Judge Says Politically Charged Memo Is ‘Garbage’ : Courts: Law clerk described a public defender as a ‘flaming liberal’ in notes prepared for the jurist. Incident raised concerns over lack of impartiality.

SANTA ANA —  An Orange County Superior Court judge who received a law clerk’s memo containing personal comments about the political persuasions of a defense attorney appearing before him said Friday that such “garbage” has no place in a courtroom.

Upon reading one of at least two comments calling Deputy Public Defender Allyn Jaffrey a “flaming liberal” and questioning her stance on abortion, Judge Michael Brenner said that he scolded the law clerk who prepared the document.

“He was told immediately that that kind of thing has no place in the courtroom,” said Brenner, who declined to name the law clerk or give the memo to either Jaffrey or the media. “This is the first time this happened, and I think if it happened again he’d be looking around for new work.”

The memorandum surfaced in court Thursday when Brenner denied Jaffrey’s request to throw out a Feb. 9 contempt citation against a woman accused of violating a judge’s order to stop talking to a defendant. It was found among legal notes on the case that had been prepared for Brenner by the law clerk. Orange County Public Defender Ronald Y. Butler, who is Jaffrey’s boss, expressed concern over the comments in a letter sent Friday to Brenner and Presiding Orange County Superior Court Judge Donald E. Smallwood.

Jaffrey said that Butler asked the judges not to destroy the memorandum so an appellate court can review it with other documents in the case, which involves Traci Ann Pixler, 25, of Garden Grove.

Pixler was sentenced to three days in jail by a Municipal Court judge after she allegedly tried several times to tell her boyfriend, who was in a courtroom on trial, that she had suffered a miscarriage.

On Thursday, Brenner upheld the contempt citation but said that Pixler would not have to serve the remainder of her three-day sentence. Pixler had served one day in jail before she was released.

The memo marked the latest controversy to crop up between the courts and the public defender’s office since the office filed a formal complaint against two judges in January with the state Commission on Judicial Performance.

The complaint alleged that Central Municipal Court Judges Claude E. Whitney and James M. Brooks denied the most basic constitutional rights to thousands of defendants in an effort to maintain a high rate of guilty pleas. Both judges have denied any impropriety.

Brenner said Friday that he would never allow comments like those in the memorandum to influence his rulings. The law clerk, part of a staff of attorneys who help judges perform legal research, apologized after being reprimanded, he said.

Jaffrey, along with several other defense attorneys interviewed by The Times on Friday, said Brenner has a reputation as a fair and impartial judge. But she said the comments left her concerned that law clerks might interject their personal feelings into legal documents that should be impartial.

The memorandum, Jaffrey said, questioned what her position was on the abortion issue and made light of her defense of Pixler by hinting that it sounded more like an anti-abortion rights argument.

“These just aren’t the kind of comments that belong in legal documents,” Jaffrey said. “I think it leaves this impression that politics play a role, and that’s not right.”

Brenner said he, too, is concerned about the memo because it presents a false perception that judges can be easily influenced.

“Someone might say that the guy must know that this is going to elicit some kind of a favorable response, or he wouldn’t have written it,” Brenner said. “However, it did not get a favorable response.”

Brenner, who also indicated that he might have read a reference to Jaffrey as a “feminist,” could not recall ever finding such personal comments in legal research prepared for the court. In disgust, Brenner said, he threw away another comment by the law clerk that was written on a tiny note attached to the documents.

“I’m not condoning anything he said,” Brenner told The Times. “It’s certainly one thing to say something to a friend over a beer, and it’s a whole different thing to say something like this in a courtroom setting.”