hroughout this election season, The Recorder is giving judicial candidates in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco and Santa Clara counties an opportunity to speak to our readers in their own voices.
Last week The Recorder sat down with each of the four candidates for Contra Costa County Superior Court: Malcolm Sher, Cheryl Mills, Joel Golub and Stacey Grassini. Today we conclude the Contra Costa series with Grassini, a deputy district attorney.
Recorder: Why should the voters choose you?
Grassini: What sets me apart from the other candidates is for the last decade or so I've dedicated my professional career to protecting the public, to serving the public. So I've been committed to being a public servant by being a deputy DA. My job as a deputy DA is to ensure that justice is served. I think that's as closely aligned as you can be as to a judge. ...
Above and beyond that, out of all four of us, I'm in the courtroom almost every day. I'm a trial attorney, litigating motions, pretrial negotiations, trial work, preliminary hearings. I've literally prosecuted thousands of cases, from misdemeanors to felonies. Currently I'm assigned to the sexual assault unit. I deal with sexually violent predators. I deal with people on a daily basis.
So I'm familiar with the courtroom process, everything from filing a case to disposing a case to trying a case. ...
Recorder: Tell us about a judge on the Contra Costa bench, retired or current, that you would emulate.
Grassini: That's a great question. There's attributes from different judges that I admire. ...
One of the ones that comes to mind is Judge Peter Spinetta. He has a temperament, he maintains his composure, he definitely has atmosphere, when you go in there, you get a feeling of fairness, which is just as important as fairness occurring. ... He actually listens to people, he allows communication, instead of people just talking at one another. ...
For just the respect and longevity and having dedication and working hard, it would be Judge [Richard] Arnason. I mean, that man's amazing. ... He's dedicated his whole life to being a judge, and I admire that from him.
A couple of the other judges are now appellate court judges, Pat Sepulveda - Justice Sepulveda - and also Judge [Richard] Patsey [now with JAMS/Endispute]. For different reasons.
Judge Patsey was great because he embodies something that I think is very important: personal responsibility and accountability. You go into his courtroom and you had to make sure you had your ducks in a row. But not just you, the other side, the witnesses, and he just made things happen. And I think by making all the parties in the courtroom accountable, you get a better work product ... and a more fair and just result.
Judge Sepulveda was great because she's extremely bright, I mean just extremely bright, and was able to listen to people and base her decision not only on her extensive knowledge but also common sense.
And the last one, just from judicial temperament, is Judge Wayne Westover, whom I tried several cases in front of. ...
Recorder: What do you think is the most important issue out there facing the Contra Costa court system right now?
Grassini: Trying to make sure that the court system is run a little bit more efficiently, so that the cases that are of the utmost importance get heard in a timely fashion. And cases that aren't as significant get resolved at an early stage, so there's not such a backlog, both from the criminal perspective and from the civil perspective. ...
Working as a calendar deputy, my job was basically to ... evaluate cases and weed out the cases that had issues with respect to provability or equity or cases that should be resolved, and the cases that are more serious, making sure those get pushed forward. ...
Recorder: What's stopping those cases from getting resolved at an early stage now?
Grassini: Part of the problem is there's a lot of legislation that mandates certain sentencing. There's not as much discretion allowed to the judges at all. There are certain determinate sentencings - you have midterm, aggravated and the lower term. You have the strike legislation that mandates certain things. ... People don't realize a lot of that legislation also is mandated toward the DA. If you look in the Penal Code, there are all these things you "shall" prove. If there's a strike offense you shall plead that. ...
I think you're seeing a trend away from - not talking about serious or violent felonies - but talking about drug-related felonies, Proposition 36, which is trying to take away some of those cases and trying to do away with the mainstream criminal process and kind of giving them off to [an alternative] system.
Recorder: It sounds like you feel that's a positive development.
Grassini: Yes.
Recorder: Contra Costa has an interesting geographical, cultural divide, between West County and East County. For the courts that plays out in access. What do you see as the court's role in addressing that issue? Would part of a solution be to hear felony [trials] in Richmond, in some of the satellite courthouses?
Grassini: I have thought about that, and I have spent, for whatever reason, luck of the draw, a good percentage of my time in West County. That's where I've litigated a lot of my cases.
In talking with some retired judges, they used to actually have a superior court out in Richmond. I think it's a good idea. I don't think there's enough room anymore [in Martinez] to expand to allow public access. I don't know if you've been there, there's hardly any parking, jurors have to get shuttled from a bus station to a courthouse. I think that is actually an excellent idea. ...
Recorder: Can you tell us in general how you feel about the way Three Strikes is handled in Contra Costa County?
Grassini: I don't know if I'm allowed by the judicial ethics to comment. ... I guess I would say this, and I don't want to sound trite, I definitely would uphold the law as it's written. It's not my job to change the law as a judge. ...
As a deputy DA I'm not in a management position where I decide how the application of Three Strikes is done in our county.
Recorder: There's some debate or discussion right now about the amount of discretion judges have. Can you comment to that aspect of Three Strikes?
Grassini: Judges do have discretion now to strike strikes. ...
I'll put it to you this way: If I was a judge, the things that I would look at to exercise my discretion, I would look at the present offense, which means I think if you're looking at someone who's just committed a violent rape as a present offense, it's likely to be treated differently than someone who maybe just stole a pizza from a car or a pack of cigarettes from a local mini-mart. So you look at the present offense.
You look at his prior convictions, and see how old they are. Are they from 1970? Are they garage-type burgs that qualify as residential burgs for strikes, where some kid took, you know - they didn't have VCRs in 1970 - a bicycle out of a garage, versus someone three years ago who sodomized three young children.
I know those are extremes, but I think that's the kind of things you'd have to look for. ...
Recorder: How do you feel about the process you're going through right now? There are folks out there who believe the election process should go away, and it should be purely gubernatorial appointment.
Grassini: I think the process of electing a judge should be left to the people because the job that a superior court judge does in Contra Costa County or Alameda County affects the lives of people throughout the county. I think as part of our democracy that they should have a voice. I don't think it should be left up to the governor in all contexts. ...
What was the second part of your question, do I like going through the process? [Laughs] That's a different issue. It's kind of hard because I grew up in a blue-collar, working-class family. I worked my way through college and law school. So the aspect of going out and asking people, not only for money, but for their time, their name, I don't think it's something that I'll ever get used to, and I don't enjoy doing that. ... Unfortunately, it's something you have to do.
Recorder: How would you handle the areas of law that are less familiar to you? How would you approach getting a civil court assignment?
Grassini: I did work for about a year as a civil attorney, so I was exposed to the Code of Civil Procedure. I worked for a Walnut Creek firm by the name of Anderson, Galloway & Lucchese. I did do a lot of pretrial work, doing depositions and retaining experts and sitting in on depositions and writing motions. ...
Everyone has a specialty. If you're a civil attorney, it doesn't mean you know all areas of civil law. You normally know, like family law, or you know products liability. Right now I'm assigned to criminal law. ...
I do know the Evidence Code, which I think is important, because I use that every day. The Evidence Code is the same, no matter if civil or criminal law. ...
I've talked to several judges about this, about different areas of the law, when they go from family law to civil law, and they say the most important thing is how we interact with people. And the actual substantive area of the law, what you do is you go and research it. ... So I'm not really concerned about if I got sent to family law or a civil department. ...
Recorder: Being a judge is a quasi-management position. Do you have any managerial experience?
Grassini: My present job with the DA's office, from a pure management [standpoint], I haven't supervised employees. I do manage my own caseload, as far as that goes. I have had a position as both a - I was a felony filer out in Richmond, where basically that means the police bring all the felony cases and you review them and decide what cases to file, and that was my own decision. So I did manage, so to speak, all the felonies that were in West County. ...
Recorder: How do you feel about the trend of more and more cases going into mediation and arbitration? Do you feel there's been a brain drain from the bench?
Grassini: I think that any type of pretrial resolution of a civil case is good. Mediation and arbitration by nature means that both sides are trying to work out their differences rather than going ahead to trial. So ... mediation and arbitration I think are valued, vital parts of our system. It helps unclog the system. ... The goal is that both parties come away feeling like they're satisfied. You couldn't ask for much more than that.
It's unfortunate that we do lose to a lot of good judges to, I think it's called JAMS. I don't know how you stop that. You can't really fault somebody for making a decision for whatever reasons to move on. But I think it does affect our bench. ...
Recorder: At the beginning of this conversation you said that being a DA is the most like being a judge. But really, isn't being a court commissioner the closest job classification in this race to being a judge?
Grassini: I would say no, only because, I guess it depends on what type of commissioner you are, whether juvenile versus just a traffic commissioner, hear traffic tickets. If what you do, is your job basically just to hear traffic tickets eight hours a day, I don't think that is close to what I do as a deputy DA. I think you don't have the breadth of experience.
Recorder: During the televised debate a few weeks ago, toward the end you said, "I'm not a court commissioner, I'm not a bureaucrat." And that you're "not an attorney chasing the almighty dollar." It sounded like you were drawing a distinction between yourself and the other candidates, and it seemed kind of harsh.
Grassini: I did read the article you wrote that said it was a "dig." And it wasn't really trying to be a dig. It was just trying to distinguish myself from everyone else. My wife's actually a civil attorney [laughs]. She's a tax attorney, she does ERISA benefits law for Wilson Sonsini, so -
Recorder: How is it not a dig to say you're not an attorney chasing the almighty dollar?
Grassini: I guess I meant that in a perspective of my career choice has been to provide public service. I guess that was the point I was trying to make. You make a choice in life whatever career you want to do, civil litigation or any other type of law. But I've chosen to dedicate my professional life to serving the public. I guess that was the distinction I was trying to make when I made that statement.
