Bird, Fellow Justices Receive Endorsement of Ex-Justice Newman

Former state Supreme Court Justice Frank C. Newman, commenting publicly for the first time on the campaign to oust Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, criticized Bird’s opponents Thursday for injecting partisan politics into this year’s retention election of six Supreme Court justices.

Calling efforts to vote Bird out of office contrary to the constitutional mandate for an independent, nonpartisan judiciary, Newman said that “we’ll be in a terrible mess if groups of people decide that an appellate judge . . . should not be retained because they disagree with some of their decisions.”

He also said in an interview that all six justices on the ballot merit reelection Nov. 4. “I’m for the whole ticket,” Newman said.

Newman’s comments came at a news conference and panel discussion announcing the formation of San Diegans for an Independent Judiciary, a San Diego County group that pledges to publicize “the difference between valid, constructive criticism of the decisions and processes of our courts and unfounded criticism which erodes our system of justice.”

Bird has been targeted for defeat by a wide array of opponents, led by the Westwood-based Crime Victims for Court Reform and Orange County-based Californians to Defeat Rose Bird. Gov. George Deukmejian has said he is against Bird, while his probable opponent in the gubernatorial election, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, has said he will take no stand.

The state Supreme Court’s frequent reversal of death penalty sentences has been the main lightning rod for opposition against Bird and the three other justices--Joseph P. Grodin, Cruz Reynoso and Stanley Mosk.

Newman said that “this isn’t the way to get the death penalty (grievances) solved. There are a lot of ways to do it.” One possibility would be to have death penalty sentences reviewed by lower appeals courts, which do a better job of sifting through trial transcripts, he said.

Newman, now a faculty member at Boalt Hall, the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, was joined by former Congressman Jerome Waldie, state Appeal Court Judge Robert Staniforth and others at the University of San Diego. Both officials showed less restraint than Newman.

Waldie said that Deukmejian’s opposition to Bird represents “an unheard-of intrusion by the executive branch into the judicial branch, into the independence of the judiciary.”

Staniforth likened Bird’s opponents to “the sleaze parade of 1986.”