Group Led by Pat Brown Urges Bird Reconfirmation

A group headed by former Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown today called for reconfirmation of California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and five other Supreme Court justices, saying the court’s foes want to impose right-wing political views on the state.

The Independent Citizens Committee to Keep Politics Out of the Court is supporting all justices up for reconfirmation, regardless of their politics, because members believe political attacks will interfere with justice in the state.

Members of the group include attorneys and representatives of unions and other community organizations.

Brown and others launched the group’s public campaign at a news conference at the Greater Los Angeles Press Club.

“The real purpose of the campaign against the court is not the death penalty, not Rose Bird, not the phony allegations against the other justices,” Brown said.

“Rather, the intent is to use the courts to enact a right-wing agenda: crippling the abortion laws, uniting church and state, destroying workers’ rights, wrecking our environmental safeguards and eroding the civil rights and liberties that the courts have granted individuals against an intrusive state.”

“There hasn’t been a period since the days of (U.S. Sen. Joseph R.) McCarthy when you have the right-wing movement, both nationally and in California, the way you have it now,” Brown said.

Opponents of Bird, who was appointed by Brown’s son, former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., have also targeted Justices Joseph R. Grodin, Cruz Reynoso and Stanley Mosk. They accuse those justices of being soft on criminals and point to the court’s frequent overturning of death penalty verdicts.

But the elder Brown said that the court has upheld more than 90% of all convictions and sentences it has considered. Death penalty verdicts are frequently overturned, he said, because of the confusing state of the law on capital punishment nationwide.