Rose Bird on Trial
Sowell, Thomas
pear overnight. Surplus U.S. grains could help ease the transition. In a perfect world there would be no government-to-government foreign aid, at least not for development purposes. But large-scale...
...cutting them off, even if they are the poorest of the poor, would be painful but necessary...
...The grounds for reversing death penalty convictions have been virtually endless and incredibly imaginative...
...This Robin Hood theory of justice has ramifications that reach well beyond skyrocketing liability insurance and the shutting down of businesses and activities that cannot afford it, or cannot get insurance at any price...
...No technicality is too small when it comes to reversing death penalty convictions...
...The actual record of the California Supreme Court is very revealing, in civil as well as criminal cases...
...They do not twist words or strain logic on the side of the prosecution, or business-men, or for the taxpayers, but rather for criminals, welfare recipients, homosexuals, plaintiffs against business, or others favored by the liberal-left vision of the world...
...A detailed look at one such case will illustrate the mental agility of the justices...
...Second, assistance should be careful-ly targeted, to reward countries that adopt growth-producing policies and to punish recipients that do not...
...Supreme Court's most free-wheeling judicial activist, Justice William Brennan...
...Doctors who have stopped delivering babies because of the ease with which they can be sued are another symptom—an especially costly consequence of judicial activism to pregnant women located in some rural areas, who may have to travel considerable distance to find a doctor with enough insurance to be willing to treat them...
...This election is in fact building up to a referendum on the practice of judicial activism...
...Moreover, they have allowed Bird and her defenders to seize the moral high ground and depict this election as a battle between those who attack judges for "unpopular decisions" and those who want the law upheld by an "independent judiciary...
...Activist judges who go beyond the written law—or counter to the written law—in order to reach decisions they consider morally or socially preferable, are revered by some and reviled by others...
...the election campaign...
...That the California District Attorney's Association has opposed her re-election may not be as surprising as the fact that a recent poll of trial judges found that most of those who were willing to comment publicly were against the re-election of the Chief Justice...
...For business-people, government officials and anyone faced with potential public scrutiny, TALKING BACK TO THE MEDIA offers advice on everything from facing TV cameras, answering newspaper reporters' questions, or living through a stakeout, to calling a press conference...
...A long-overdue awareness of how various appellate judges have made a mockery of the law is beginning to dawn on the public and to be articulated by a few hardy souls willing to brave the denunciation of those who believe in judicial activism...
...6 x 9. $17.95 hardbound...
...Rose Bird has joined in scorning "the law according to Eddie Meese," as she calls it...
...While ih the booth, he was struck by a drunk driver and severely injured...
...Far from defending the judicial activism of the California Supreme Court, which has been in the vanguard of courts changing laws at will, Rose Bird flatly denies that it has happened...
...According to Rose Bird, "critics want a justice who responds to political pressure," but...
...Getting rid of Bird will be a hollow victory for the court's critics, if the other justices are re-elected to continue overruling death penalty convictions...
...On the other side, well over a thousand of her sup-porters recently attended a $200-a-plate dinner in her honor at the posh Fairmont Hotel, in San Francisco...
...This insistence that resident aliens are a constitutional requirement for convicting a multiple murderer is all too typical of Chief Justice Bird's taking a mile when the law gives her an inch...
...But the cold fact is that virtually everybody is doing it on the California Supreme Court—and on some other courts around the country...
...Why do conservatives buy liberal magazines for their children...
...The University Bookman Send $10 for a one-year subscription lo: St...
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...That vision has its legitimate place in the political spectrum, but it is not the law of the land unless the voters or their elected representatives say so...
...Individual orders must be pre-paid...
...Moreover, death penalty cases are only the tip of the iceberg...
...This is politically powerful stuff...
...Thomas Sowell ROSE BIRD ON TRIAL Will the rest of her gang get away...
...But when decisions represent judges' visions or whims, many more people find it a worthwhile gamble to try to collect from some "deep pocket," or to get the judges to give them what the elected officials refused to give them...
...The California Supreme Court did not say that the defendant was insane, but only that this tactic wasn't used, and should have been...
...James 5. Brady, Assistant to the President "Peter Hannaford is the professionals' professional at wowing the media and standing up to them...
...But large-scale U.S...
...So the letters were not the only evidence of premeditated murder...
...One of the ad-vantages of following the written law is that many potential litigants stay out of court, because they know in advance what the decision will be...
...Laments that we are "a litigious society" miss the point entirely...
...24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1986 right to engage in political activity was used to allow a homosexual to sue his employer for discrimination—by defining "coming out of the closet" as a political act...
...ternational statistics, despite Chief Justice Bird's sweeping assertions...
...And that, at least, would make the annual foreign-aid bite a little less painful...
...A quarterly for children 7 to 97...
...As for the rest, California would be well rid of them...
...While the decision was writ-ten by the Chief Justice, the votes of Justices Grodin, Reynoso, Broussard, Mosk, and Kaus provided the necessary majority...
...Neither Jerry Brown nor William Zimmerman, nor any of Rose Bird's other official or unofficial supporters, has yet named a single individual who claims that judges should be con-trolled, or even influenced, by politicians...
...For continuing to subsidize governments that knowingly wreck their economies, whether for political or ideological reasons, would be far crueler...
...The question is whether they want a scalp or a change in the court's policies...
...The burglar received more than a quarter of a million dollars for his injuries, in an out-of-court settlement by the school's insurance company...
...There is in fact a pervasive ideological pattern to both their civil and criminal decisions that disregard existing laws or create new "rights" out of thin air...
...In another case, the fact that a California law protected an employee's The issues involved reach well beyond California...
...26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1986...
...Nevertheless, the California Supreme Court could have reduced the conviction to second-degree murder, if they thought the letters were that important, instead of requiring a new trial from scratch—after seven years had elapsed, with all the problems of trying to relocate witnesses, and trying to get them to remember exactly what happened that long ago...
...I'm Eddie Meese and I want Eddie Meese and Eddie Meese's viewpoint every-where on this court...
...It is not unpopularity but unpredictability that is the curse of judicial activism...
...That is the key issue not only in California but all over the country...
...residents must add sales tax...
...Moreover, while Bird's well-financed political defense may not succeed in saving her, it may yet succeed in conveying the impression that criticism of this court's behavior is an attack on the law, or an attempt to politicize the judiciary...
...But the California Supreme Court has now turned the clock back to the issuing of edicts rather than the upholding of law...
...It seems politically impossible for the Bird court to go before the voters and defend having changed the laws that were passed by "interpreting" them to mean whatever the court's social vision wanted them to mean...
...Conjuring new constitutional rights out of thin air is part of the Bird court pattern, whenever the court disagrees with the policies voted by the elected representatives of the people...
...Major credit cards accepted...
...They might easily win the battle and lose the war...
...Significantly, it was not Rose Bird's vocal critics but a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner who exposed her factual misstatements...
...But neither the California constitution nor federal law requires—or permits—that alone to be a basis for overruling a verdict...
...The second prisoner, after his release, went to rob that same store, taking with him the list of witnesses, whom he methodically murdered with shotgun blasts, pausingafter each killing to reload...
...When judicial activism creates a vast penumbra of uncertainty around the law, many cases end up in court that would never have been there a generation ago...
...These media supporters range from the New York Times's Anthony Lewis, who has long supported every form of judicial activism, to law columnist John A. Jenkins, who wrote a glowing—if not gushing—account of Bird in the November 1985 issue of Trans World Airlines's Ambassador magazine According to Jenkins, "Rose Elizabeth Bird is fighting not just for her own political survival, but for an ideal: that of a free and independent judiciary...
...The real question—crucial both for California and for the nation—is whether judicial activists on the bench are in fact upholding the law or contributing to its destruction...
...The issue is not liberal versus conservative, or whether the death penalty is good or bad, or whether particular decisions were "unpopular...
...No one does this more than the California Supreme Court, or provokes more controversy in the process...
...In the chaos produced by judges who make the law mean whatever they want it to mean, there is no reliable guidance as to what anyone can legally do or not do...
...The critics of the Bird court face a real challenge and a moral responsibility...
...There is apparently no honest way to differ with Rose Bird, in the vision presented by her media supporters...
...Whether those edicts favor plaintiffs or respondents, business or labor, prosecutors or defense attorneys, is not the issue...
...Paul's Family Magazine, P.O...
...Former Governor Jerry Brown, who appointed Bird to the California Supreme Court, picks up the same theme...
...Moreover, these objections were made retroactive, upsetting death penalty convictions made years earlier...
...What matters for political election purposes, however, is not the reality but the image—and her image shines as brightly as ever among her media supporters, who simply leave out such inconvenient facts...
...I I'1 n Mb...
...The Anglican Digest...
...Ob-viously a profit-making enterprise like an insurance company does not give away that kind of money unless it is afraid of the uncertainties created by the courts' willingness to disregard the written law in order to rule for the plaintiff against "deep pocket" defendants...
...This constitutional provision may as well not exist, as far as the court is concerned...
...Other death penalty convictions have been reversed because the California Supreme Court suddenly objected to standard instructions to juries that had been used by judges for years...
...In another "deep pocket" case, a California motorist who had an accident on the highway went to a telephone booth to call for help...
...It is Joan of Arc versus a lynch mob, if you believe the image-makers who manage Rose Bird's election campaign...
...Phone calls to her staff to get a reply were not returned...
...An attorney who was fined for wasting an appellate court's time with a frivolous appeal had the fine overruled by the California Supreme Court...
...According to the California Supreme Court, his employer was responsible...
...The tragic irony is that no one this side of the Mafia has shown more con-tempt for the law than Rose Bird, and no one has done more to turn the California Supreme Court into a political institution, carrying out a political agenda...
...The issue, he says, "is not the desirability or wisdom of the changes" in public policy which it has imposed, but whether the people's democratic "right to governthemselves is being undermined by judges who are overstepping their function...
...While pouring motor oil into the engine, he was struck by a passing automobile...
...The path of least resistance for them will be to keep focusing on Rose Bird, because they can then claim credit when she is defeated—as seems almost certain—and justify themselves to those who donated money to them...
...Bird counterattacks against critics who see the court as soft on criminals by asserting that California has "more people in our prisons" on a per capita basis than any other state, and more on a per capita basis than any nation, except the Soviet Union or South Africa...
...However, the letters were not the only evidence that he had the time to think about the killings before committing them—which is all that is required for premeditation...
...There is no point blaming juries for large damage awards in cases that the judges should have dismissed before they reached the jury...
...When the written law no longer provides guidance as to how courts will rule, innocent parties who have obeyed the law are nevertheless fearful of going into court, and thus can be victimized by those threatening lawsuits...
...This election is in fact building up to a referendum on the practice of judicial activism, which has provoked increasingly bitter controversy across the nation over the past thirty years...
...Finally...
...There was no real issue as to whether this man committed the multiple murders...
...That cannot be dismissed as right-wing politics...
...That court, according to Superior Court Judge Joseph B. Harvey, "has retroactively changed the law...
...First, aid levels should come down, not go up...
...He had to pull the trigger several times, with various steps in between...
...As for international comparisons, experts on criminology have said that there are no accurate inTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1986 25 curacies in citing statistics and in misquoting "Eddie Meese," but also by her raising money for her election campaign from an organization of attorneys who specialize in representing plaintiffs with injuries...
...Paul's Family' Magazine This children's magazine is orthodox, humorous, fun, challenging and beautifully illustrated...
...economic assistance is not going to disappear any time soon...
...His manual of `how-tos' and 'no-nos' in dealing with the media is must reading for jungle survivors in 1986...
...On the contrary, it twisted the law beyond recognition to make this a workman's compensation case and place the costs on the employer...
...From the standpoint of the coming election, the truth or falsity of Rose Bird's charges may mean far less than the sheer repetition of them in the media...
...The California Supreme Court as a whole has gone along with the Chief Justice in the overwhelming majority of death penalty reversals, often by a lopsided vote, or even unanimously...
...Her characterization of their viewpointis: "You do as I say or you're out...
...Either California trial judges don't know how to conduct trials or the state supreme court is determined to stop death penalties from being carried out...
...Opposition to Bird's re-election—virtually inexplicable on the basis of the facts he selectively included and omitted—are explained by emotionalism, venality, sexism, and "the New Right's efforts to throw out judges who are too liberal and replace them with conservatives...
...A conviction for an elaborately sadistic sex-murder of a young mother was reversed by the court on the same grounds...
...Astronomical liability insurance costs are only one symptom of this uncertainty...
...The "burning issue" in the coming election, according to Jenkins, is whether "judges should be allowed to decide cases solely on their legal merit, without fear of losing their jobs if they make an unpopular decision...
...Another murderer of two helpless victims had his death penalty reversed because his attorney failed to attempt an insanity defense...
...But if they face up to the real issue and try also to defeat Justices Grodin, Reynoso, and others who have voted consistently for the same things as Bird, they may end up with a less impressive batting average...
...But California trial judges who dismiss trivial, frivolous, and speculative lawsuits are repeatedly over-ruled by the state supreme court, which orders the issues tried...
...Who was financially responsible for his resulting losses...
...The issue is whether or not we live in a democracy where laws are to be respected—even by judges...
...Several inconvenient facts disturb this image, however...
...Often the trial court's "error" consisted of nothing more than failing to guess that the state supreme court would object to things that had never been objected to before...
...The financial responsibility was put on the telephone company...
...Many of these cases are horrifying in their details—the sadistic torture-murder of a two-year-old girl, for example—so it is not surprising that much public out-rage has been directed at Rose Bird for her rulings in such cases...
...This was only one in a long series of workman's-compensation and civil-liability cases in which the only consistency is that whoever has the most money—lawyers call it the "deep pocket"--is forced to pay...
...The controversies swirling around Chief Justice Bird threaten to overshadow both the elections of her judicial colleagues, who will also be on the ballot, and the many serious and disturbing questions raised by the conduct of the California Supreme Court for more than a decade...
...must not let pressure for increased appropriations obscure the real cause of global under-development: Third World regimes that stifle economic incentives, confiscate personal earnings, discourage private investment, and terrorize their people...
...Eliot Janeway "A practical guide to meeting the media and coming out ahead...
...Speechwriter's Newsletter 192 pp...
...Nor was it simply an "unpopular decision" that the court was forced to make to "uphold the law...
...the din and clamor of the moment" has been resisted, she says, while the California Supreme Court has "steadfastly upheld the rule of law...
...Rose Bird has joined in scorning "the law according to Eddie Meese," as she calls it...
...For many, the crucial person is Rose Bird and the crucial issue is the death penalty...
...As in so many other cases—both civil and criminal—Rose Bird voted with the liberal activist majority, but added her own special reasons, going much further...
...Therefore, the injury was employment-related and the injured man was entitled to workman's compensation...
...One prisoner convicted of murder gave a fellow-prisoner the names of four people who had testified against him after an armed robbery of the store in which they worked...
...The point is not simply that this was a bad decision...
...Some countries may not be willing to cooperate with the U.S...
...Yet they may not have to, and may well be able to continue the same practices after this year's election as before...
...By centering their attacks on Rose Bird for her death penalty decisions, critics have allowed her colleagues to escape scrutiny for the very same practices...
...Four different organizations have been formed for the express purpose of defeating Bird in the California judicial election this November...
...Hannaford gives some good solid advice and comes up with some pro-vocative, if sometimes controversial, conclusions...
...FACTS ON FILE, INC...
...National Catholic Register...
...Ironically, however, the focus on Bird and on death penalty cases may boomerangagainst critics of the California Supreme Court...
...A classic case involved a burglar who fell through a skylight while trying to break into a school—and sued the school...
...Justice Edward Panelli is too new to have much of a track record before election day, but he is highly regarded...
...Brown sees the role of the courts as that of "reining in the passions of the people...
...By a similar sleight-of-hand, they have turned the demand for respect for democratically passed laws into a demand that judges decide each case as public opinion dictates...
...If the voters throw them out, judicial activists around the country will be put on notice that the party is over...
...These letters indicated that he had threatened to kill her, suggesting that the murders were premeditated...
...For her, the...
...Like all ideals, it was never perfectly realized...
...It will be a tragedy of the first magnitude—for California and the nation—if all that happens at the next election is that Rose Bird is defeated, while her less well-known colleagues are put back on the state supreme court to continue the same kind of policies she symbolized...
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...People like Meese are "bully boys" who want judges to "salivate on signal," she says...
...Any hope of returning this court to the role of upholding the law, and following the constitution as written, depends on the voters cleaning house on election day—not just getting rid of Rose Bird...
...This added up to more than a quarter of a million dollars raised in just one evening to pay for her fight to stay in office...
...The state constitution explicitly states that trial verdicts are not to be overruled unless "the error complained of has resulted in a miscarriage of justice...
...Critics are so centering their fire on Rose Bird and on death penalty cases that only she is at risk on election day...
...460 PARK AVENUE SOUTH, NEW YORK, NY 10016 IN A RUSH...
...When a shelter for unmarried and employable welfare recipients did not provide enough privacy, according to the Chief Justice, those welfare recipients had a constitutional right to something better...
...I follow the law in all areas," she says...
...All the other justices of the California Supreme Court who have consistently voted for the same kinds of judicial policy-making may escape through sheer anonymity...
...The Justices of the California Supreme Court are not stupid, nor is their behavior capricious...
...The ostensible reasoning of the court was that the phone booth should have been located in a safer place—as if any place near a highway could be safe from a drunk driver—but the real consistency was that the "deep pocket" lost once again...
...Published statistics show two dozen states with higher per capita rates of incarceration than California...
...A quality magazine for children...
...Attorney General Edwin Meese's re-cent call for judges to follow the law and the constitution as written has brought a storm of bitter attack, led by the U.S...
...With innumerable rules and thousands of precedents involved, a judge, an attorney, a juror, or a witness, may fail to dot an i or cross a tin just the right way...
...The U.S...
...have been indulging their own social visions and political ideology...
...The crudity of her attacks on Attorney General Meese has shocked even some of her sup-porters, such as the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a legal publication, which declared: "Meese has said no such thing...
...All that seems clear at this point is that the campaign is certain to be bitter and divisive, and to add nothing to public respect for the courts...
...They simply second-guessed his attorney's strategy and claimed that the defendant did not get an adequate defense...
...Therefore, if foreign aid is to haveany beneficial impact, existing pro-grams must be fundamentally restructured...
...Deploring political leaders "who see it as their prerogative to have judges who do their bidding," Brown asserts that Rose Bird has "insisted on the underlying logic of the laws she interprets...
...The New Right," according to Zimmerman, is "politicizing the courts," trying to have a judiciary "subject to the whims of public opinion...
...By contrast, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that a defendant "is entitled to a fair trial but not a perfect one...
...The issues involved reach well beyond California...
...at any price...
...Only Justice Malcolm Lucas dissented, pointing out that the employee was "injured outside the work premises, before working hours, while engaged in an act of personal convenience...
...Rose Bird, Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, has become the symbolic focus of this controversy...
...According to legal precedent, these letters should not have been admitted because they were hear-say...
...It is also contrary to fact...
...I recommend it highly...
...by a group of political advisers, including nationally known political pollster and strategist Pat Caddell...
...The judicial activism of the California Supreme Court was illustrated in a 1984 case in which an employee reported early to work, found his employers not yet there to open the THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1986 23 door, and decided to use the time to work on his own car, which was parked on a public street...
...Responsible individuals and groups who have never publicly opposed the election of any judge have come out against Rose Bird...
...While hile civil cases do not have the same emotional drama as death penalty cases, their impact on the public may be greater, even if not as widely under-stood...
...The most galling examples are of course the death penalty cases...
...The California Supreme Court has been in the vanguard of judicial activism, virtually rewriting the law under the guise of interpretation, on a sweeping range of civil as well as criminalcases...
...More fundamental than any particular result in any particular case is the question whether the very meaning of law is being destroyed in California by judicial edicts which ignore or defy the written law and the written constitution, in favor of the court's own social and political vision...
...For too many centuries, despots issued edicts at will...
...He didn't just happen to have a gun in his hand and pull the trigger in a sudden rage...
...That will become clearer as the election campaign unfolds...
...The Rose Bird line is widely echoed in the media, parts of which refused to accept antiBird advertising in the previous close election...
...The kind of glowing image of Rose Bird presented to TWA passengers will undoubtedly be repeated again and again to wider audiences during the election campaign, not only in her own political organization's handouts, but also in the media and among academic supporters...
...After a quarrel with his wife, the defendant warned her about having to "pay the consequences," then went to get his rifle, came back and shot the wife, then went upstairs to kill the children, and even had to turn over a bed to find his nine-year-old son, who was hiding under it...
...From the fact that everyone has a constitutional right to privacy, Rose Bird has leaped to the conclusion that the taxpayers have to provide that privacy, in the case of welfare recipients...
...Far from reversing these convictions in order to uphold the law, as Rose Bird and her defenders claim, the California Supreme Court has reversed in utter defiance of the law...
...Rose Bird's reasoning was that the worker "provided a benefit to the employer by waiting near the premises...
...Bird's media strategist, William Zimmerman, is playing it for all it is worth...
...Among the current members of the California Supreme Court, Justice Malcolm Lucas has an admirable record of trying to uphold the rule of law, while Rose Bird and Co...
...The political tactics of the Bird defense are brilliantly orchestrated...
...The California Supreme Court reversed his death penalty conviction on grounds that the trial court failed to instruct the jury that it had to find specific intent to kill, in order to convict...
...The issue is not whether the California Supreme Court's policies are better or worse than those of the state legislature...
...The only issue was whether it was premeditated first-degree murder or second-degree murder...
...Given the well-known bias of the Bird court toward such plaintiffs, the lawyers would no doubt be getting their money's worth by keeping her on the court...
...That is what makes this year's judicial election so important for the years to come, for both California and the nation...
...The issue is whether we shall live under laws, rather than under a judicial despotism...
...By verbal sleight-of-hand, they have turned the demand that judges follow the law into a demand that judges obey politicians...
...n. ,~i...
...She also calls the California Supreme Court "one of the toughest judiciaries in the entire United States, if not in the entire world...
...Yet opinion pollsshow only Rose Bird with more people opposed than in favor...
...One trial judge even published a lengthy essay detailing the reasons for his opposition to the whole pattern of the California Supreme Court...
...Conserve our culture with (St...
...This sidesteps the issue by saying that everybody is doing it...
...But Rose Bird's repeated denunciations of "special interest politics" ring hollow against the background of her own money-raising practices...
...A pilot who lets a passenger go into the cockpit and fly the plane cannot escape blame if it crashes...
...Law is a precious heritage in a free society...
...Altogether, Rose Bird and her critics are expected to spend unprecedented millions of dollars during Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California...
...When asked if she has been imposing her personal beliefs instead of the law, she points to the fact that most of the court has usually voted the same way she has...
...Yet the California Supreme Court constantly disregards the "miscarriage of justice" requirement when overruling convictions in even the most open-and-shut cases...
...PETER HANNAFORD TALKING BRCR SEDIR MAKING A TV APPEARANCE HANDLING INTERVIEWS IN ALL MEDIA HOLDING A PRESS CONFERENCE DEALING WITH A MEDIA STAKE-OUT ANSWERING HOSTILE QUESTIONS AND MUCH MORE TALKING BACK TO THE MEDIA PETER HANNAFORD "The book examines closely both the role and the state of the media in the 80s...
...The mantle of nobility that Rose Bird draws around herself has been sullied not only by such reckless inacMeet the Press and Come Out On Top...
...According to law professor Phil-lip E. Johnson at Berkeley, "California is generally recognized as one of the most `pro-plaintiff jurisdictions in the world, to the extent that injured per-sons from other states and countries are often eager to find a way to bring tort cases into California...
...Despite numerous death penalty sentences, no one has been executed in California in eighteen years...
...a well-conceived and much needed Christian magazine of quality...
...Getting rid of Bird will be a hollow victory for the court's critics, if the other justices are re-elected to continue overruling death penalty convictions...
...Other regimes, however, may be pragmatic or desperate enough to respond to the new American approach, making everyone better off, particularly the Third World peoples most in need...
...Yet the California Supreme Court has repeatedly substituted that vision for law by interpretations that have been ingenious, if not ingenuous...
...The legal requirement that the jury be drawn from a cross section of the California population did not specify resident aliens, but Rose Bird wanted them represented...
...Even though this is a congressional election year, one of the most important elections in the nation is not for Congress, or for the governorships, or for the state legislatures, but for the California Supreme Court...
...A man who shot and killed his wife, two children, and a niece had his conviction reversed by the court be-cause his dead wife's letters were allowed to be used in the trial...
...Rose Bird alone could not overturn a single death penalty verdict, since she has only one vote, like every other justice...
...But the danger that a murderer might escape on a technicality has never deterred this court—even though, in this case, it had the option of requiring the trial court to re-sentence for second-degree murder...
...More centuries of struggle and bloodshed were required before the ideal of "a government of laws and not of men" gained the ascendancy...
...In more than fifty consecutive death penalty cases, Bird has voted to reverse the trial court's sentence...
...This continues a long tradition in California of voter support of incumbent judges...
...That may not save her this time, but it may well save the other justices who are doing the same things—and who will continue to do the same things when they are re-elected to new twelve-year terms...
...No member of the California Supreme Court has been voted out of office in more than half a century, and only Bird came close, winning just 52 percent of the vote in 1978...
...It will demonstrate to judicial activists all across the nation that even the fiercest public outrage can still be turned aside with a few pious phrases about an "independent judiciary...
...mere fact that there were no "resident aliens" on the jury that convicted the murderer was sufficient reason to overturn the verdict...
...The insurance company may have been wise to give the burglar his quarter of a million...
...With an "anything goes" attitude to (1) what can be litigated, and (2) how it will be decided, the California Supreme Court cannot escape responsibility for the overcrowded courts it is constantly lamenting...
...a journal of Christian culture for young people...
...The California Supreme Court "is not a political branch of government," she asserts...
Vol. 19 • September 1986 • No. 9
