Plea to Remove Judge in Denny Case Rejected

Two Los Angeles Superior Court judges refused to remove a white jurist from a highly charged riot case Monday, denying a request from defense lawyers who said they believe another judge should preside over the trial.

“I have absolutely the highest regard for Judge (John H.) Reid’s ability,” said Judge Cecil J. Mills, the supervising judge in the criminal division of the Superior Court. “I believe he is overwhelmingly committed to justice and to the appearance of justice.”

Mills’ comments came just minutes after another Superior Court judge declined to remove Reid, who is white, from the case of three black defendants charged with attacking motorists at the intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues during the opening hours of the rioting in Los Angeles.

The jockeying Monday capped a week of intense controversy about the selection of a jurist to hear the closely watched case. During that week, Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner struggled to explain why his office used its peremptory challenge to remove a black judge from the case. In the fallout from that decision, Reiner has been accused of racial insensitivity.

Defense lawyers have been particularly critical of Reiner, but on Monday they also split from one another. James R. Gillen, who represents defendant Antoine Eugene Miller, employed a strategy on Monday that would have enabled him to challenge Reid had it been successful. As part of that strategy, Gillen filed a motion saying Miller is prepared to testify that he is innocent, but that his co-defendants are guilty on at least some charges.

Miller, Damian Monroe (Football) Williams and Henry Keith (Kiki) Watson are charged with attempted murder, torture, aggravated mayhem and robbery in the beating of truck driver Reginald O. Denny, as well as a variety of lesser crimes in attacks on other victims the same evening.

“At the trial, Mr. Miller will contend that his co-defendants are responsible for beating Mr. Denny,” Gillen said in his motion. “Miller’s defense will include viewing the videotape (of the Denny attack) to prove he himself never touched Denny; that it was the other co-defendants who did.”

That motion does not commit Miller to testifying against his co-defendants and was part of a tactical move on Gillen’s part. He hoped to show that his client’s case is so different from those of the other two defendants that the court should treat the defense lawyers as representing different sides of the case.

Gillen needed to show that in order to remove Reid from the case. Under normal circumstances, all defense lawyers are allowed only one challenge to peremptorily remove a judge assigned to a case. But if their interests differ substantially, they may be granted more challenges.

Even as part of a tactical maneuver, however, the charge rankled some other defense lawyers and marked the first suggestion that their efforts may not be unified going into trial.

“I’m very concerned about that, very concerned,” said Edi M.O. Faal, who is representing Williams.

Gillen’s motion to remove Reid was rejected by Judge William R. Pounders, and Mills refused to act on it on Monday. Gillen said he plans to appeal Pounders’ rejection later this week.

Although the defense lawyers were disappointed by the denial of Gillen’s motion, several of them emerged from a closed-door session with Mills optimistic that the judge still might be willing to consider another jurist if all sides can agree on one.

The controversy over who should preside over the trial began last Tuesday when Reid, who is well-regarded by many prosecutors and defense lawyers, was given the case after prosecutors used their one peremptory challenge to remove Superior Court Judge Roosevelt F. Dorn, a black jurist whom Mills had picked.

Mills said he had asked Dorn to take the case because he believes Dorn is qualified to handle the trial and sufficiently experienced to deal with the intense media interest in the case.

“Judge Dorn had the additional benefit, in my mind, of being a black man, one who I know to be well-respected in the community,” Mills added. “It was my belief that assigning the case to him might offer some calming effect on the community.”

Prosecutors at first said they removed Dorn from the case because he did not have a high-security courtroom and he had a busy calendar. Dorn then called a news conference and accused the district attorney’s office of lying, and Reiner said that his real reason for removing Dorn was that he had doubts about the judge’s judicial temperament.

Mills then assigned the case to Judge George Trammell, who is white. Defense lawyers used their peremptory challenge to remove Trammell, which left both sides with Reid.

“I just have a problem with Judge Reid,” Gillen said Monday. “He does not have the proper judicial temperament to hear this case. . . . All I want is somebody who’s going to be even-tempered and evenhanded.”

Mills adamantly defended Reid, saying the jurist would handle the difficult case without being distracted. Mills, however, was particularly critical of Reiner’s statement that he had a “clear understanding” of which judges Mills intended to appoint if either side objected to Dorn.

A spokeswoman for Reiner told reporters that prosecutors had understood that if they removed Dorn from the case and defense lawyers removed Trammell, Mills then intended to assign it to Superior Court Judge Donald F. Pitts, a black judge who sits in the Compton courthouse.

Mills said on Monday that he never told the district attorney’s office of such a plan, adding that he could not have assigned the case to Pitts because that judge is recovering from serious eye surgery. Mills did not accuse Reiner of deliberately misrepresenting his conversation with one of Reiner’s deputies, but said that some of the information was “lost in the translation.”

The judge--who also stressed that the verdict in the case will be rendered by a jury, not a judge--balked when Gillen said that the district attorney’s public comments indicated that prosecutors may have had access to information that was denied to the defense.

“The fact that somebody says they were privy to information doesn’t make it so,” Mills said. “I don’t think anybody knew.”

Prosecutors, weary of the controversy and eager to return to the legal issues in the case, declined to respond to Mills’ remarks.

“I’m not going to comment,” said Frank Sundstedt, who heads the district attorney’s organized crime unit and is one of the prosecutors handling the case. “I just don’t think that’s productive.”