Verdict’s In on Dickey: Judge Is ‘Ruthlessly Fair’

SANTA ANA — Attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. says he and his colleagues “cringed” when they learned that the case of former Black Panther leader Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt was being transferred to Orange County.

The dominant perception in Los Angeles, Cochran says, is that judges and juries in Orange County deliver assembly-line justice and are hostile to minorities.

But Pratt’s case landed in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey, considered by some court watchers as one of the best jurists in the state. Dickey overturned Pratt’s 1972 conviction of murdering a schoolteacher, and last week he freed Pratt on bail.

Cochran now says he regrets being apprehensive about trying Pratt’s case in Orange County and describes Dickey as “one of the best judges I’ve practiced before.”

He pauses, then says: “In the entire United States.”

In nearly three decades on the bench, Dickey has never shied away from dropping judicial bombshells.

In a case that had inflamed racial tensions in Orange County, the Superior Court judge sentenced two Latino youths convicted of slaying a white San Clemente teenager to less than seven years in a juvenile facility, instead of 15 years to life in a tougher state prison, as the victim’s family and prosecutors demanded.

Dickey also did not flinch when he cited jury misconduct and nullified the conviction of a confessed child killer, acknowledging that his ruling was likely to cause “extreme community revulsion.”

The reversal of Pratt’s murder conviction reverberated across the nation, but it didn’t cause a ripple among people who know the 62-year-old Dickey well. Since 1970, the judge has earned a reputation as a fiercely independent jurist who is not afraid to follow the law and his conscience--even at the risk of causing great public outcry.

Many expect him to follow the same standard when he sentences Orange County’s former assistant treasurer, Matthew R. Raabe, for misappropriating public funds and securities fraud violations arising from the county’s 1994 bankruptcy.

Raabe’s sentencing in August on five felony convictions will be one of Dickey’s final acts before he retires.

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Defense lawyers and prosecutors, who seldom agree on anything, say the county is not only losing its most senior judge but also one of its best jurists.

“He’s ruthlessly fair,” said Deputy Orange County Dist. Atty. Christopher Evans, who has tried several murder cases before Dickey. “Only someone who’s well prepared and has truth on his side has an edge in Judge Dickey’s courtroom.”

Alan J. Crivaro, a senior deputy Orange County public defender, says, “Judge Dickey embodies the canon of ethics, but more important, he is never fearful about doing the right thing.”

Lawyers say that even though Dickey has made many gutsy rulings, he will forever be remembered as the judge with the fortitude to free “Geronimo” Pratt.

The ruling is a fitting exit for Dickey, who was appointed to Orange County Municipal Court by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan in April 1970--the same year Pratt was convicted of killing teacher Caroline Olsen on a Santa Monica tennis court.

Pratt has steadfastly denied that he was the killer and says that the FBI knows he is innocent because agents had him under surveillance in Oakland at the time.

Local prosecutors and defense attorneys who know Dickey said Pratt probably drew the best judge in the county--possibly the state--to hear his plea that his murder conviction be overturned on the basis that crucial evidence that would have undermined the credibility of the state’s witnesses had been withheld by prosecutors.

“He is as meticulous and as thorough a judge as you will ever find,” said Thomas Goethals, a former Orange County prosecutor now in private practice in Laguna Hills. “He has never in his lengthy career glossed over anything.”

It didn’t take long for the Pratt’s lawyers to realize that. During one of his first meetings with lawyers in the case, Dickey pointed out that one of their legal briefs had duplicate pages, while another had pages out of order.

Cochran said the lawyers exchanged knowing glances, realizing that they were in front of a judge who had carefully read every scrap of paper in six file boxes that had been shipped to him only a couple of months earlier.

Shortly after he was released on bail Tuesday, Pratt said he saw some irony in being freed by a Reagan appointee in traditionally conservative Orange County.

“I feel so good about Judge Dickey,” Pratt said, “a man standing on his own principles and doing what’s right.”

But long before camera crews from CNN, the BBC and Court TV focused on Dickey’s ninth-floor courtroom, the judge’s bold rulings had occasionally attracted local attention of a different sort.

One ruling in 1994 briefly threatened Dickey’s continued tenure on the bench.

In that case, two Latino youths, described by prosecutors as gang members, were convicted of spearing 17-year-old Stephen Woods through the head with a paint-roller rod. The 1993 killing caused deep divisions between Latinos and whites in San Clemente.

Prosecutors pleaded with Dickey to send the two youths to state prison for 15 years to life for the second-degree murder of Woods. But Dickey instead opted for a sentence to the California Youth Authority, where the defendants, both 18, cannot be held past age 25.

Announcing their sentences, Dickey noted that young defendants sent to state prison can become a greater problem to society when they are eventually paroled.

“These young men are not predators,” Dickey said.

The victim’s mother, Kathy Woods, denounced the sentences as “too lenient,” and--with the help of one of the organizers of the successful Proposition 187 campaign--launched a yearlong effort to recall Dickey.

“I still believe Judge Dickey was absolutely wrong,” Woods said from her home in Mammoth last week.

Although the recall effort eventually failed, it had threatened to end a legal career that began in 1956, when Dickey graduated from USC and joined the Navy.

Three years ago, Dickey told a reporter that his legal career was almost a fluke. On his first day in the Navy, and without any real legal training, Dickey was asked to assume the duties of a retiring legal officer.

After leaving the Navy, Dickey enrolled at USC Law Center, where he received his law degree in 1961. A year later, he joined the Orange County district attorney’s office. Within six years, he was one of the office’s top administrators and a likely nominee for the bench.

Less than three years after naming him to Harbor Municipal Court in Newport Beach, Reagan promoted him to Superior Court.

Dickey quickly earned a reputation as a scholarly judge who was demanding of lawyers practicing before him. Some say privately they shuddered at the thought of having to appear before Dickey and face his pointed questions. Others describe him as imperious.

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In many cases, it became clear that Dickey was better prepared than either the prosecutor or the defense attorney.

Crivaro, the Orange County deputy public defender, said it was not uncommon for attorneys to receive a notice from Dickey that they should be prepared to argue the applicability of cases that had not been cited by either side in legal papers.

In the Pratt case, Dickey’s eye for detail was evident. At one point in the hearing, Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. Harry Sondheim argued how prosecutors had presented “overwhelming” evidence against Pratt during a trial that lasted some 30 days.

Wait a minute, Dickey interrupted. He had checked the daily transcripts himself for start and stop times. They showed that Pratt’s 1972 trial lasted just over six full days. If jurors deliberated for 10 days, as they did, that showed they did not think the evidence was overwhelming. “The jury was clearly having some difficulty,” Dickey said.

Even Cochran, who represented Pratt at the 1970 trial, said he had not thought to refresh his memory so he could make the same point.

Dickey declined to be interviewed for this article, but over the years, lawyers say, he has pushed for a system that produces qualified and independent judges in state courts.

In a commentary written for The Times several years ago, Dickey advocated changing the current election system for judges who face reelection every six years, often against opponents who claim to be tougher on crime.

The public is not served by candidates for judicial offices who “place so much emphasis only on crime and criminals,” Dickey wrote, arguing that “they are simply pandering to the perceived necessity to win. It tells the public nothing about whether that person will make a good judge.”

Instead of contested elections, Dickey argued in favor of retention elections, such as those for appellate judges, who run on their record, instead of against other would-be judges.

With age, Dickey has come to look like someone picked by central casting to wear a judge’s robes. His neatly trimmed mustache is now as silver as his well-coiffed hair.

He was expected to retire at the end of this month, but he has been asked to stay on indefinitely to handle motions that may follow Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s decision to appeal the reversal of Pratt’s murder conviction.

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But before he leaves, Dickey will also have to sentence Raabe, the former assistant county treasurer who was recently convicted of misappropriating public funds and securities fraud.

Last month, Dickey ordered Raabe, 41, to report to Chino State Prison for a pre-sentencing study, which typically examines whether a convict should be sentenced to state prison, or to county jail and a term of probation, or to probation alone.

Lawyers say that judges sometimes order such studies when they seek some “cover” or an excuse for sentencing a defendant to probation or a short stint in jail, rather than hard time in a state prison.

But both defense attorneys and prosecutors say they are certain that is not the motive behind Dickey’s action in the case of Raabe, who faces the possibility of 13 years in prison and $10 million in fines.

“He’s going to call it as he sees it,” said Crivaro, the deputy public defender. “This is one judge who is not going to be too concerned about what the letters to the editor say about any of his rulings.”

Times staff writer Edward J. Boyer contributed to this article.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Profile: Everett W. Dickey

Age: 62

Hometown: Los Angeles

Residence: San Clemente

Family: Wife, Freddie Louise Cook, and two adult daughters

Education: Bachelor’s degree from USC, 1956; doctor of laws, USC Law Center, 1961

Military record: Lieutenant in Navy, 1956-58. Served as defender, prosecutor and judge in the Navy’s legal department

Legal career: Deputy and assistant district attorney for Orange County, 1962-70; Municipal Court judge, Newport Beach, 1970-73; Superior Court judge, Santa Ana, 1973-present

Hobbies: Sailing, hiking, camping

Notable Rulings

* 1978: Struck down Sheriff Brad Gates’ practice of incarcerating women only in main jail rather than in other lower-security branch jails. “It was a cutting edge issue in those years. The sheriff actually argued they needed to keep the women at the main facility because they needed them to do the laundry. I don’t think any lawyer today could make that argument with a straight face.”

* 1992: Cited jury misconduct and threw out murder conviction and death penalty verdict of Richard DeHoyos, 34-year-old drifter from Texas who confessed to killing a fourth-grader on her way home from school in Santa Ana. “Even guilty persons are entitled to a fair trial.” (A year later, he sentenced DeHoyos to die after a second jury convicted him.)

* 1994: Rejected pleas to sentence two youths to state prison rather than California Youth Authority for second-degree murder of a San Clemente teenager who died after being speared through the head with a paint-roller rod. “I can’t bring Stephen Woods back. Nonetheless, these young men are not predators.”

* 1996: Granted a new penalty trial for convicted triple murderer Edward Charles III, citing misconduct by a juror who sought spiritual advice while deliberating whether the Fullerton mechanic should die for his crimes. “The defendant is entitled to 12, not 13 people, on the death penalty.” (A new jury will determine whether Charles receives a death sentence.)

Sources: Times reports, Los Angeles Daily Journal; Researched by DAVAN MAHARAJ / Los Angeles Times