Courthouse Abuzz Over DA's Blanket Boycott of Longtime Judge
Since being appointed to the state-court bench in 1995, a Southern California judge has presided over numerous high-profile cases and served in a series of leading administrative roles.
But San Diego Superior Court Judge John Einhorn isn’t as busy as he was on the criminal side, thanks to a blanket boycott by the local prosecutor’s office, reports the San Diego Union-Tribune.
District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis confirms her office’s practice of exercising a peremptory challenge every time a case is assigned to Einhorn. However, she won’t say why it is taking this approach to a man she calls a “well-respected jurist” following “careful consideration and thoughtful review over an extended period of time.”
The judge himself tells the newspaper that no one from the prosecutor’s office has told him why, but otherwise declines to discuss the boycott, and the court’s presiding judge also declines to comment. Meanwhile, the evasive strategy by the DA’s office, which seemingly went into effect around September, has caught the attention of other judges and lawyers in the courthouse.
Attorney Allen Bloom, who has been before Einhorn in a high-profile case this year, criticizes the avoidance of Einhorn by the DA’s office as a form of bullying.
“For the DA’s office to shut down an entire court as a policy is pure intimidation, not just of Judge Einhorn but the whole bench,” he tells the newspaper. “They are trying to manipulate and shape the court, and that is a very scary proposition.”
