Taking Care of Friends
Some judges are born incompetent; some achieve incompetence and some have incompetence thrust upon them.
Despite my quibble that California tends mostly to have Republican governors who tend mostly to appoint their judges from among the ranks of local District Attorney’s offices, Alameda County has historically had a highly qualified judiciary. In fact, although I haven’t done a scientific study, I believe that Alameda County has sent more judges to the California Supreme Court than any other county in the state.
There was, of course, Judge B, with the mounted moose head on the wall just behind him, who never understood why his courtroom was empty day after day because attorneys refused to appear before him. And there was Judge C, whose divorce appeal I handled and who led me to comment that “you evidently don’t have to know anything about the law to be a judge.” And Judge E, who tended to sleep during trials.
And then there was Judge William D. Spruance, who was in a class all his own.
Spruance was the senior partner in a three-attorney San Leandro firm when he decided to stand for election as a judge in 1970. Elected, he took office in January, 1971, and served for four years before being removed from the bench. But the last two of those four years he spent fighting charges against him for what the California Supreme Court later termed his “inexcusable and reprehensible conduct.”
(For some reason [I have my suspicions as to why], judges in California tend to retire in mid-term, allowing the governor to appoint their replacement, who then runs as an incumbent when the six-year term expires. It is rare for a judicial seat to be up for grabs in a general election. But it does happen.)
Eyebrows were raised before he was even elected. Spruance was running against another long-time Alameda County attorney and came up with the campaign slogan “Retain Bill Spruance for Judge.” When challenged as to why he used the word “retain,” which tended to suggest that he was running as an incumbent, he was all innocence. “Clients ‘retain’ an attorney,” he would explain. “That’s all I meant.”
Of course I didn’t know any of this when I went to work for him the summer after my first year of law school. But foolishly, even learning of his background and reading the California Supreme Court’s characterization of him as “petty and vindictive,” I stayed on for four years after law school before finally bailing in disgust.
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Spruance had a lot of friends and a lot of enemies, although both of those categories were figments of his own imagination. He really had no friends: he had sycophants, drinking buddies, hangers-on and those who found him valuable for their own purposes. And he had no real enemies: those who didn’t like him tended not to waste any time worrying about him and those whom he termed “enemies” were mostly those whom he didn’t like.
But once on the bench, he set out to reward his friends and punish his enemies.
Two of his “friends” were attorneys Julio Juarez and Robert Winkler. I later knew both of them. Bob Winkler was a fine, intelligent attorney and how he let himself get caught up with Spruance I never really understood. Julio Juarez was a nice guy but a public menace as an attorney, and who was disbarred much too late in his career.
But Spruance took care of them, appointing them over and over again to represent criminal defendants at public expense, without regard to the niceties of the law.
A criminal defendant has a Constitutional right to an attorney and when he can’t afford an attorney of his own the Public Defender is appointed to represent him. But for various reasons which aren’t important here, the Public Defender sometimes cannot represent a particular defendant. In these cases, private attorneys are appointed by the court from a list of approved attorneys provided by the county. And the private attorneys are paid for by the county. Judges are supposed to assign private attorneys in some sort of order so that none of them receives any more appointments than any of the others on the panel.
When he was a practicing attorney, Spruance was used to buying friendship by standing for round after round of drinks, picking up the dinner tab and providing free legal services over the objections of his business partners. He saw his judgeship as just another, bigger, fiefdom. He gave Winkler and Juarez 44% of his appointments – usually without even checking to see if the defendant was eligible for a court-appointed attorney.
The California Supreme Court, on an appeal from a recommendation of the Commission on Judicial Performance that he be removed from the bench, commented that “We can only conclude that petitioner’s appointments of Messrs. Juarez and Winkler were motivated by his desire to reward his friends and election campaign supporters.”
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In another case, the nephew of a friend and political supporter was arrested and charged with engaging in a speed contest. Without the knowledge of the District Attorney or the judge properly assigned to the case, Spruance had the matter transferred to his department. He then reduced the speed contest charge to illegal parking on condition that the boy perform 40 hours of community service at the San Leandro Boys Club, a favorite charity of his and one on whose board of directors he had previously served.
The Supreme Court concluded that his actions “were motivated by nothing having to do with the merits of the case, but rather by his friendship with [the defendant’s uncle.]”
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And then there was the case in which the defendant was another long-time friend and the defense attorney not only worked for Bob Winkler but was also dating Spruance’s daughter. Spruance (and remember: he was a sitting judge) cornered the Deputy DA assigned to the case on several occasions and tried to persuade him to reduce the charge from drunk driving to reckless driving. When the deputy held firm (good for him, but I’ll bet he didn’t fare too well in Spruance’s court after that), Spruance went to his superior.
The Supreme Court held that he “knew or should have known that he was using the prestige and authority of his judicial office to effect a disposition of a criminal case not before him in any judicial capacity and [here’s that phrase again] for reasons unconnected with the merits of the case.”
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W.D. never forgot a slight by an enemy. And if he could punish someone who displeased him while at the same time rewarding a friend, well, so much the better.
When the son of one long-time friend was charged with being under the influence of drugs in public and possession of marijuana, and was defended by another long-time friend, Julio Juarez, Spruance went to work.
Before the court trial (i.e., a trial in front of a judge only, without a jury), the judge suggested that the defendant plead guilty to the under-the-influence charge and that the possession charge be dismissed. The DA rejected the proposed deal. During the trial, Spruance brought it up again, was rebuffed again and commented sadly that the DA was forcing him to do something he didn’t want to do.
Evidently what he didn’t want to do, but did, was exclude most of the prosecution’s evidence and then find the defendant “not guilty” on both counts. The DA appealed and the verdict was reversed. The defendant then appealed to a higher court which reinstated the original verdict, commenting that a retrial would amount to double jeopardy for the defendant, despite a “gross miscarriage of justice” on the part of the trial court.
Spruance later stated that the defendant, while actually guilty, had been “saved by a technicality.” The Supreme Court pooh-poohed this excuse, as follows:
Petitioner’s attempt to put a gloss of good faith on the whole incident, by declaring that the defendant “had been saved by a technicality,” was intended to conceal the fact that petitioner’s conduct was motivated by his relationship with the defendant’s father and with the defendant’s counsel, as well as petitioner’s desire to punish the deputy district attorney for his refusal to accept petitioner’s suggestion of a negotiated plea.
But that wasn’t the worst.