First Woman Selected as Top Federal Public Defender in L.A. Office : Justice: Maria Stratton will supervise 38 attorneys representing defendants who cannot afford to hire counsel. She calls the appointment ‘a dream come true.’

For the first time, a woman has been selected to be the chief federal public defender in Los Angeles, one of the largest offices of its kind in the nation.

Maria E. Stratton, 40, a criminal defense lawyer with a small but prestigious downtown law firm, was chosen Wednesday for the position by the judges of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and plans to start her new job Monday.

Stratton will supervise 38 attorneys who represent low-income defendants charged with crimes, including bank robberies, narcotics trafficking, securities frauds and weapons offenses.

She comes to the job at a key time for the office. Its size has more than doubled over the past decade, and the agency has experienced morale problems, according to attorneys in the Los Angeles Federal Courthouse.

Nonetheless, Stratton said her appointment was “a dream come true in a lot of ways.”

Stratton’s selection was praised by her new colleagues, former adversaries and her first boss, U.S. Circuit Court Judge Harry Pregerson, for whom Stratton was a law clerk from 1979 to 1981. “She’s tough; she’ll raise the quality of the office,” the judge said.

“I am very enthusiastic and optimistic about her appointment,” said Deputy Federal Public Defender Guy C. Iversen.

“Maria’s biggest job is to get the office running at a little bit higher level,” Iversen said. “I think she’ll be much more hands-on, more in the trenches with the troops” than her predecessor, Peter Horstman, who had the job until April.

“She made a very good name when she was a deputy public defender and she’s committed to coming back and rejuvenating the office,” said Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who met Stratton more than a decade ago.

Levenson said that public defenders, like other criminal defense lawyers, have a harder job now than in years past.

“The laws are tougher; the public sentiment is very strong against crime. You’re representing unsympathetic clients before an often hostile bench,” Levenson said. But she predicted that Stratton “would inspire the other lawyers in the office to do it with fervor.”

For her part, Stratton said, “I don’t think there’s a higher calling” than representing the accused.

“Your clients are typically the people no one wants to do anything for. Many times they’ve done terrible things, but often they’ve just been accused of doing terrible things. You have a real opportunity to make a difference in certain cases with people who pretty much have the odds stacked against them.”

In particular, she said, stiff federal sentencing guidelines enacted in the late 1980s strengthened the hand of prosecutors and reduced the power of judges to tailor sentences according to the particular history and circumstances of a defendant. As a consequence, she said, defense lawyers have to be prepared to take cases to trial that would have concluded with a guilty plea in the past.

Moreover, she said the defenders are now handling more complex cases that require longer trials than were the norm when she left the office in 1984. “Three-day trials were common when I was there; there are hardly any like that now,” she said.

Although her appointment to the $113,500-a-year job was not finalized until Wednesday, sources said that Stratton had been told informally a month ago that she had the job, pending completion of background checks by the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. She has had some informal meetings with other public defenders.

Among her plans is to set up a formal unit to handle the many appeals filed by the office. She said that preparing appeals “is the hardest work” for many lawyers and the task that most often gets put off to another day by attorneys with heavy workloads.

Stratton also said she plans to beef up the office’s training programs. “I really like the teaching aspect of this job, being around young lawyers,” she said.

After graduating from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law with honors in 1979, Stratton clerked for Pregerson, a former Marine who has worked often with homeless veterans. She says the experience had a profound impact.

“He always does the right thing and he instills that in his clerks by example,” Stratton said. “When you leave working with him, you want to do that too. You want to be like him.”

After her clerkship, Stratton worked as a deputy federal public defender from 1981-1984. Perhaps her most prominent client during this period was former Redondo Beach City Councilman Walter L. Mitchell Jr., who was convicted in 1983 of mail fraud stemming from his role in getting a development proposal approved. The conviction was overturned by a federal appeals court in 1989.

She went into private practice in 1984, and after a brief stint at another firm, joined Talcott, Lightfoot, Vandevelde, Woehrle & Sadowsky in 1985. She became a partner in 1987.

She has specialized in criminal defense work but also has had victories in wrongful discharge and civil rights cases.

For example, last year she and partner John D. Vandevelde secured a $2.5-million verdict for an African-American police officer in Riverside. The officer had been subjected to racial slurs, and was falsely arrested and beaten by Fontana policemen after he went to the aid of a friend, a school administrator, who was retrieving a car impounded by police.

Profile: Maria E. Stratton * Born: Dec. 29, 1952, in Santa Monica.

* Residence: Los Angeles.

* Education: USC, B.A. in 1975, Phi Beta Kappa; UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law, J.D. in 1979.

* Career highlights: Law clerk for Judge Harry Pregerson, federal district and circuit judge, 1979-81. Deputy federal public defender, 1981-84. Associate with law firm of Overland, Berke, Wesley, Gits, Randolph & Levanas, 1984-85. Joined firm of Talcott, Lightfoot, Vandevelde, Woehrle & Sadowsky, 1985; became partner, 1987.

* Interests : Gardening, dogs.

* Family: Married to attorney Stephen B. Sadowsky since 1983; one daughter and one son.

* Quote: “Being a criminal defense lawyer is God’s work. I don’t think there’s a higher calling. Your clients are typically the people no one wants to do anything for. Many times they’ve done terrible things, but often they’ve just been accused of doing terrible things.”