Capistrano law was different

ROBERT GARDNER

* EDITOR’S NOTE: The Daily Pilot has agreed to republish The Verdict,

the ever-popular column written for many years by retired Corona Del

Mar jurist and historian Robert Gardner, in exchange for donations to

the Surfrider Foundation. This column was originally published Feb.

19, 1994.

Judge John Landell, justice of the peace of San Juan Capistrano

Township during the ‘20s and ‘30s, was one of the most delightful men

I have ever known. To understand him, one has to understand the

Capistrano of the old days.

It was a tiny village clustered around the mission and connected

with the rest of Orange County by a two-lane road that ran over the

hills to Tustin. It was inhabited almost entirely by descendants of

the original mission Indians plus some refugees from the Mexican

Revolution of 1911.

Judge Landell was, for all intents and purposes, the alcalde, a

combination judge, mayor, chief of police and ombudsman. He was a

rather small man, dignified, with a wonderful thatch of white hair

and a flowing white mustache.

One day in 1937 when I was a very young and very new deputy

district attorney, I had my first exposure to Judge Landell. It was

an education.

I was sent down from Santa Ana to prosecute a disturbing-the-peace

case. It seemed that one lady had charged another lady with

disturbing the peace because the other lady had called her a bad

name.

I arrived at the tiny courtroom located in an ancient adobe

building that must have been built about the same time as the

mission. The complaining witness and the defendant were both there,

two rather rotund ladies who were glowering at each other across the

courtroom.

Judge Landell introduced me to the two ladies and asked me to put

on my case.

I called the complaining witness as my first witness and promptly

lost control of the proceedings. She began to yell at the defendant

in Spanish. The defendant screamed back at her in Spanish. I sat

there in bemused bewilderment, not having the slightest idea of what

was going on.

However, with my primitive border Spanish I could catch a phrase

once in a while.

The decibel count was high and from time to time Judge Landell

would say something to the ladies in Spanish that seemed to keep them

from clawing each other.

Finally, the ladies ran down and Judge Landell took over, all in

Spanish of course.

It was plain that he was reading the riot act to them. When he had

finished, the two ladies left the courtroom, considerably chastened.

I asked the judge whether I had won or lost.

“Oh, I found them both guilty,” he said. “I sentenced them both to

jail and suspended the sentences on condition they behave themselves

in the future.”

I rose to my feet and in my best

brand-new-lawyer-who-knows-more-than-anyone-else-in-the-world tone

told him he had no jurisdiction to find the complaining witness

guilty because she hadn’t been charged with anything. I launched into

a scholarly speech about due process, the rights of the accused,

threw in a few references to the Magna Carta and, in short, made a

complete ass of myself.

Judge Landell heard me out. Then in a quiet, kindly tone he said:

“Young man, don’t try to tell me what the law is in Capistrano.

All that law you are expounding may be all right for Los Angeles or

even Santa Ana but not down here in Capistrano.

“This is a tiny enclave, cut off culturally and geographically

from the rest of the world. I make my own rules.

“If I had found just the defendant guilty, that would have caused

more hard feelings, with one of those women crowing over the other.

The same thing would have happened if I had found the defendant not

guilty. This way, because I have found both to have been at fault,

both are now frightened and will behave themselves in the future. So,

Mr. Gardner, you must remember that when trying cases in my court, I

am the law.”

Judge Landell was a wonderful old man. The people of Capistrano

worshiped him and I never saw him be anything but fair and just --

even if he did bend the law just a teeny bit once in a while -- but

always for a good reason.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a resident of Corona del Mar and a longtime

observer of life in Newport Beach.