n a Monday morning in 1997, a drug dealer accused of violating his probation and living the last eight years as a fugitive appeared before Alameda County Superior Court Judge Dean Beaupré.
Dressed in the sky-blue uniform of the Santa Rita jail, the prisoner spoke politely, but sounded a little desperate when he asked Beaupré to let him out that day on bail. The prisoner said he'd lose his two jobs if he doesn't return to work.
Instead of bail, the prisoner got sharp words.
"You've been missing for 10 years, and you didn't have the best of rap sheets before that," Beaupré told him.
Then the judge added, with a heavy dose of sarcasm, "We'll make sure you have phone calls to explain to people that you've been temporarily inconvenienced."
The prisoner sighed as he was led out of the courtroom.
The exchange is a typical mixture of the kind of toughness, attention to detail, compassion and, sometimes, impatience that Beaupré brought to Department 11, the master criminal calendar in Oakland.
After landing the assignment the former chief assistant public defender surprised, and sometimes frustrated, his former colleagues with his toughness on criminals. Even more surprising was his brutal insistence on moving cases quickly through the system. That strategy reduced the criminal backlog in Alameda County, but placed intense pressure on lawyers -- especially defense lawyers -- to dispose of cases or take them to trial.
"Dean has been extremely tough when it comes to setting trial dates and continuances," said Jay Gaskill, the now-retired Alameda County public defender and Beaupré's former boss. "He has been far less flexible on those scheduling issues than either people expected him or other judges similarly situated. That produces a certain disquiet."
Beaupré knows he angered lawyers with his insistence on sending cases out early. But he has his reasons.
Beaupré said he finds it offensive "to have an 800-case backlog and to have a judge sitting there doing nothing."
Given his experience as a public defender and ability to assess cases, he said he is able to balance the interests of defendants and their lawyers against the press of the calendar.
"When a guy has been arrested and it's now two years later and we still haven't dealt with his case, to me that's the antithesis of what a justice system should be about," Beaupré said.
"I know when I suggest we're doing it for the defendants, defense attorneys roll their eyes," he added. "But I know that for many of these defendants, they need to get the cases over with and on with their lives."
While the public defenders praise his independence and call him a fair sentencer, not all are convinced that clients are benefiting from his fast-track approach.
"Sometimes he wants to get court dates quickly," said Deputy Public Defender Jody Nunez. "Sometimes that's not in the best interest of the client !.... It's been difficult for people to work with him."
From many of the same lawyers who gripe about his hardball scheduling tactics, Beaupré wins praise for his independent-mindedness, work ethic, and his savvy about criminals and criminal law.
Beaupré spent a total of 23 years in the PD's office -- 13 as chief assistant, the second-in-command of the office. Beaupré was appointed to the municipal bench by Gov. Pete Wilson in 1993 and elevated to superior court in April 1996.
As an executive judge in the criminal division as of January 1997, Beaupré has gained a reputation for being well prepared for each hearing before him, often taking files home and reading them over the weekend. While some lawyers privately groan at Beaupré's management, others say his familiarity with the facts makes him a better judge.
"There is no limit to his diligence," said Freda Perel, a private criminal defense attorney in Berkeley. "You don't often find a judge who is willing to sit down and read a transcript in a calendar court. It just makes you feel you're in front of somebody who takes seriously every single case."
On the bench, Beaupré can be cutting and impatient -- as evidenced by his remark to the probation violator.
But out of his robes and in the privacy of his chambers, Beaupré's stern demeanor quickly gives way to reflectiveness and a gentle sense of humor. A shock of white hair frames soft facial features; behind dark-rimmed glasses are kind blue eyes. Two gallon-sized buckets of Jolly Rancher candy and chocolate mints are stationed near the door for lawyers' consumption.
"He may appear gruff, but he's not really that way," said criminal defense attorney Philip Schnayerson of Hayward's Garcia & Schnayerson. "It's a style, not a way of life."
"In chambers," concurred Alameda County Assistant District Attorney Gary Cummings, "he's the real Dean Beaupré."
In fact, Beaupré has shown he's willing to change when he's wrong.
For example, shortly after his assignment, Beaupré -- a fanatic about keeping all his courtrooms busy -- implemented a program whereby he held defendants and lawyers scheduled for trial on a week-long "standby" until a courtroom opened up.
The purpose of the plan was to ensure that courtrooms weren't empty between the time one trial ended and the other began. But it also meant defendants in custody were dragged to court in the wee small hours of the morning on special transport to await trial. Lawyers, especially those in private practice, complained of the upheaval in their schedules.
Realizing the policy wasn't working, Beaupré modified it by getting lawyers to agree that, if they were on standby, they would rush to the court within an hour of being paged rather than having to appear each day. Beaupré also persuaded the Santa Rita jail to agree to bring in defendants within a half-day of getting a call.
"We were bringing the defendants in every morning, and these poor guys had to get up at 4:30 to make the bus to my court. Well, that gets real tiring," said Beaupré. "It just didn't make sense, what I was doing."
The program may still not be loved by lawyers, "but it's also true that when you are trying to manage precious resources, you have to impose on people," said Superior Court Presiding Judge Ronald Sabraw.
Sabraw also praised Beaupré's use of his connections on the municipal court bench to enlist muni judges for service in Oakland Superior Court to hear felony cases when courtrooms are free.
"He's a very talented judge," Sabraw said. "He's a hard worker and he's creative, and he's made my life easier."
While public defenders acknowledge that some of Beaupré's decisions have disappointed them, none call him a pushover for the DA's office.
"I do know a lot of criminal defense attorneys were disappointed to see that sentences that defendants receive in his department are not lenient -- they are harsher than one might have expected from a former public defender," said Michael Ogul, an Alameda County assistant public defender who has had several murder cases in front of Beaupré.
But, Ogul said, "He's very clearly not just a rubber-stamp judge who will just go along with whatever the DA wants."
"To his credit," added county Public Defender Gaskill, "he's made a number of courageous decisions in rulings and sentencing choices that show that he's one of those judges who's determined to do the right thing."
Beaupré said his experience has shaped his view.
"I probably am hard on guys who have been crooks all their lives and have never worked, because I don't expect people to live that way," Beaupré said. "They are like a bomb: They usually end up destroying the lives of everyone around them."
But Beaupré conceded that he's probably more lenient than average on first-time or situational offenders. He believes in sending nonviolent drug abusers to rehabilitation programs, and said he has a "soft spot" for prostitutes, who he says often suffer horribly in abusive relationships with boyfriends and pimps.
DAs generally applauded Beaupré's work.
"Ninety-nine percent of the time," said Cummings, the Alameda County assistant DA, "he's dead on in terms of what we think should happen in the case."
But where there are differences, they can be sharp.
Cummings and Beaupré feuded over one case in which an Oakland police officer drove to a robbery in progress, and a defendant shot at the cop, who wasn't hit.
"He pled to everything and got 14 to 15 years. I thought he should get 20-something at least," says Cummings.
Beaupré stands by his sentence, recalling that it wasn't clear at the time whether the defendant was shooting at the police officer or, as he claimed, firing in the air to try to scare the cop off.
"I looked at a very young kid who had done something incredibly stupid, was clearly involved in drugs and not thinking right, and was going away for 15 years," he said. "It's a long time."
The judge said the sentencing is the hardest part of his new job. "I lose sleep over it, I take it home with me," he says. "It is an enormous decision."
"I find myself on numerous occasions urging the DA to reconsider their offer of 22 years on a case," he added.
Although his early rulings failed to please all of the people all of the time, observers say Beaupré is unafraid of controversy. For example, in late 1997 Beaupré considered a defense motion to move the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers' Club conspiracy and possession trial to San Francisco.
He asked about the "appearance of forum shopping" in the case, and suggested the attorney general's filing location could have been an act of retaliation against cannabis club founder Denis Peron and the five other defendants. Peron and the others supported Proposition 215, which legalized marijuana use for medical purposes, while AG Dan Lungren had opposed the measure. Beaupré ordered both sides to submit briefs on the issue, suggesting he might be inclined to move the case to San Francisco.
Although lawyers on both sides of the bar may at times disagree with Beaupré, most say they respect the passion he brings to his job.
"He's is a person of very high integrity who is really trying to make a difference in the criminal justice system," said Charles Denton II, a longtime Alameda County deputy public defender. "He's someone who really does care deeply about what happens."
