Female attorneys, clerks testify appellate court justice made crude remarks

LOS ANGELES -- A panel of special masters heard testimony Monday from several women who said they were sexually harassed by Justice Jeffrey W. Johnson of the 2nd District Court of Appeal as a Commission on Judicial Performance hearing got underway that will decide whether the jurist should be removed from the bench.

Johnson, 58, has been accused by 17 women of sexual impropriety or bullying, alleged misconduct that spanned two decades.

Roberta Burnette, a sole practitioner since June 2016, worked at Dentons in October 2015, when as the leader of the firm's labor and employment practice, she attended an Association of Business Trial Lawyers event where she met Johnson.

Burnette testified she sat at a table of attorneys and was introduced to Johnson. The others soon left, and she was alone with Johnson.

"You know, you're very voluptuous," Johnson allegedly told her. She testified she found the comment odd but shrugged it off, shifting the conversation to the Los Angeles Lawyers Philharmonic and her role as a viola player.

"You need to put your viola mouth on my big black dick," Burnette said Johnson told her.

Startled, she attempted to steer the conversation away from sexual references. Burnette said she informed Johnson the viola is a string instrument and the player uses their hands while playing it.

"Oh, so you stroke it," Burnette said Johnson replied. "You need to stroke my big black dick with your viola hand."

"I tried to treat it as a joke to allow him to back off or treat it as a joke," Burnette testified. She said she was especially concerned not to anger Johnson.

"Why didn't you want to anger him?" asked Commission on Judicial Performance examiner Mark A. Lizarraga.

"Because I was concerned about retaliation," Burnette replied. "He could badmouth me to friends on the bench or elsewhere."

Monday's hearing began with opening statements from attorneys for Johnson and the Commission of Judicial Performance.

Paul S. Meyer, an Orange County sole practitioner representing Johnson, told the panel of three judges acting as special masters that his client was the victim of a disinformation campaign.

"This is a career death penalty case," Meyer concluded after telling the panel, "We're in the #metoo era; ... there is a huge increase in questionable claims from people who are rethinking the past."

Meyer also bemoaned what he described as a new era in which a person couldn't go to a party anymore and hug somebody in greeting.

"The reinterpretation of something could be dangerous so you avoid it," he said.

Bradford, an examiner for the Commission on Judicial Performance, told the panel Johnson abused his power to harass women at all levels, "many of whom do not know each other and are not connected to each other."

Bradford said there was "no single response from these women" to the alleged harassment they endured, and the justice's perceived notion of how they or others might react to such abuse was immaterial to the facts of the case.

"You will hear about how they were afraid of his power and being on the wrong side of it," Bradford told the panel, adding they would find out "just how difficult it is in that situation to speak truth to power."

Johnson "used the courthouse as his own playground," according to Bradford, concluding: "Your honors, the allegations in this case are shocking. What is more shocking is the conduct in this case has gone for so long, and with seeming impunity."

Alcohol was a common thread that wove together each witness's testimony. Burnette said she believed Johnson was intoxicated at the time of their encounter as did Price Kent, a sole practitioner who worked for now-defunct Marcin Lambirth LLP between 2007 and 2012. Kent testified she met Johnson at his nomination party for the 2nd District.

When she met him for the first time, Kent said Johnson asked her to come back to his chambers, an offer she declined.

"Did Justice Johnson invite you to his chambers more than once?" asked Commission on Judicial Performance examiner Emma Bradford.

Kent said he had, detailing a later experience in which Johnson attended a function her firm was putting on. Johnson, Kent said, promised to send business to the firm, which she said was struggling financially at this time.

"He promised to send business to the firm, and we needed the business," Kent testified.

"He made a statement that he thought humans were not meant to be a monogamous race," Kent testified. She said Johnson started making statements that people in power thought the same way as he did, including former President Barack Obama.

Later in the evening at a dinner function, Kent said Johnson turned his conversation strictly towards Kent and invited her to his chambers. He told her he could help her with her career, she testified. Kent thanked him but said she was uncomfortable and that he seemed "overly solicitous".

Johnson then began putting his hand on Kent's thigh, to which she said something to the effect of "are you kidding me" and physically removed his hand then made preparations to leave, she testified.

"You didn't tell him you were leaving because he put his hand on your thigh," Bradford asked.

"I didn't want to make a scene," Kent responded, who said she notified the partners at her firm the following day.

Isabel Martinez, a onetime deputy clerk to Johnson, testified the justice asked her inappropriate questions about breast augmentation work she'd had done.

"He asked me if I had my boobs done," Martinez said. "It was out of the blue."

Martinez testified she told the justice she had. When he heard this, "he picked up his hands and said, 'Can I touch them?'"

Martinez pantomimed an open-handed grabbing motion she said Johnson made while he asked if he could touch her.

Other inappropriate comments Martinez alleged included him asking her why she never dated black men and trying to set her up with his karate instructor.

Trisha Belez, judicial assistant to Justice Victoria Chaney since August 2013, testified Johnson would badger her to get coffee with him, requests she typically declined. She eventually did get coffee with him, where he told her he was up for a state Supreme Court seat and he could bring along two staff members, dangling the proposition that one could be her. Two weeks later, they went for coffee again, where he disclosed to her he was unhappily married.

"He said that if he was married to me he would never leave my bed, and that he liked me," Belez testified. She said she told him firmly to "stop it" and they left together.

Before Belez could be cross-examined, testimony concluded for the day.

Meyer, Johnson's attorney, sought to cast doubt on the women's memories of events that occurred years ago, seizing upon doubts about details such as the shape of tables and the number of people sitting in chairs where some of the alleged events occurred.

The examiners called Darnice Benton, a custodian at the Ronald Reagan State Building in downtown Los Angeles for 20 years. Benton recalled one night in 2017 when she said she witnessed him stumbling back to the building at roughly 1 in the morning.

As Benton was driving her car home from work, she testified to observing the justice. "He was walking topsy-turvy, he looked in my opinion to be severely inebriated," she said.

Bradford asked Benton to describe the justice's demeanor who responded by standing up in the courtroom to pantomime a drunken lilt, flailing her arms in the air.

Rodney Pettie, another custodian at the court for nearly 17 years, testified that he encountered Johnson multiple times over the years appearing drunk.

One evening, Pettie testified, Johnson and two women were in the lobby of the building. Pettie testified that the women attempted to climb on mountain lion statues in the lobby.

Pettie also testified that he had observed beer bottles in Johnson's garbage maybe twice every three or four months.

In his cross-examination, Meyer asked Pettie if there was any other evidence that Johnson was drunk during the four or five times he observed him. Other than the smell of alcohol, Pettie said, there was not.

The trial is projected to last 19 days. The special master panel is made up of Justice Judith L. Haller of the 4th District Court of Appeal; Judge William D. Lehman of the Imperial County Superior Court; and Judge Louis R. Hanoian of the San Diego County Superior Court.