Challenge to Judge in Denny Case Assigned to Orange County : Courts: State Judicial Council makes move after prosecutors reject a defense attempt to have the matter decided by a black jurist.

A defense motion to disqualify the judge in the Reginald O. Denny beating trial will be decided by an Orange County judge, it was announced Tuesday.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Cecil Mills told prosecutors and defense attorneys that he had conferred with California Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas, who chairs the State Judicial Council, and the matter was assigned to Santa Ana Superior Court Judge Theodore E. Millard.

Before Mills announced the assignment, defense attorneys proposed that Superior Court Judge Dion Morrow, an African-American, be assigned to decide whether Judge John W. Ouderkirk will be removed. Since prosecutors did not agree to Morrow, the Judicial Council made the assignment.

Attorney James R. Gillen, who represents defendant Antoine Miller, said outside court that prosecutors had “once again rejected an opportunity to assign an African-American judge to this case.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lawrence C. Morrison, one of two prosecutors assigned to the case, denied that race played any role in the prosecution’s rejection of Morrow.

“Since they have made an attack on a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, we feel it would be most fair for an out-of-town judge, selected by the Judicial Council, to hear the matter,” Morrison said.

That process removes any question of an L.A. judge having ties to Ouderkirk because they serve in the same jurisdiction, he said.

Millard said he has heard many challenges to remove a judge for cause and the motion in the Denny case is “another routine one.”

“I haven’t seen it, but I would imagine that this matter would be handled just like all the other matters I have received,” he said.

Millard, 54, has a reputation for being meticulous. He has been a Superior Court judge since 1978, when he became the first candidate to successfully oppose an incumbent judge in Orange County in nearly 40 years.

Gillen requested last week that Ouderkirk be removed from the case, arguing that the judge has a conflict of interest stemming from his romantic involvement with former Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner’s former executive secretary.

Ouderkirk denied any bias and produced a transcript showing that he told the defense in October about his relationship with Sherry Perkins, and that both the defendants and their attorneys waived any objections.

Defense attorneys countered that they had no idea last October that Reiner would be called to testify in a potentially volatile hearing alleging that the district attorney’s office charges African-American defendants with more serious offenses than it does white defendants arrested under similar circumstances.

That hearing was scheduled to begin last week with Reiner, who was district attorney when the defendants in the Denny beating trial were arrested, as the first witness. It was postponed when the motion to disqualify Ouderkirk was filed.

Attorney Edi M. O. Faal, who represents defendant Damian Monroe Williams, filed additional grounds Tuesday for Ouderkirk’s removal. Faal said in court papers that the judge had solicited opposition to a defense motion seeking to medically examine Denny.

Prosecutors did not oppose the motion, but Ouderkirk notified Denny’s attorneys, who appeared in court to object to the examination, Faal said. Based on that objection, the judge denied the motion, Faal said.

According to a transcript of a conference in the judge’s chambers, Ouderkirk admitted inviting Denny’s attorneys to court, saying he did it in the interest of “moving matters along.” A prosecutor defended the judge’s action, saying he had proceeded exactly as the district attorney’s office had intended “in order to get that information before the court.”

In papers filed Tuesday, Faal also argues that Ouderkirk issued an order aimed at assisting “the prosecution in its efforts to defeat the defense motion on discriminatory prosecution.”

Miller and Williams, both 20, and Henry Keith Watson, 28, are charged with multiple felonies, including attempted murder, stemming from the assault on Denny at Florence and Normandie avenues as rioting broke out in Los Angeles on April 29, 1992.

Ouderkirk, a former prosecutor and Santa Monica police lieutenant, was assigned to the trial last October after three other judges had been removed in acrimonious wrangling. Judge Roosevelt F. Dorn, an African-American, was removed when prosecutors exercised their peremptory challenge. Defense attorneys used their challenge to remove Judge George W. Trammell, who is white.

Judge John Reid, who also is white, was assigned the case, but he was removed when an appellate court gave the defense an additional peremptory challenge.

Times staff writer Lily Dizon in Orange County contributed to this story.