By Greg Mitchell

Daniel Kremer was a career prosecutor in the attorney general's office, where he was a right-hand man to George Deukmejian before being appointed by him to superior court in 1983 and then to the appellate bench in 1985.

Kremer is described as smart, conservative and pragmatic by one appellate practitioner, who compares him to California Supreme Court Justice Marvin Baxter.

Kremer got some notice in March 1998 when he took on the thorny issue of a criminal defendant's right to lie on the witness stand. In People v. Johnson, 62 Cal.App.4th 608, Kremer ruled that a trial judge had violated a defendant's constitutional rights by refusing to let him testify after his lawyer had warned that he was likely to perjure himself. But Kremer held the error harmless, and set down guidelines for handling such situations in the future.

Kremer doesn't get second-guessed very often. Despite publishing a healthy 25 opinions between October 1996 and October 1998, Kremer was never depublished and saw review granted only once.