New Presiding Judge Says Her Career Decision Was Right One : Superior Court: Melinda A. Johnson will be first female jurist in post. Experts say selection reflects trend of women landing prestigious appointments.

When a judgeship opened in Ventura County 10 years ago, Melinda A. Johnson wasn’t sure whether to pursue it.

The Ventura attorney was busy enough balancing her home life--included bringing up two small sons--and working part-time handling cases.

But she knew that if she allowed the chance to go by, she might not get another shot at a job on the bench. So Johnson dropped her name into the pot of applicants and then-Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. pulled it out.

“It was now or never,” Johnson recalled. “I think it was the right choice.”

So do many others. Two years after her appointment to the Municipal Court, Johnson was promoted to the Superior Court. Now her colleagues have elected her as the Superior Court’s first female presiding judge.

Judicial experts say Johnson will become only the third woman to preside over a Superior Court in California when she assumes her new role Jan. 3.

They say her selection reflects a trend of more women graduating from law school, making names for themselves in the field, and landing prestigious legal and judicial appointments.

President Clinton appointed Janet Reno as U. S. attorney general and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the U. S. Supreme Court. Then-President Ronald Reagan put Sandra Day O’Connor on the nation’s highest court.

But not all of the gains have been so high-profile.

Women now head the State Bar of California and the federal public defenders in Los Angeles, one of the largest offices of its kind in the nation.

“I think what you’re seeing are the results of more women on the bench,” said Dawn Schock, a Long Beach attorney and president-elect of the California Women Lawyers Assn.

“I think it does mean that we’ve now been around long enough that we’ve reached a position where we are able to be elected to those positions,” said Judge Judith D. McConnell, who became the state’s first female Superior Court presiding judge in San Diego County in 1990.

But McConnell said bias still exists in the selection of judges at all levels.

“As long as the appointing authority is not deliberately seeking out diversity in appointment, there is always going to be a certain paucity of women,” said McConnell, who has been nominated by U. S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) to fill a vacant federal judgeship in the Southern District of California.

Others agree.

“I would say that women have not reached this so-called critical mass as judges on any bench yet,” concurred Justice Joan D. Klein, who has served as a presiding justice on the California Court of Appeal.

The numbers support that view. According to a survey by the State Bar in 1991, the most recent year for which figures are available, women made up 26% of the attorneys in California. But as of September, only 15% of the state’s judges were women, the Judicial Council of California said.

Johnson believes that the efforts to raise such numbers are working. She said, for instance, that the only reason she applied for the judicial vacancy in 1983 was that Brown had made it clear that he wanted a woman for the job.

Johnson’s goal in life, as far as back as when she was 7 years old, was to become President. Her father, Richard Mathison, was a longtime bureau chief for Newsweek magazine in Los Angeles. His journalist friends would come over to the family’s home and encourage young Melinda to pursue her dream.

But they always warned her that in order to become a politician, she would probably need to become a lawyer first.

“I went to law school to become President,” Johnson said recently in her chambers.

She obtained a bachelor’s degree in political science from Stanford University in 1969 and briefly attended Hastings School of Law in San Francisco. That’s where she first noticed the gender inequities of the profession, she said.

Of the 450 students in her incoming law class, 90% were men. No big deal, she thought, until she transferred to USC and, again, only 10% of her class was female.

“This was not a coincidence,” Johnson said. “Every school had a 10% quota. And I just never felt I was part of a little quota, other than that one little fact.”

Quota or not, Johnson was good at law and landed a job with the Ventura County district attorney’s office shortly after graduation in 1972. Her husband, Jay, whom she met while an undergraduate, had joined the prosecutor’s office in Ventura two years earlier.

For the next four years, Johnson carved a niche prosecuting criminals. She started off working small cases like any other lawyer, but soon was prosecuting felony suspects for child abuse and sexual assault.

She left her job in 1976, after becoming pregnant and giving birth to her first son, Brett. She wanted to have another child and work only part-time until they were in grade school.

Four years later, son Tyler was born. Johnson was a full-time homemaker and accepted part-time work handling cases involving domestic relations and personal injury.

She was content with her life and had no plans of making any radical shifts, she recalls. Until late 1982, when the Ventura County Municipal Court seat opened.

“You have to remember that I had not applied to be a judge in the first place,” Johnson noted. “I never set being a judge as a career goal.”

But family and friends persuaded her to take a shot at the vacancy, especially since Brown wanted to name a woman. At the time, all of Ventura County’s 15 Superior Court and 12 Municipal Court judges were men.

Johnson got the job and, two years later, was promoted to the Superior Court bench. She worked long hours, but found that it was not easy to be a pioneer.

“I got a real bad series of assignments,” she recalled. “I was assigned jury trials and given courtrooms without a jury box.

“Why did I get those assignments?” she asked, pondering the question for a moment. “I don’t know. I never felt anybody was discriminating against me. Part of it might have been my personality.”

That personality, according to those who know her well and not so well, is to take risks to get the job done in a professional but efficient way.

“Mindy is extremely bright,” said Ventura attorney Louis B. Samonsky Jr., a friend of the Johnsons since they moved to Ventura County. “She comes from a very accomplished family, isn’t afraid to dig in and learn the law before making a judgment.

“She brings stacks and stacks of papers home and reads them at night, something I wish many other judges would do.”

Samonsky said Johnson’s biggest strength is her ability to deal with lawyers and others who can be argumentative.

“Many judges have a difficult time keeping a level head and their cool,” he said. “But she’s able to handle it.”

“She’s a pretty remarkable person,” said Yolo County Judge Donna Petre, the only woman now presiding over a Superior Court in California. Petre met Johnson at a seminar in 1991.

What struck her most, Petre said, is that Johnson talked a lot about her two sons and how important family is to her.

“You don’t easily forget her,” Petre said.

As an administrative judge, though, Johnson has her critics.

For instance, some have accused her of violating the state Constitution in her efforts to consolidate the county’s Superior and Municipal courts.

The two Ventura County courts became the first in the state to consolidate their administrations in 1989. Now they are in the process of bringing together their benches. One plan, to begin in February, will allow some Municipal Court judges to preside over death penalty and other felony cases--trials normally reserved for Superior Court judges.

Superior Court Judge James M. McNally, a vocal critic of the plan, has said it is “a complete alteration of the California Constitution.”

But Johnson defends the consolidation, saying it will help deliver more efficient justice.

Kevin J. McGee, chief deputy district attorney, said he believes that Johnson was chosen to head the court because of her people skills.

“She’s a good listener and has a good ability to build consensus,” McGee said.

As presiding judge, Johnson will decide which judges handle criminal, civil and other types of cases. She will oversee budget and personnel matters, and serve as spokeswoman for the court.

Johnson noted that Ventura County Bar Assn. members ranked her as one of the county’s top judges in a poll last year.

But she remembered a negative comment she received on her bar evaluation from one local attorney. “Mindy Johnson isn’t half as smart as she thinks she is,” the attorney wrote.

She said the comment caught her by surprise.

“In fact, if you knew me, you would know I’m very insecure about my abilities,” she said.

Despite her success on the bench and some of the attention she has received for it, Johnson remains one of the lower-profile members of her own family.

Her sister, Melissa Mathison, is the respected screenwriter of “E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial” and “The Black Stallion.” Melissa’s husband is Harrison Ford, star of “Star Wars” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

Another sister is a screenwriter. One brother is a free-lance journalist. And a second brother is a musician who does studio recording, among other things.

Johnson did some acting early in life, but somehow knew that the entertainment industry wasn’t for her.

She freely talks about her relatives’ accomplishments and has a copy of the July issue of Vanity Fair on the coffee table in her office lobby.

On the cover is her brother-in-law. It reads: “HARRISON SOLO: How Harrison Ford Handles the Fans, the Flacks, the Fame.”

Johnson said she tries to not overplay the connection.

“The point is, I don’t walk around saying, ‘Hello, I’m Mindy Johnson, and my brother-in-law is Harrison Ford.’ ”