Judge, Public Defenders Form Uneasy Truce

After 2 months of friction and threats, an uneasy peace was reached Thursday between the Van Nuys branch of the county public defender’s office and a Superior Court judge.

The dispute climaxed after two deputy defenders assigned to Judge C. Bernard Kaufman’s court filed legal papers seeking to keep Kaufman from presiding over 20 pending criminal cases.

Under state law, attorneys each have one opportunity to remove a judge from a case by filing an “affidavit of prejudice.” The affidavits would have resulted in all 20 cases being assigned to other judges.

The attorneys withdrew the affidavits after high-ranking court officials met with Kaufman. Bill Weiss, head of the Van Nuys public defender’s office, said a tenuous peace was reached because officials in his office believe Kaufman will soon be transferred to a civil court judgeship.

At the root of the conflict are actions by Kaufman that Weiss characterized as “erratic and out of line.” Among those were threats by Kaufman to remove the public defender’s office from numerous cases and orders in one instance that a deputy defender remain in Kaufman’s courtroom for several hours despite protests that the attorney had cases to attend to elsewhere.

Kaufman said Thursday that he had been seeking to speed the often ponderously slow pace of justice.

He said he has “no problem with the public defender’s office. They’re hard-working men and women who have hard jobs to do and do them well.” But, he said, cases are constantly being postponed, and as a result, “defendants are being denied the right” to a speedy trial. He said he wants more defense attorneys to handle cases.

But Weiss charged that his office “is being made a scapegoat for” a systemwide shortage of resources. Court officials who met with Kaufman on Thursday secured a promise that he would stop trying to remove the public defender’s office from cases, Weiss said.

Alan B. Haber, presiding judge of the Van Nuys Criminal Courts, one of two officials who met with Kaufman, declined to discuss the matter.

The other judge who met with Kaufman on Thursday, Superior Court Judge Richard G. Kolostian, who will become presiding judge of Van Nuys Superior Court on Jan. 1, refused to confirm rumors that he plans to transfer Kaufman to a civil judgeship in 6 weeks.

Kaufman said he has requested such a transfer and been told it is likely. Haber said the transfer, if approved, would have nothing to do with the current dispute.

The immediate cause of the action by the deputy defenders was a threat by Kaufman on Tuesday to reassign a case from Deputy Public Defender Dennis Cohen to a private attorney or to the Alternate Defense Counsel, which handles county defendants when the public defender’s office has a conflict of interest or no available deputies.

Kaufman said he was considering the reassignment because he wanted to start trial on Cohen’s case and Cohen would not be able to proceed because of other pending cases, Weiss said.

About 2 weeks ago, Weiss said, Kaufman ordered Deputy Public Defender Daniel Kuperberg to remain in his courtroom after Kuperberg refused to waive his client’s right to be present when testimony was read back to a jury that had questions during deliberations.

Because Kuperberg insisted on having the client present, Kaufman said he could not simply send a court reporter into the jury room to read the testimony and bring in another court reporter to continue with other cases. Instead, he had to delay the other cases while jurors were brought in the courtroom and the court reporter read testimony.

Weiss said Kaufman told Kuperberg, “If you are going to waste the court’s time, I am going to waste your time.”

Kaufman refused to let Kuperberg use the telephone and attend to cases in other courts, Weiss said.

Kaufman said Thursday that he ordered Kuperberg to remain only because the judge was scheduled to start trial on another case soon after and “didn’t want the attorneys to be getting lost.”

Asked why he refused to let Kuperberg use the phone, Kaufman said, “I really don’t know if I did or did not.”