Decisions on Ice : Judge Rules in Court and at Hockey Rink

SANTA ANA —  There’s nothing quite like a day in the life of Judge William W. Bedsworth: It’s two parts “Night Court,” one part “Wide World of Sports.”

An Orange County Superior Court judge who had not a lick of experience in the sport of hockey, Bedsworth managed to persuade the Mighty Ducks hockey team to hire him as a home-game goal judge.

Presiding over some of the justice system’s most weighty matters has precious little to do with determining whether a whizzing hunk of rubber crosses a thin red line. But Bedsworth convinced the Mighty Ducks that, at a minimum, his years in the courtroom had prepared him to deal with the many, er, objections he would receive from players.

After 28 games, this 46-year-old father of three, who manages to be sanguine about nearly any topic, including his recent brain surgery, may be the most uniquely qualified goal judge in all of professional hockey.

“Actually,” Bedsworth says, “there’s more in common about the two jobs than you think: For one thing, in both jobs you’re required to start out perfect and get better with experience.”

*

While sitting on the criminal bench is as tough a job as it sounds, a goal judge’s task isn’t. Basically, the charge is to never take one’s eyes off the disc-shaped puck, also known as The Biscuit. When the puck crosses the line in front of the goal, the goal judge presses a button that triggers a swirling red light atop the net.

The tricky part comes in trying to keep up with the puck as it caroms off walls and players’ sticks at speeds up to 100 m.p.h. and gets trapped in the hurly-burly of a hockey game. Occasionally, there is a fuss, to put it nicely, when one team thinks a goal is a goal and the other squad thinks it isn’t.

“Already this year we had one . . . where the Ducks screamed bloody murder,” Bedsworth says. “It’s OK, though, because I’m used to working in an environment where people yell at me.”

Though Bedsworth is all business at both jobs, he is more Judge Harry T. Stone from “Night Court” than Justice Rehnquist.

On one wall of his stately 10th-floor courtroom in Santa Ana, just a few feet from the “Great Seal of the State of California” plaque, hangs a framed poster of “The Great One,” hockey player Wayne Gretzky.

Bedsworth’s chambers contain nearly as much hockey and sports paraphernalia as law books.

“I’m the building’s hockey freak,” he says, and he doesn’t need a lawyer to prove it. Among his decor: hockey puck paperweights and a pair of autographed hockey sticks, one by members of the Mighty Ducks and another by the Los Angeles Kings players.

A 15-year Kings season-ticket holder, Bedsworth landed the job with the Ducks last fall when he sent in a resume and letter on a lark. Confessing he had no experience, he claimed he possessed unusual qualifications on the grounds that he had an undying passion for the game and a mind fine-tuned in the science of what he calls “dispassionate observation.”

“I told them I had attended somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 hockey games and had seen a lot of pucks in my time,” Bedsworth recalls. “I also was used to performing under fire,” he says, motioning to a stack of cases on his desk, the corner of which is occupied by a foot-high, ceramic, black-cloaked wizard.

“When I was elected in 1986, that’s what somebody told me I would need to do in this job,” he says, “wear a black robe to work every day and perform magic.”

*

It’s a recent weekday, and eight hours from now Bedsworth will be seated ringside in a plexiglass kiosk at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, judging the accuracy of slap shots from the Mighty Ducks and the Hartford Whalers.

At the moment, though, he’s on the bench, listening to a defense lawyer try to keep his client, a 48-year-old man convicted on cocaine charges, out of state prison.

His lawyer, armed with a Probation Department report recommending leniency, asks Bedsworth to “be merciful.”

After hearing both sides, Bedsworth acts decisively. “The amount of respect I have for Mr. McDonnell (the defense lawyer) is only outweighed by the amount of respect I have for the Probation Department. But in this case, I disagree with both of them,” Bedsworth says, as he meets the man’s gaze and sentences him to three years in state prison.

Next up: a young man who has pleaded guilty to his first felony. Bedsworth, noting the man’s lengthy list of aliases, leans toward the shackled prisoner and says: “First of all, what is your true name? You have several.”

Before pronouncing judgment, Bedsworth admonishes the man not to violate his probation, something he has done in the past. “If you do that again, you are on your way to state prison. Do you understand that?”

And with that, Bedsworth sentences him to nine months in county jail and bids him “good luck.”

Moments later, he kicks his black leather cowboy boots up on his desk in his chambers and sighs.

“The toughest part is always the sentencing,” he says. Though he doesn’t second-guess himself, he harbors mixed feelings about the sentence he gave the 48-year-old: “The guy had led a blameless life. But with eight kilos of cocaine, you’d have to be Mother Teresa to stay out of state prison.”

*

It’s an hour before the opening faceoff and the pregame pandemonium at the Pond in Anaheim seems an ocean away from the order in Courtroom 37.

As Bedsworth dines with other off-ice hockey officials, most of whom have played organized hockey, it becomes clear that the job provides a healthy distraction for a man who suffered a close call in 1988, when an aneurysm ruptured in his brain.

“I have fully recovered, although there are people in the defense bar who would argue otherwise,” Bedsworth says.

Before the game, fans who have come to recognize Bedsworth’s familiar face playfully suggest that he consider giving the Ducks, who play worse at home than on the road, a few breaks. But when the puck starts flying, Bedsworth adopts the no-nonsense, decisive persona those in his courtroom have grown accustomed to.

Assuming his position in one of two goal judge boxes--each at opposite ends of the ice--he is the picture of concentration, his eyes darting to and fro with every slap of the puck.

The wait is not long. Twenty-nine seconds into the game, the visiting Whalers tap in a goal at Bedsworth’s end and his crimson light flickers to life on cue.

Another Whalers’ goal follows a few minutes later.

“This is nothing,” Bedsworth says during a break in the action. “New Jersey came into town one night and scored five goals in six minutes. I picked up the phone, called the referee’s table and said I wanted to renegotiate my contract.” Which, by the way, amounts to a modest sum for Bedsworth, who earns $104,000 a year as a Superior Court judge.

By the end of the first 20-minute period, the teams have attempted a combined 28 shots on goal--more than one per minute--most of which have come at Bedsworth’s end of the ice. Twice, the puck gets lost in a melee of players in front of the net, but Bedsworth’s light remains unlit.

“That’s a goal judge’s nightmare,” he says, “to push the button when no goal is scored.”

Another goal judge’s nightmare happens 11 minutes into the second period, when Bedsworth rules in favor of the Ducks on a shot that the Whalers’ goalie thinks he saved. The goalie, who looks to be about twice Bedsworth’s size with a temper to match, repeatedly skates up to Bedsworth’s see-through box and scowls.

If Bedsworth, who doesn’t so much as twitch at his accuser, has any doubts about his call, he doesn’t show it.

“He’s probably the angriest man in the building right now,” Bedsworth says a few minutes later. “But there’s no question in my mind.

“You do have to concentrate,” he says. “But that’s another similarity: I’m used to sitting in court for three hours at a time.”

When the final buzzer sounds, the Ducks have notched a rare home victory, 6-3, an outcome that pleases Bedsworth the fan. Bedsworth the goal judge wonders aloud whether the National Hockey League might frown on his affection for the home team. But, he says, “I can’t believe the 260 off-ice officials in the league don’t have favorite teams.”

If nothing else, Bedsworth says his supreme view from the goal judge’s box has given him a greater appreciation of the game and of certain Ducks players, like No. 7, Anatoli Semenov, who is more cagey than the judge had believed.

Quizzed on how he has observed such things when his unofficial job description requires he keep his eyes glued to the puck, he replies: “Hey! If you’re going to ask questions like that, I want a lawyer.”

Bedsworth expects to receive his first job evaluation by the NHL any day now. But until then, the jury on his performance is, in his words, still out.

Profile: William W. Bedsworth

Age: 46

Hometown: Long Beach

Residence: Mission Viejo, 10 years

Family: Wife Cheryl and three children

Education: B.A. in English literature, Loyola of Los Angeles (Loyola Marymount), 1968; law degree, UC Berkeley, 1971

Resume: Prosecutor, Orange County district attorney’s office, 1971-1986; elected to Orange County Superior Court bench in 1986

Hockey experience: None

First hockey game: Saw Detroit Red Wings versus “somebody else” in the 1940s

Favorite hockey team: “I’m a league official--can’t play favorites.”

All-time favorite player: Marcel Dionne, retired Los Angeles Kings center

Greatest hockey moment: The “Miracle on Ice” game in the 1980 Olympics, when the United States defeated the Soviet Union for the gold medal

On hockey in O.C.: “Usually it takes years to get a hockey franchise. But, lo and behold, I’m sitting in my office here one day and the Ducks just drop out of the sky--no pun intended.”

Source: William W. Bedsworth