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Judge Norman Tarle to Depart Superior Court
By a MetNews Staff Writer
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NORMAN TARLE Superior Court Judge |
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Norman P. Tarle’s last day on the bench will be March 30 and, after using up vacation time, will officially retire on April 20, ending a 36-year judicial career, with the last two decades being spent at his present post.
That career included the anomaly of having imposed a sentence, while a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner, on a judge of a superior court. That happened in 2005 when he sentenced then-Orange Superior Court Judge Gary P. Ryan (now on inactive State Bar status) to three years of informal probation and ordered him to pay a $390 fine following his guilty plea to drunk driving.
Tarle was hired as a commissioner by the judges of the Superior Court on March 8, 1994. He was previously elected as a commissioner by judges of the Los Angeles Municipal Court, taking office in 1985.
At the time he became a subordinate judicial officer of the now-extinct Municipal Court, he was a Los Angeles deputy city attorney, assigned to the Housing Enforcement Division. He joined the City Attorney’s Office in 1979, after working in the Los Angeles Municipal Court’s Planning and Research Unit since 1977.
The judge obtained his law degree from UCLA in 1976, also securing a masters degree in business administration from that institution the same year.
In 1990, he ran for election to the Santa Monica Municipal Court, coming in third in the primary in a four-person race. He had the lowest finances of any of the candidates, but the bulk of the contributions came from within the legal community, as opposed to sources tapped by his rivals.
Retirement from the Superior Court bench, he said, will not mean departing from activity in a judicial capacity.
“I expect to do some mediation and arbitration with one of the dispute resolution providers,” he told the METNEWS.
However, he added:
“I will be visiting my grandchildren often. I expect to do more travel to some ‘bucket list’ locations in the USA and overseas.”
For the first “one to two months,” he related, he “will actually do nothing” and will “really take time off.”
Tarle said he will continue to be active as a member of the California Center for Judicial Education and Research workgroup that is re-writing the curriculum for the New Judges Orientation Program and will be on the faculty this month, teaching from March 22-26. His reflections on his judicial service appears below.
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Tarle Reflects on 36-Year Career on Bench
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have been reflecting on my 36-year career recently, as one might expect. When I began as a commissioner in the Los Angeles Municipal Court in January 1985, I was 34 years old. Back then, you only needed five years as a lawyer before becoming a municipal court judge or commissioner.
In 1994, I became a Superior Court commissioner. I had the good fortune of being sworn in as a judge in April 2001.
I can say without blushing that the bench has felt more like a calling than a job or profession. Even on the worst days, I cannot imagine doing anything else. I am truly thankful to all the staff and colleagues whose wisdom and patience helped me throughout my career.
I am very grateful to the Los Angeles County Criminal Courts Bar Association for their judge of the year award.
Each assignment had its special meaning. I had been granted some unbelievably challenging opportunities. My seven years at the Norwalk courthouse as a commissioner with a direct calendar felony court was certainly one of those challenges. The support of the bench there was necessary, but also warm and close. Norwalk, for a bench officer, is a hidden gem in the Los Angeles court system.
While most people might think that the highlights of my career would be my time in the long cause felony court on the high security Ninth floor of the Foltz Criminal Justice Center or the I C civil court in Santa Monica, I believe I did the most good for the most people in the misdemeanor arraignment/master calendar court in the West Los Angeles Courthouse between 1986-94.
Misdemeanor arraignments and master calendar was the place I had the opportunity to help many who were not necessarily on a career path of criminality, but instead, going through a difficult period in their lives. I was able to redirect their trajectory away from the criminal system. I was blessed with a group of L A deputy city attorneys, public defenders and other defense attorneys, who were able to work together to find solutions without undermining their duty to the public or their clients.
We had a mental health worker assigned to Division 90 who was invaluable, as well as courtroom Spanish language interpreters and marshals—yes, those were the days when the Marshal’s Office existed—who saw themselves as problem solvers. We started programs to assist functionally illiterate defendants in learning to read and write and many non-english speaking defendants to get started on learning English as a second language. We addressed issues of homelessness, drug use and mental illness on Venice beach and the west side of L.A. We worked with counselors for veterans near the Veteran’s Administration. We used community service as a tool to redirect defendants back into the community where it might help.
For example, shoplifting, which was prevalent at the Westside Pavillion, is many times a cry for help. That offense was often committed by elderly defendants, suffering from loneliness, who were often ordered to do community service at the Felicia Mahood Senior Citizens facility.
When the shah fell in Iran, we felt the impact with Persian shoplifting defendants suffering from the trauma of that event. We attempted to redirect them back into the Persian community, as well as mental health counseling.
I recall efforts by the deputy public defenders and deputy city attorneys in uniting some homeless denizens of Venice beach with family members across the country and arranging flights or bus transportation. I know from later communications we turned many lives around.
Copyright 2021, Metropolitan News Company