Court Opinion

ID: 9549396
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:17:36.575336+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:20:14.434288
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.-I dissent.
I do not propose to discuss the merits of the public censure of Judge Roberts ordered by the court in this case. It is my view that the action of my colleagues is redundant: in effect the judge has already been publicly censured by the Commission on Judicial Performance. In so doing, however, the commission has improperly assumed a function which the Constitution authorizes only this court to perform.
Article VI, section 18, subdivision (c), carefully delineates the responsibilities of the commission and the Supreme Court. Only the court may retire, censure or remove a judge. The commission, by contrast, is limited to the power to “privately admonish a judge found to have engaged in an improper action or a dereliction of duty” (italics added), and even that is subject to court review.
In this instance the commission made a public release of its recommendation for reproval. Once reported to the world, the commission action was not the private admonishment which the Constitution and rule 920(a) of the Rules of Court authorize, but itself became a public reproval which only the court may properly administer.
The commission apparently bases its justification for this invasion of the court’s prerogative on rule 902. If rule 902 can be read to permit press releases by the commission, then it clearly violates article VI, section 18, subdivision (f), of the Constitution, which authorizes only rules “providing for confidentiality,” not rules to evade confidentiality.
However, I do not read rule 902 to justify the public notoriety that the commission seems to seek. Rule 902(a) requires that all papers and proceedings of the commission “shall be confidential. ” Rule 902(b) provides in subsection (1) that a public statement may be made “at the request of the judge *752involved”; in (2), a statement may be made “if there is no basis for further proceedings or recommendation of discipline”; in (3), when the administration of justice is threatened a statement may be made confirming the fact of a hearing and describing the “procedural aspects”; in (4), when a judge resigns a statement may be made “to a public entity”; and in (5), after investigation the commission may make certain disclosures “to the person complaining against the judge.”
Nothing in rule 902 permits the commission, under the circumstances of this case, to violate the confidentiality which was always intended to be the hallmark of these proceedings. As stated above, if the commission persists in misinterpreting the rule to allow it to go public by announcing a recommendation of discipline then I would declare the rule invalid.
The majority refer to an unfortunate dictum in Mosk v. Superior Court (1977) 25 Cal.3d 474, 502 [159 Cal.Rptr. 494, 601 P.2d 1030], that arguably permits the commission to announce “the results of an investigation already known to the public.” The dictum is inconsistent with the body of the opinion in that case, which discussed at considerable length the history and bases of the confidentiality concept and the public policy in support thereof. (Id., pp. 488-499.) Any conflict between the text and rationale of an opinion and an incidental dictum therein must, of course, be resolved in favor of the former. In any event, there was no actual discipline ordered in that case, then or subsequently; the issue involved the required confidentiality of a mere preliminary investigation which the commission unconstitutionally sought to undertake in a circus atmosphere not only open to the public but replete with radio and television coverage.
It might be argued that even if the commission met its responsibility of confidentiality, the recommendation for discipline would become known when it was filed with this court. That is not necessarily so. The material filed with the court does not identify the judge involved; in this instance the case was entitled “Inquiry Concerning a Judge No. 49.” Only when the judge files a petition for writ of review, seeking a hearing in open court, does his identity become general knowledge. Thus, going public remains the choice of the judge, not of the commission.
In the event a judge does not seek a writ of review, this court determines on the basis of the commission record and recommendation the nature of the discipline, if any, to impose. The court is not required to adopt the commission recommendation. Under some circumstances the court may see fit to administer mere private censure by minute order, using the anonymous case title. But if the commission has previously made the matter public, private censure becomes an impossibility. I insist the commission has no right to so restrict the options available to this court.
*753In the instant matter, the release of the commission’s conclusion tarred Judge Roberts with a broad brush. Before the matter was argued in court, the public was informed that he should be censured. Thus the actual order by this court is not only anticlimactic, it doubles the reflection on the judge’s judicial performance in the eyes of his constituents. Not even the most heinous conduct merits infliction of the same discipline twice. Excessive punishment is not the path to rectitude.
In view of the action by the commission, and to discourage its repetition in future cases, I would dismiss these proceedings.