Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Maria Ghobadi, L.A.County Deputy Public Defender Rhonda Haymon and attorney Francisco Amador are competing for L.A. County Superior Court Office No. 64.
Amador was rated “Not Qualified” by the L.A. County Bar Association.
I interviewed the two deemed qualified by the Bar.
Ghobadi, rated “Well Qualified,” told me that she would like to become a judge because, “After almost two decades of being in the courtroom and seeing that judges have an amazing impact. They uphold the rule of law, the system. Their rulings impact the community and the defendants and the victims so much … And I just hope that my experience, and my diversity and my different way of looking at things, I can still continue to have that impact in a positive way.”
Haymon, rated “Qualified”, told me that she’s running because, “Public defenders make up a single-digit number in the judiciary as we speak in Los Angeles County. 70 to 80% of the bench itself have a prosecutorial background,” and that, “Black women are not making up enough of the bench … there’s an appearance of impropriety because you don’t have enough people from the community of ethnic descent.”
Both candidates expressed some form of support for ethnic and background diversity in the bench for their potential to increase just outcomes.
An important trait for a judge to have is for them to give a strong air of impartiality and resist expressing beliefs that might reveal too much about how they would be disposed to rule. This sentiment is expressed in the California Code of Judicial Ethics and extends to judicial candidates.
Both of our candidates worked in the L.A. County courts during the transition from District Attorney George Gascon to Nathan Hochman, and this presents us with an opportunity to see how they handle what may have been disagreements with one DA or the other. Gascon was known to favor what is seen as a lenient restorative approach to prosecution, while Hochman has claimed that he would like to strike a “hard middle” but has undoubtedly moved the DA’s office towards a more punitive approach.
I asked both candidates for their thoughts on the differences they experienced between Gascon and Hochman.
According to Ghobadi, “It’s kind of irrelevant what my thoughts are … You know, there’s a lot of things that I agree with or disagree with, and I just kind of put my head down and just do what I’m supposed to do and stay right. Like, my big thing is … If someone were to pull my cases, would you look at the way I handled that and say, ‘okay, regardless of who her boss is, that was the right outcome,’ I think is all I genuinely care about.”
Ghobadi’s response seemed to me an attempt to maintain that air of impartiality and professionalism. Haymon was much less apprehensive of expressing her opinions, particularly her preference for Gascon’s policies.
“[Before Gascon] there was more focus on incarceration … So I carved out my own restorative justice even when restorative justice wasn’t supposed to be implemented. I did my own creativity … So when Gascon came on, he kind of codified what we needed. And I know that during that time, smash, quote unquote, grabs, people say, became more prevalent. But people don’t take into consideration that COVID, while Gascon was in office, played a major part in people’s social economic circumstances … And Gascon received the blame for that … And his policies were never fully implemented because his own deputies were suing him under their union to stop him from implementing the changes.”
With every response, Ghobadi seemed much more mindful of the possible unintended implications of her comments. She expressed that she was wary of prejudging on abstract cases or making sweeping claims about judicial approaches whereas Haymon seemed more than willing to comment on how she intends on rule, which could be seen as improper given the Judicial Code of Ethics.
“There’s stagnation. There’s no movement. We need to move forward and lock ourselves into rehabilitation where the law allows and it allows that discretion and to diversionary programs from people who have mental health illness and lock ourselves out of incarceration because they come home one day.” Haymon continued, “We want to change the behavior of the person from stealing and taking property … State prison, you go to four years, you come back, you’re in worse economic circumstances than you were in the past … Those are the gaps that people don’t know about and don’t get addressed on the bench because there are not enough deputy public defenders on the bench to understand that that person is gonna go out and potentially steal because they lack resources.”
This is one of many instances throughout the interview where Haymon appeared to demonstrate a strong preference for leniency if elected.
The MetNews, a source for legal news in California, published its own assessment of the candidates, along with comments by other attorneys and judicial officers familiar with Ghobadi and Haymon. While there was nothing but praise for Ghobadi’s professionalism, Haymon was described as having a “terrible temperament”, “unprepared”, and several noted her habitual “tardiness.”
In 2023, the MetNews also published a column by an anonymous deputy DA alleging, among other things, that Haymon is “combative”, “toxic”, has a “poor knowledge of the law”, and that after a fellow prosecutor declined Haymon’s request to dismiss a case, she “threaten[ed] to make that person’s life miserable.”
I asked Haymon for her response to these allegations.
“So for 26 years, I’ve been highly successful against the prosecutors … Also, in addition, I’m an adjunct professor of law. So this notion of me not being aware of the law is absolutely incorrect.”
Of Judge Birnstein, who alleged that Haymon was often tardy, Haymon accused her of having a bias against her and of improperly campaigning against her in court – Haymon has a pending motion to get Birnstein recused from her cases. She also implied, without providing evidence, that Birnstein’s endorsement of Ghobadi may have been motivated by a bias in favor of Jews.
“And she has a bias against me as she said that she had endorsed another person. Well, that person is Jewish. It’s not this black woman. So I stand committed that things that have happened to me as a black woman that should not have happened.”
Haymon was also held in contempt of court for continuously interrupting a separate judge, Judge Olson and for presenting unrelated matters in court. According to Haymon, the contempt charge was unjustified and she claimed that a transcript published by the MetNews showing the exchange was fraudulent.
“I ran against a judge who held me in contempt because of the success that I was achieving in the Compton Courthouse. She wanted to stop that … Now, people interrupt the court all the time. Let’s just say I want to concede that. I don’t believe I did and the transcript didn’t properly reflect what was happening. They made that transcript up. No one ever confirmed with me … Yet the news published portions of it, which was not true of what actually transpired.”
The transcript seems to show Haymon interrupting Judge Olson even after several warnings and an appeals court later upheld the contempt charge, but once again, Haymon levies accusations of racism.
“So what she did was I went and studied her court to see, is it just me that she’s treating this way? Or is it everyone? I reached the conclusion that it was just me … And I noticed that there were white female attorneys appearing for preliminary hearings at 11:30 a.m. Now, if I had engaged in such conduct, it would be a problem.”
I’m in no position to confirm or disconfirm whether Haymon is as unprofessional as some of her colleagues describe but the differences between her and Ghobadi are striking.
Ghobadi is extraordinarily careful in what she expresses, as you would expect from someone with the demeanor of a judge, while Haymon is very willing to make disturbing accusations about the internal motivations of others and even claim that transcripts of her courtroom exchanges were falsified.
Voting for Haymon seems like a mistake when we have a well-qualified candidate with what appears to be a pristine reputation.
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group.