As Bar Joke Becomes Habeas Claim, Lawyer Is Target of Hearing
A bar joke more than 20 years ago by a then-deputy attorney general in San Francisco isn’t so funny now.
Made to a bartender at Eureka’s Waterfront Cafe, where a waitress happened to be a juror in a capital case, it resulted in an evidentiary hearing earlier this year after defense lawyers found out about the incident, reports the Recorder. Its article is reprinted in New York Lawyer (reg. req.).
But attorney Ronald Bass’s suggestion that the bartender could share his tip with waitress Zetta Southworth, in exchange for a guilty vote, wasn’t intended to be taken seriously, a judge sitting as a referee tells the California Supreme Court in a recent report.
“The manner in which the comment was made, in a conspiratorial fashion with a stranger, the surrounding circumstances of alcohol consumption in a bar, and Mr. Bass having earlier stated to Ms. Southworth, ‘I cannot have contact with you,’ suggests the intent of the remark was a joke,” writes Humboldt County Superior Court Judge W. Bruce Watson.
Bass, who is now retired after overseeing the criminal unit in the San Francisco attorney general’s office for much of the 1990s, declined to comment to the legal publication. Lawyers for the appellant, death row inmate Curtis Price, didn’t respond to phone calls.
