Santa Barbara Judge Due in Court on New Charges

SANTA MARIA, Calif. â€”  Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Diana R. Hall, on trial eight months ago on battery and drunk-driving charges that threatened to destroy her career, is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday on charges she violated campaign finance laws.

In the first case, a Santa Barbara jury acquitted Hall of a felony charge of using a gun to intimidate her domestic partner, Deidra Dykeman. And prosecutors agreed to drop a second felony count of damaging a telephone to block a 911 call after a jury deadlock.

Her arraignment in Santa Maria will be on eight misdemeanor criminal charges relating to her alleged failure to properly report a $20,000 campaign loan from Dykeman during a 2002 reelection effort.

If she had been convicted of either felony charge during her first trial, Hall would have faced automatic removal from the bench. Instead, she was found guilty only of two misdemeanor drunk-driving charges, fined, ordered into an alcohol counseling program and placed on probation for three years.

During the domestic battery case, the subject of the loan came up, and Assistant Dist. Atty. Kimberly Smith secured testimony that Hall had reported the $20,000 as being part of a loan from herself rather than Dykeman to hide the fact that she was in a lesbian relationship.

Almost immediately after the first case ended Sept. 29, prosecutors started working on putting together a new set of charges for alleged violations of the California Political Reform Act.

Hall is accused of depositing a check from Dykeman into her own bank account, then using it as a part of a $25,000 loan from herself. She later allegedly failed to report that she was repaying Dykeman partly by paying her lover’s share of their monthly mortgage on their house in Santa Ynez.

Formerly the chief criminal judge in Lompoc, Hall was reassigned to civil duties after her first prosecution. Most recently, she has been assigned to family law issues, including some domestic battery cases.

Hall has declined to comment on the new charges, and generally has refused to talk to reporters in recent months except for one exchange when she unexpectedly took a courtroom seat during Michael Jackson’s initial arraignment in Santa Maria on child molestation charges Jan. 17.

That was the day Jackson wound up dancing on a car roof and throwing a party for hundreds of fans at his Neverland Ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley.

Hall grimly sat down next to a reporter and said she had been told she would be arrested if she took a courtroom seat. But she had the right to be there, she said, and she intended to remain to see how presiding trial Judge Rodney S. Melville handled motions, looking for contrasts with her own case.

Saying she has been shunned by many of her fellow judges, Hall said: “I’m not being treated well. This has ruined my reputation, and I’m just not going to take it any longer.�

Hall’s first criminal case was heard by an out-of-county former Municipal Court judge, Carol Koppel-Claypool, assigned under a program managed by the Judicial Council of California. All of Santa Barbara County’s judges had disqualified themselves.

All the judges have again disqualified themselves in the campaign loan case, and this time the arraignment has been assigned to retired Orange County Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan, 69, an ex-Marine with a reputation of handing down tough sentences.

A former law professor at Pepperdine, Ryan was described in a 1987 article in the Daily Journal, a legal newspaper, as a judge who was widely respected and known for his intelligence.

“You have to do it by the book, or he will jump on you,� said one lawyer. “He is courteous to those attorneys who are prepared and short tempered with those who are not.�

The eight misdemeanor charges filed against Hall carry maximum sentences of six months in jail and fines of up to $60,000. If a judge is convicted of a campaign violation, the law also prohibits that person from running for reelection for four years.