Speaker 1: We talk a lot about crime and punishment on this
Speaker 1: radio show, like a lot of people do in the country.
Speaker 1: It's one of the top issues everywhere, all the time.
Speaker 1: And Katie, Katie, Katie the news Lady. Her dad was
Speaker 1: a judge, he's now a retired judge, and thought it
Speaker 1: would be cool to talk to him at some length
Speaker 1: about a whole bunch of different stuff. I'm gonna let
Speaker 1: Katie introduce her own dad. Okay, Yes, judge in Oakland
Speaker 1: for thirty three plus years.
Speaker 2: Thirty three thirty three plus yep.
Speaker 1: Known to some as Judge Larry Goodman, known to others
Speaker 1: as LL Dog and Daddy O. So here he is here,
Speaker 1: Come here, pops, Judge, thanks for coming back on the
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Getty Show. Appreciated how you How you like
Speaker 1: in retirement? By the way, not everybody adjusts well to retirement.
Speaker 3: I love it. I love it.
Speaker 2: No adjudgment problem.
Speaker 3: No, Because it got to be a point where remember
Speaker 3: Sunday nights when you were in school and you hated
Speaker 3: Sunday nights because you had to go to school. Yeah,
Speaker 3: never felt that until right before I retired, and it
Speaker 3: was like I knew it was time at that point.
Speaker 2: Interesting so you stuck around long enough. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So before I get into some like specific questions I have,
Speaker 1: do you think you have an overall takeaway from all
Speaker 1: those years of being judge a judge just about society
Speaker 1: and order and crime in general in Oakland?
Speaker 3: Yeah, not so much overall. I mean, you see good people,
Speaker 3: you see bad people. Oakland is particularly depressing at times,
Speaker 3: just because it's it's overwhelming and the kind of cases
Speaker 3: I did you just life was so cheap and there
Speaker 3: was really no concert. There was consequences, but it didn't
Speaker 3: seem to stop anybody from acting out. So but overall,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's a job, just like everything else. The
Speaker 3: only you feel like you're contributing a little bit by
Speaker 3: being part of the judicial system or the justice system.
Speaker 3: But outside of that, it's not like any shattering awareness
Speaker 3: that I have.
Speaker 1: Now, Well, do you think most people who commit crimes,
Speaker 1: particularly bad crimes, it's because of they're just born to
Speaker 1: be bad or do you think there's an environment they
Speaker 1: came from?
Speaker 3: I think most of them are. It's the environment. I
Speaker 3: think it's life is cheap. Would you like to sell
Speaker 3: burgers at McDonald's or sell drugs? And if you sell drugs,
Speaker 3: you hang more gold, and you drive better cars. So
Speaker 3: I think that's what I'll do. But there's a certain
Speaker 3: risk involved in that, but I'm willing to take it.
Speaker 3: And that's what they see, that's who their role models are,
Speaker 3: and that's what they do.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know the statistics on this,
Speaker 1: but were the vast majority of people that would come
Speaker 1: before you guilty found guilty?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, I had three three non I tried according
Speaker 3: to my clerk, one hundred and seventeen murder trials. I
Speaker 3: had three not guilty verdicts.
Speaker 2: Really and in your opinion, do you think they were
Speaker 2: not guilty?
Speaker 3: One of them in a death penalty case, he was
Speaker 3: definitely guilty.
Speaker 2: The other two and it was found non guilty and
Speaker 2: found out not guilty.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 3: He killed both his sisters and tried to kill his parents.
Speaker 3: But that's a long story for another day. But the
Speaker 3: other two they probably did it, but the evidence wasn't
Speaker 3: all that great.
Speaker 1: But so most of the time, if specifically a murder
Speaker 1: gets to a courtroom, they did it.
Speaker 3: The chances are pretty good. I mean, they've gone through
Speaker 3: the charging, the screening before the charging, they've gone through
Speaker 3: a grand jury or a preliminary hearing. They've gone through
Speaker 3: all the pre trial motions by that time, it's been
Speaker 3: reviewed quite a few times, and so it may not
Speaker 3: be a murder, it may not be a first degree murder,
Speaker 3: it may be a second, it may be a manslaughter.
Speaker 3: But they pretty sure that they killed somebody.
Speaker 1: And I suppose because of limited resources and time, you know, money,
Speaker 1: all that, you wouldn't pursue it unless you're pretty sure
Speaker 1: they were guilty.
Speaker 3: On the prosecution sign In Alameda County, where I worked,
Speaker 3: we had used to have not anymore. They had one
Speaker 3: of the best DA's offices in the country, and so
Speaker 3: there was a lot of checks and balance, and nobody
Speaker 3: really went to trial unless they were pretty sure they
Speaker 3: had the right person, although I will say I did
Speaker 3: one trial. After about three witnesses, the DA came in
Speaker 3: and said, you know, I think we got this one wrong.
Speaker 3: We're going to dismiss the case.
Speaker 1: Wow, So you weren't in the era or place of
Speaker 1: these das who don't want to charge anybody with anything
Speaker 1: to try to make some sort of point about society.
Speaker 3: No, that's one of the other reasons I'm glad I'm out,
Speaker 3: because i'd be getting in trouble all the time.
Speaker 1: So how would you have handled that as a judge,
Speaker 1: or would you have had any role in it whatsoever?
Speaker 1: If your local, if you got a gascon or whoever
Speaker 1: that just doesn't want to prosecute crime.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, eventually what happens. I have a friend
Speaker 3: of mine who's still sitting on the bench and he's
Speaker 3: been challenged by the DA because he wouldn't go along
Speaker 3: with all of her issues or all the things she
Speaker 3: was trying to do. He kept denying motions to strike
Speaker 3: priors or strike that, so they finally filed a blanket challenge.
Speaker 3: So he went from criminal into probate.
Speaker 2: Oh so that's interesting. Back to the violent crime.
Speaker 1: So you you've had a lot of violent criminals come
Speaker 1: before you do they tend to regret what they did
Speaker 1: at the point that they're in a courtroom. And I
Speaker 1: don't mean like regret it because they got caught, but
Speaker 1: if they could go back, they wish they hadn't done it.
Speaker 3: Very few, very few. I mean, I'm sure some of
Speaker 3: them deep inside might have felt that way, but it's
Speaker 3: kind of a sign of weakness if they do that.
Speaker 3: I most of them kind of maintained the aura of
Speaker 3: I'm a criminal and I didn't do it, but you're
Speaker 3: gonna and if I did do it, you got to
Speaker 3: prove it. But I'm not going to say I did
Speaker 3: it and I'm sorry. Once in a while it's sentencing,
Speaker 3: they will address the family of the victim and say
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, But not up until that point.
Speaker 1: You said, these people live in a world where life
Speaker 1: is cheap. Expound on that a little bit. They just
Speaker 1: for some reason, it because of their youth or environment.
Speaker 1: They just don't get what.
Speaker 3: I don't think. They think that they're going to live
Speaker 3: that long because they see a lot of their peers
Speaker 3: get shot or get killed, and so it's kind of
Speaker 3: like a live why you can go fast and go
Speaker 3: hard because you're not going to be here that long.
Speaker 3: And so you look at me funny while I'm standing
Speaker 3: on the street corner and I come back and I
Speaker 3: shoot you, because that's the kind of a unwritten rule
Speaker 3: of the streets. You don't disrespect somebody without having consequences,
Speaker 3: And people get shot over the dumbest things. Or I'll
Speaker 3: shoot at you and I'll hit a twelve year old
Speaker 3: girl across the street because I miss. But that's collateral damage,
Speaker 3: and I really don't think about it. I just move on.
Speaker 3: And that was just kind of the mindset that we
Speaker 3: saw a lot of.
Speaker 1: Did you have people come into your courtroom with as
Speaker 1: flimsy a reason for killing somebody as you just described.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, Oh yeah, lots of times.
Speaker 2: Okay, give me some examples.
Speaker 3: Well, we had the gun well, I used to call
Speaker 3: it the gunfight at the ok Corral. It was the
Speaker 3: gunfight ninety eight the needs in Oakland, and one gang
Speaker 3: got disrespected by another game because somebody disrespected the guy's car.
Speaker 3: He said that car looks like this and looks like that,
Speaker 3: and it was his pride and joy. So one group
Speaker 3: of kids is in the liquor store buying liquor, and
Speaker 3: this other group rolls up and opens fire with semiautomatic
Speaker 3: weapons and kills three people. The other gang he finally
Speaker 3: gets their guns out and shoots back, and one of
Speaker 3: them misses, and the bullet goes across the street and
Speaker 3: hits a guy getting gas and bodges in his neck
Speaker 3: and he has a stroke and he loses his ability
Speaker 3: to talk. And all the people that we did the
Speaker 3: trial for, they had no remorse whatsoever. Matter of fact,
Speaker 3: I had to keep pulling this one kid out because
Speaker 3: he kept disrespecting and saying rude things to the one
Speaker 3: of the victims mothers who came to address the court.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, and how old were these people?
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, when he did it, he was seventeen, which is
Speaker 3: entitled him to have another resentencing under the new laws
Speaker 3: in California. I sentenced him to sixty five years to
Speaker 3: life or something like that, but that he was seventeen
Speaker 3: when he did the crime, so he was entitled to
Speaker 3: be re sentenced. I don't know what he got again,
Speaker 3: but do.
Speaker 2: You keep track of people after you sentenced him?
Speaker 3: The only I kept track of two people, and they
Speaker 3: weren't even murder cases. They were multiple sexual assault cases.
Speaker 3: And one one guy was a retired law enforcement officer
Speaker 3: who continually raped his stepdaughter. And he came up for
Speaker 3: parole and I was asked to write a letter, and
Speaker 3: I'd never done it before, but he actually raped his
Speaker 3: step son, who kind of gave him. He gave himself
Speaker 3: up to protect his step daughter, and the son ended
Speaker 3: up killing himself. So I wrote a letter saying he
Speaker 3: should I sentenced him to ninety nine years, but he's
Speaker 3: now in his sixty so he's eligible for elder parole
Speaker 3: or whatever they call it. And I wrote a letter
Speaker 3: saying I sentenced him for that long they didn't ever
Speaker 3: getting out, and he didn't know his step son had
Speaker 3: killed himself. So once he found that out, he withdrew
Speaker 3: his request for a parole and he's still in there.
Speaker 1: So I've always believed that on a lot of the
Speaker 1: sexual stuff, their brains don't work right. They were they
Speaker 1: were they were, they're born in such a way or whatever,
Speaker 1: their brains don't work right, as opposed to the other
Speaker 1: thing you were talking about, the you know, you grew
Speaker 1: up in an environment where you run with gangs in
Speaker 1: the more environmental than your brain doesn't work well.
Speaker 3: The sexual the in home sexual predators like this guy,
Speaker 3: Ron Roy Chass, I still remember his name. He's probably
Speaker 3: not wired right. But some of them are just mean,
Speaker 3: vicious people that it's you know, rape is not about sex,
Speaker 3: it's about violence, about control, and so some of these
Speaker 3: people are just violent sexual predators who just like to
Speaker 3: inflict that kind of pain on people.
Speaker 1: How how do you And this is tough for cops
Speaker 1: and prosecutors and people work in prisons, all kinds of
Speaker 1: different people. How do you keep your sense of humanity
Speaker 1: in that most of us are good and most of
Speaker 1: us don't do that.
Speaker 2: When you're encountering these people all the time, it's got
Speaker 2: to wear on you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I was lucky enough to have Patty and
Speaker 3: Katie and come home and be able to, you know,
Speaker 3: coach Katie and sports and hang out with her and
Speaker 3: my wife, and you just kind of leave it at work.
Speaker 3: And I don't think I tried real hard not to
Speaker 3: bring any of that stuff home, even when it was
Speaker 3: a high publicity stuff, when we didn't talk about it,
Speaker 3: we didn't watch it on the news or read the newspapers.
Speaker 3: You just try to when you leave the office, you
Speaker 3: just try to leave it there because it will wear
Speaker 3: on you. I mean, I had a couple of cases
Speaker 3: that to this day I still don't like to talk
Speaker 3: about them. But most of the time you're able to
Speaker 3: leave it at work.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: We're talking to Katie's dad, who is a was a
Speaker 1: judge for a very long time, is retired.
Speaker 2: Now what do you do? Mostly? You fish? You hunt? Yeah?
Speaker 2: You what do you what do you do?
Speaker 3: I work out, I play, guitar, trying to get back
Speaker 3: into golf, which will probably shorten my lifespan exactly. We
Speaker 3: still have a boat that we keep in Craplifornia that
Speaker 3: we go out and stay on for a while.
Speaker 1: To that story, we got to talk about you getting
Speaker 1: robbed in our old hometown and what that was like,
Speaker 1: because this is just a story about the lawlessness of
Speaker 1: some areas of the country.
Speaker 2: You came back the other day, tell us what happened.
Speaker 3: Well, we keep our boat in Alameda because we one
Speaker 3: thing we do miss is the ocean and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: So we were having some people to go out on
Speaker 3: the boat for the Blue Angels. So we were on
Speaker 3: our way to the grocery store to get some things.
Speaker 3: We go out to the parking lot and I look,
Speaker 3: and I said, honey, our tires are gone. And there
Speaker 3: was the Toyota Corolla sitting. They brought their own blocks,
Speaker 3: so there was blocks under each of the doors, and
Speaker 3: they left the lug nuts, but all four tires were gone.
Speaker 2: With the wheels. Yeah, tires.
Speaker 1: So so you're back in California, which you fled because
Speaker 1: of the crime and the homelessness and the taxes and
Speaker 1: all that sort of stuff. You come back briefly and
Speaker 1: your round car gets all four wheels stolen off of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm like a junkie. I had to come back
Speaker 3: from my crime fix. I guess that is.
Speaker 1: An amazing story and so emblematic of why you can't
Speaker 1: hardly ever get a U haul in California because there
Speaker 1: are so many people fleeing the state.
Speaker 3: And the funny part about is the lady that rented
Speaker 3: us the car, she said, now, you'd be careful because
Speaker 3: they'll steal everything. And when you go get gas, you
Speaker 3: keep your eye open because they'll break the passenger door
Speaker 3: window and steal your purse. I mean, she went through
Speaker 3: this whole litany of things that were going to happen,
Speaker 3: and sure enough, the day after that happened to us.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Back to you judging and crime and punishment and what
Speaker 1: you've learned over all the decades of being in the system.
Speaker 1: I've always been I'm a big believer in the US
Speaker 1: justice system, and I've always just I've never been afraid
Speaker 1: of being falsely accused of anything like that, because I
Speaker 1: just feel like the justice system generally works, is that
Speaker 1: your assessment after decades of being involved in it the
Speaker 1: vast majority of the time, we get it right.
Speaker 3: I think so absolutely. I mean, like I said, we
Speaker 3: were always a little bit better than a lot of
Speaker 3: places in Alameda County. But yeah, I think for the
Speaker 3: most part it works the way it's supposed to.
Speaker 1: And for places that it doesn't work as well, what
Speaker 1: would cause that?
Speaker 3: Just an overload of cases. Sometimes things get shuffled through
Speaker 3: that shouldn't get shuffled through. There are places where based
Speaker 3: upon how you look and how you act, sometimes you
Speaker 3: get charged. They're built in prejudices in some places. I
Speaker 3: taught at the National Judges College in Reno one day
Speaker 3: and the judges from Louisiana, a certain part of Louisiana
Speaker 3: came up and we're kind of making fun of us
Speaker 3: from California about how long it took us to pick
Speaker 3: juris and death penalty cases and everything, and really so
Speaker 3: it's just kind of a different mindset.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I should ask you about that.
Speaker 1: California has the death penalty but doesn't actually put anybody
Speaker 1: to death. The leading cause of death on death or
Speaker 1: in California is old age. We taxpayers spend gazillions of
Speaker 1: dollars on this and nobody actually dies are you four
Speaker 1: or against the death penalty?
Speaker 3: Oh? I was for it. I sentenced nine people to
Speaker 3: death I think, and one of them die to liver failure.
Speaker 3: The rest of them will probably outlive me.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's the problem with it. We're not getting it.
Speaker 1: Nobody's dying, so I don't like paying for it. I
Speaker 1: don't mind capital punishment. I'm against it for the it does.
Speaker 1: It's not practical if nobody's dying.
Speaker 2: Standpoint.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if we're not going to do it, we shouldn't
Speaker 3: have it.
Speaker 2: Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 1: I just want to ask you some questions about your
Speaker 1: experience as a judge, and whenever a big case hits,
Speaker 1: we'll go to you for expertise.
Speaker 3: As always, I appreciate it. Thanks Jack, you bet, you
Speaker 3: Armstrong and Getty