State court makes rare visit
- September 16, 2010
Things were far from business-as-usual when California’s Third District Court of Appeals was called to order Wednesday morning.
Instead of a wooden dais, the three black-robed judges sat at a couple of plastic folding tables fitted with a pleated black skirt.
Instead of somber portraits and odes to the law lining the walls, there were colorful banners listing sports victories of years’ past.
And instead of a mostly empty courtroom, the three judges sat in the Calaveras High School gym facing a wall of bleachers filled with 350 students from the county’s two major high schools.
The court paid its first-ever visit to Calaveras County on Wednesday as part of an community outreach program that has brought proceedings to gyms and multi-purpose rooms across the 23 counties the Sacramento-based court covers.
The Calaveras and Bret Harte High School students and other attendees — who included a dozen or so members of the public, and the county’s new district attorney, Barbara Yook, and several of her deputies — watched as lawyers in two cases presented oral arguments to the court.
The circumstances of each case were rich with drama. In one, a woman high on drugs had crashed a 1967 Chevy Camaro into a tree, killing one of her passengers, who was the owner of the car.
In the other case, defendant June Lucena, a correctional officer at Folsom State Prison, had fallen while climbing a ladder to the hatch of a guard tower.
She said injuries to her back and jaw prevented her from working, but an investigation revealed she had engaged in many of the activities she said were impossible, including riding water slides, lifting large plastic bins, and eating nachos, chips and fried chickens.
Students remained hushed throughout the proceedings, for, despite the dramatic circumstances, arguments in each stressed relatively remote sections of insurance policy or law. But they perked up for the question and answer period.
Everyone has personal beliefs and biases, even judges, said Calaveras High School junior Meghan Justice, 16, of Valley Springs, setting up her question.
“That is recognized right off the bat as one of the things that we have to watch very closely,” answered Associate Judge Kathleen Butz, noting that all new judges take a class to identify their biases and tendencies.
Another student asked how much money appellate judges made per year.
“A little over $200,000,” answered Associate Judge George W. Nicholson, to twitters and murmurs in the audience.
All three justices emphasized to students they were not in it for the money. They and most judges they knew generally make less money than they had in private practice. Nicholson said he had turned down more lucrative jobs while on the bench.
After one student from the mostly upperclassman group asked about what the judges had studied for their bachelor’s degrees, all three went through their educational histories.
Butz had studied international relations — “which was all the classes I really liked” — but said it really did not matter.
“One of the beauties of a law degree is that you can come out of any major and go to law school,” she said.
Nicholson went from junior college to Cal State Hayward to UC Hastings College of the Law. He delivered a stern warning to the assembled students.
“If you don’t work hard in school now, you’re going to regret it,” he said.
But Arthur G. Scotland, the court’s presiding judge, had a gentler message.
“I goofed around a lot. I didn’t take college as seriously as I should have,” he said. “It’s never too late to get serious about an education.”
The one question that roused the whole room to a roaring applause had nothing to with the law.
“Who do you think is better, Calaveras or Bret Harte?” asked Calaveras High sophomore Brian Golston, 15, of Valley Springs.
“If I was a trial judge, I would say, ‘Thank you very much, I’ll take that under submission,’ ” joked Scotland.
Read article: