judicial branch.
Considering the
9th Circuit council’s call for a private reprimand for Judge Real, the
Judicial Conference’s conduct committee in January said, in effect, no.
“If the council
finds willfulness, it should consider a more severe sanction, such as a public
censure or reprimand and an order that no further cases be assigned to the
judge for a particular period of time,” the conduct committee wrote.
Short of
impeachment, that would be the worst fate imaginable for a jurist who twice
petitioned the Supreme Court personally in an effort to hold on to cases that
had been reassigned.
Like his
nemesis Dubin, Real is a man who fully believes he is right and has been
wronged. And he presses every challenge as far as he can.
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