Confidential File

Some Judges Deal in Real Justice

Two weeks ago I quoted you a rather amazing conversation between an attorney and Los Angeles Municipal Judge George B. Ross.

At least, to me it was amazing.

The gist of the judge's remarks to the attorney, who was questioning the severity of the sentence given his client, was:

If
a man pleads not guilty and asks for a jury trial, and he's found
guilty, and I believe he was obviously guilty, it's going to cost him a
lot more than if he pleaded guilty in the first place.

The
attorney, Louis Romero, argued that trial by jury was the right of
everyone, rich or poor. It was not a privilege reserved only for the
wealthy.

He added that levying heavier fines against individuals who used their right of jury trial was a deterrent to justice.

Judge
Ross replied, "Maybe so, but that is what I am doing. That is what
other judges are doing, and you are going to have a to persuade a lot
of judges to change their minds…"

At the time, I questioned Judge Ross' statement that it is a common practice of our courts to soak someone for exercising a constitutional right.

And last week, Mirror News reporter Paul Weeks polled several judges, who both denied and criticized the use of such a policy.

I thought, then, that possibly Judge Ross' attitude was a unique one.

But
today I received a copy of "The Open Forum," official publication of
the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

In it was the following article:

 "A
Long Beach judge who habitually set excessive bail when a defendant
insisted on a jury trial was officially condemned in a ruling handed
down by Superior Judge Frank G. Swain last month.

"The court granted a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the appeal of Emery Newbern, merchant seaman, and ordered his bail reduced from $500 to the customary $25.

"Judge Swain appointed ACLU counsel A.L. Wirin to represent Newbern in the appeal of Municipal Judge Charles T. Smith's bail policy.

"Wirin argued that the Long Beach jurist had denied Newbern's constitutional rights to reasonable bail solely because the defendant has exercised another constitutional right, trial by jury.

Bail Held Excessive

"Judge Swain held that $500 bail on a drunk charge is 'excessive' and penalizes the petitioner for demanding his constitutional rights.

"
'It is undisputed that the purpose of bail is to assure defendant's
presence in court at the required time and bail set at a figure higher
than an amount reasonably calculated to fulfill this purpose is
excessive under the Eighth Amendment of the U.S.Constitution,' Judge Swain ruled.

"At Newbern's
arraignment, Judge Smith remarked from the bench, 'My policy is that if
you plead not guilty and demand trial by jury and are found guilty, you
are going to get 90 days in jail; and I will bet you 100 to 1 that the
jury finds you guilty.' "

Judge Smith's quoted remark is about
as shocking a statement as I've ever heard attributed to a man paid by
the taxpayers of our country to administer justice.

If it
weren't for the cynicism which accompanies my advancing age, I'd say
that a judge's betting a defendant that a jury will find him guilty is
an inconceivable bit of dialogue. It sounds like something out of a burlesque routine or out of a Moscow courtroom.

However, such bizarre interpretations of justice in our courtrooms are more the exception than the rule.

It's
reassuring to know that there are dedicated men like Judge Swain who
don't feel that the robe is so sacred that its wearers aren't subject
to public criticism when the occasion warrants.

And if Judge Smith made the remarkable statement attributed to him, the occasion certainly warrants.

Confidential File

Harry Karl's Barber Is Pro Tem Leftist

When
he's not busy totaling the day's receipts, Harry Karl, the shoe tycoon,
is a member in good standing of a social class known as the idle rich.

He is, so to speak, loaded.

Unlike you or me, he doesn't wait until the "January white" sales are announced to replenish his home linen supply.

If
his neighborhood supermarket is featuring ground round as a week-end
special, he's the kind of guy who'll shrug it off and plop a seven-bone
roast into his push-cart.

You get the idea? Money, with Harry, is no object.

Take haircuts. I know, and you know, that at $1.75 a head, barbers are getting away with daring daylight robbery.

But that's not Harry's feelings. For a perfect trim and the proper swivel-chair treatment, he'll go as high as $1,000.

You don't believe me? Well, sit down and hear me out.

Recently,
Karl was sitting in Maury's chair at the Beverly-Wilshire Health Club,
pondering a problem of relatively immense proportions, considering the
moment.

He was about to leave on an extended vacation to Hawaii.
While there, he would need a haircut. And Maury, his barber for 22
years, wouldn't be available, obviously, to perform the ritual.

"The only answer," Karl sighed finally, "is for you to fly over after me."

Maury, a man quick to oblige the whims of his customers, agreed to make the trip.

On
schedule, Maury arrived in Honolulu. Karl's chauffeur met him at the
airport and drove him to the hotel. Although it was still before 7
a.m., the barber went directly to his customer's hotel suite.

He
banged on the door until Karl woke up and opened it. The shoe magnate
muttered a sleepy greeting, yawned luxuriously and rubbed his eyes
until he could see reasonably well. What he saw made him turn pale. The
barber's right arm was neatly encased in a plaster cast.

"Maury!" he cried, pointing at it in horror. "What's that?"

"My arm," the barber replied. "I broke it three days ago."

"You
can't do that to me," Karl screamed. "Look at my hair. Three weeks I've
been waiting for you to come over here and cut it. And whatta you do? You break your arm."

"I didn't do it on purpose," Maury pleaded.

"A
thousand bucks it cost me to get you over here," Karl raged, pacing up
and down. "Why didn't you call and tell me you broke your arm? Why did
you come all the way over here?"

Maury shrugged. "You got me the ticket, I figured I might as well use it. I never been to Honolulu before."

Karl
collapsed into a chair and buried his uncut head in his hands. Maury
patted him on the back with his good arm. "Look," he said soothingly,
"we'll go to the hotel barber and I'll give him directions how to cut."

"Directions!" Karl shouted. "You could've done that on the telephone. A thousand dollars you cost me. You're a rat, Maury. You hear me? A rat."

Karl
continued pacing and furiously banging a fist into his hand. Finally,
with an exasperated sigh, he said: "As long as you're here, you might
as well stay for a day."

"No hard feelings?" the barber asked meekly.

"My luck," Karl muttered bitterly. "I got to wind up with a one-arm barber."

Guy Needs Some Killing

"No hard feelings?" Maury repeated. "Let's shake on it."

With
a flourish, he thrust out the "broken" arm. "See? It isn't broken," he
said brightly. "It was just a gag I thought up before I left."

I'd
like to end this story by telling you that Karl took the barber's arm
and broke it. But he didn't. If he had, it would mean flying in Maury's
partner from the mainland.

And, after all, who ever heard of paying $2,000 for one haircut.

Confidential File

Life Must Go On, Even After Murder

On Feb. 19 of this year, Robert L. Mason, 40, went wild with a gun.

He entered the Glendale home of jazz musician Johnny Zorro. He shot Zorro's wife, 31-year-old Mrs. Rona Porrazzo, critically wounding her. And, with two more bullets, he killed Zorro's mother-in-law, Mrs. Susan Jamerson, 52.

At the time of the shooting, Zorro was working in Las Vegas. His son, Page, 5, was the man of the house, and a witness to the murder.

These
facts have all been reported and recorded — by the police, by the
press and by the courts which eventually decided that Mason should die
for his crime.

But what hasn't been reported is the lingering aftermath of the headline case of murder in the first degree.

Yesterday
I met Johnny Zorro for the first time since we were together in the
Glendale Police Station, where Mason was being booked following his
return from Winslow, Ariz.

Zorro was crying at Mason, an acquaintance of five years: "C'mon and face me. Aren't you man enough?"

He
was pounding the table in front of Mason's chair and shouting: "You've
ruined my wife's life, my son's life. My mother-in-law is gone."

Zorro's conversation
with me yesterday bore out too much of his prophecy. A front-page
murder may be forgotten by the public, but its aftermath is still there
to be lived out.

Zorro told me, first of all, about his wife.

"You'll remember," he said softly, "that nobody expected her to live. The bullet had lodged behind her right ear.

"She
was six weeks in the hospital and in bed three months. One side of her
face is still paralyzed. Now, we'll just have to wait."

The young musician added: "Already she's done so many things the doctors said were impossible."

Today, Mrs. Porrazzo
walks unaided. But the vision in one eye blurs frequently. She becomes
dizzy quickly. There's always the noise of a roar in her right ear.

"She
wants to get back in her church work. She was real active in it before
the shooting," Zorro told me. "More than anything, though, little Pagie's the reason she's alive today. She wants to live for the boy, for his sake."

Pagie, named by his parents for their friend, Page Cavanaugh, has his memories of the tragedy, too.

"Like
in our telephone number list, we had Mason's name and phone number.
Written in a long time ago," Zorro said. "Without saying anything to
us, little Pagie got a pencil the other day and scratched it out.

"The kid talks about what happened sometimes and he asks me, 'Daddy, do you think he can break out of jail?'"

There's
also a price tag on tragedy, the musician admitted — a tag way out of
line with the family's income. Zorro's wife has undergone three
operations.

"We had two cars," he said. "I sold one. I sold some
furniture. Right now, I guess I still owe about $2,500. I'll just pay
it off little by little."

Family Must Be Preserved

Zorro, a singer who plays the electric guitar, added that he's worked only a couple of times since the shooting.

"Naturally,
I had to be both mother and father to Page when Rona was in the
hospital. I still like to stay home a lot, to be around if I'm needed.

"I know I've got to get back working," he added. "I've been trying, looking around. But things sure seem quiet now. It's tight.

"I'll
stay in the music business," Zorro explained. "I've been supporting
myself in it since I was 16. But I don't know about all the traveling.

"The main thing now," he concluded, "is to keep my family together."

Note: Here are some clippings on the Daily Mirror about the Porrazzo case.