Two lessons learned from two Charleys

I doubt that the names Charley Griffen and Charley Pearson are

recognized by many people in Orange County today, but in the 1940s,

Griffen was the city clerk of Anaheim, and Pearson, the mayor of

Anaheim, was his boss.

Pearson was a strong-willed, farsighted man who anticipated the

urbanization of Orange County. Whether he foresaw the degree to which

it has become urbanized I don’t know, but while other county leaders

sat on their hands, Pearson set about annexing land, attracting

industry and making Anaheim the leading city in the county.

He particularly coveted one large tract of land that was largely

orange groves. The owners of those orange groves didn’t want to be

annexed to the city because annexation invariably resulted in higher

taxes. They were adamantly opposed to the annexation.

Tucked into one corner of the tract was a trailer park, the

inhabitants of which outnumbered the ranchers. So Pearson had

Griffen, the city clerk, go to the trailer park and register all the

inhabitants as voters and sell them on the wonders of annexation to

Anaheim. When the election was held, the ranchers voted against

annexation, the trailer park residents voted for it and the

annexation carried.

That made the ranchers mad. They went to the grand jury, which

just happened to be made up of orange ranchers and retired ranchers

and was being advised by then Dist. Atty. Jim Davis, who also was an

orange rancher. Not surprisingly, the grand jury brought an

accusation against poor old Griffen, charging him with a violation of

some obscure section of the election code that Davis had dug up.

I tried the jury trial. Griffen was a very nice guy. While there

had been a technical violation of the law, it certainly wasn’t very

immoral, and what Charley had done didn’t benefit him personally.

Griffen was doing great before the jury until his attorney

overplayed his hand, a congenital weakness of lawyers. He brought in

all the superior court judges then on the bench as character

witnesses for Griffen. In they trooped -- Frank West, Kenny Morrison,

Raymond Thompson and John Shea -- all testifying to what a great guy

Charley Griffen was. You could just feel the jury freeze up at this

unseemly display of judicial clout. The jury promptly convicted poor

Charley. Pearson was furious.

I felt bad for Griffen. Nevertheless, pursuant to the jury

verdict, I ordered that Griffen be removed from his office of city

clerk of the city of Anaheim. To my surprise, despite his earlier

outrage, Pearson just sat there in the front row and grinned at me.

The next Monday, I discovered the reason for the grin. Right after

I removed Griffen as city clerk of Anaheim, both Charleys went back

to Anaheim City Hall, where Pearson hired Griffen as city treasurer

at a substantial increase in salary.

I learned two lessons from the Charley Griffen case. First, jurors

don’t like judges any more than they like lawyers, which is not at

all. Second, I learned not to ever tangle with Charley Pearson.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.

His column runs Tuesdays.