A Tale of Pot and Politics

When the cops came they found the judge had planted evidence

As any follower of police fiction knows well, it does not always pay to call the cops. Paul N. Halvonik, 40, a California Courts of Appeal justice, and his lawyer wife Deborah, 37, apparently do not read police fiction. Returning to their home in Oakland Hills early one evening, Mrs. Halvonik found that a burglar had stolen $1,450 worth of television and video-tape equipment. She called the cops. The Oakland P.D., in the person of Patrolman Monte Beers, responded in short order. While checking out the perpetrator's point of entry, Officer Beers later reported, he spotted some long-leafed plants growing in redwood boxes on the balcony in the rear of the house. They were not zinnias. To Officer Beers' trained eye they looked like Cannabis saliva, a.k.a. marijuana.

Two days later, a pair of Oakland P.D. vice-squad officers parked around the corner from the Halvoniks' house and deployed a Bushnell Spacemaster, a telescope with a zoom lens that can magnify up to 45 times beyond the capability of the naked eye. Sure enough, the plants on the balcony were pot. A few hours later, armed with a search warrant, the seeing-eye detectives returned and counted 323 marijuana plants growing around the house. Inside, they found two lids of smokable grass and almost half an ounce of cocaine.

The couple were charged with cultivation of marijuana, a felony, and with possession, a misdemeanor. Because the coke was discovered in her desk, Mrs. Halvonik was also charged with possession of cocaine, a felony. Since Halvonik is a judge and his wife a lawyer, they were spared the humiliation of booking, fingerprinting and mug-shooting; free without bail on their own recognizance, they face trial.

Paul Halvonik, who had a respected record as an American Civil Liberties Union counsel before his judicial appointment, is a longtime friend and former aide to Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr., who named him to the bench in 1978. Previously he had been California's first state public defender and a state deputy attorney general. Fellow jurists who know his work have nothing but praise for him. Says San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Harry W. Low, until recently president of the California Judges' Association: "He's got an excellent legal mind and a good sense of being able to relate to people." Adds Lawyer James J. Brosnahan, an ex-president of the San Francisco Bar Association: "His opinions showed a sensitivity for civil liberties and a deep knowledge of constitutional law. He was a young man with a bright future." Obviously, whatever the outcome of the case against him, Halvonik's public career may be ruined (though the publicity might not harm his future as a private advocate in California).

The incident could not have occurred at a more unfortunate time. The California Supreme Court, long regarded as one of the best state courts in the nation, is in the midst of a long-drawn, harrowing investigation involving charges that it allowed political considerations to influence the timing of important decisions. Moreover, the Oakland scandal inevitably raised questions about the quality of the Governor's judicial appointments. One Brown nominee for an appellate court vacancy had to withdraw after the Sacramento Union revealed that he had written a string of rubber checks and had several times been accused of malpractice. Last week Brown appointed an avowed homosexual to the Los Angeles County Superior Court, exposing the Governor, a potential Democratic presidential candidate, to further criticism. And for all his impressive legal credentials, even Halvonik was not everyone's idea of an appellate judge. A jazz player who moved his piano into his Sacramento office in 1975, when he worked for the Governor, Halvonik, who sports a Pancho Villa mustache, had once before been caught with a marijuana cigarette, but on that occasion the charge was dropped.

This time around the Halvonik case will probably wind up as a scriptwriter might have composed it. One day after his arrest, by pure coincidence, the California Supreme Court let stand a San Diego appellate court's ruling that police use of such devices as the Bushnell Spacemaster to gather evidence is unconstitutional, an Orwellian breach of a citizen's right to privacy. Thus Halvonik and his wife could be acquitted, leaving him free either to stay on the bench or to return to private practice and defend exactly the kind of case in which he is now so messily involved.

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