S.D. Lawyers Give Benke Mixed Reviews

Lawyers have strong feelings about San Diego County Superior Court Judge Patricia Darlene Benke, the sole woman on Gov. George Deukmejian’s list of potential nominees for the three seats opening on the state Supreme Court.

Those who worked with Benke, 37, during her decade in the state Attorney General’s Office in San Diego were ecstatic about the prospect of her elevation, after just three years as a judge, to the state’s highest court.

Defense lawyers were less uniform in their reaction to the University of San Diego Law School graduate’s possible promotion. Some questioned Benke’s qualifications for the job; others said she was about as good a choice as they could hope for, given Deukmejian’s preference for conservative judges.

Attorneys interviewed Tuesday agreed on one thing: Benke is not a bit like outgoing Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, whom she would replace as the court’s lone woman justice if she were nominated to the Supreme Court.

“She is approachable, where I think Rose Bird suffered from the appearance of being distant and aloof,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Michael Wellington, one of Benke’s supervisors when she worked in the Attorney General’s Office between 1974 and 1983.

“I expect her rulings are not going to cause anything like the ire Rose Bird’s rulings did,” Wellington added. “Pat’s a good writer and I think far more politically sensitive than the former chief justice was. You’ll see any uncomfortable ruling explained very clearly.”

Benke, moreover, is of a far different political stripe than Bird.

According to Wellington, Benke is a “fairly solid Republican,” but not “knee-jerk right wing.” The ousted chief justice was a liberal Democrat whose opponents portrayed her as out of step with the public’s law-and-order inclinations.

A defense attorney who battled Benke more than once when the judge was a prosecutor criticized her, however, for failing to leave a pro-prosecution bias behind when she became a judge.

“She’s tended to be not impartial, not evenly balanced between the defense and the prosecution,” said the lawyer, who asked to remain anonymous because she could appear before Benke if she is elevated to the Supreme Court.

The defense attorney also criticized Benke’s work in the Attorney General’s Office.

Yet Wellington said Benke’s intellect was her greatest strength. “She’s not only one of the smartest, but one of the most human and perceptive people I’ve ever known,” he said. “She’s an intuitive intellectual.”

Pierre Pfeffer, a San Diego lawyer who often represented defendants before Benke when she was a Municipal Court judge, said defense attorneys could feel “comfortable” that Benke was under consideration for the high court.

“Given Deukmejian’s temperament and the people we would expect to see him nominate, I was kind of relieved to see Judge Benke picked,” Pfeffer said. “She’s very good on the law. I think she’s a compassionate individual, and I think she truly has a love of the law.”

Benke herself had little to say Tuesday about her selection by the governor as a possible high court candidate. In a statement released by the Superior Court, she said she was “very honored to be included with this group of exceptional judges.”

In an interview, Benke told the Associated Press that she had not applied for a Supreme Court post, though she had placed her name in consideration for an opening on the 4th District Court of Appeal.

Benke declined to describe her political philosophy or to say if she considered herself a feminist. “That’s a tough question,” she told the Associated Press. “I’m going to leave the answer to that to those who know me.”

Benke was a director of the Lawyers Club of San Diego, the women’s bar association that has propelled many of its leaders onto the bench, and she is a member of the National Assn. of Women Judges and the California Women Lawyers Assn.

According to Wellington, she has never identified herself as a woman first and foremost, despite holding public posts traditionally filled by men. Yet she has recognized the advantages of being one of a relatively small number of women in those jobs.

“I am convinced Pat doesn’t think of herself in those terms,” he said. “But I’m convinced she knows she’s a woman and that’s a political card she can play to get what she wants.”

Benke has hardly been aloof from politics. She was active in Sen. Pete Wilson’s mayoral campaigns--and was rewarded with an appointment to the city Park and Recreation Board. She lost an election for a Municipal Court judgeship in 1982 before being appointed to the court by Deukmejian the next year.

Wellington described her as “very politically aware” and “very connected”--a young lawyer who befriended editors at The San Diego Union and wrote numerous opinion pieces for the newspaper while she was a deputy attorney general.

“Pat’s never been the sort of person who cloisters herself,” Wellington said.

Benke lost the most highly publicized case she handled as a deputy attorney general.

In 1981, the state Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Billy Lee Chadd, who pleaded guilty to killing two young San Diego-area women in sex-related slayings in 1974. The high court ruled in a 4-2 decision that a defendant in a capital case could not plead guilty without the consent of his attorney.

Benke also was the lead attorney for the state in cases that helped establish the bounds of law enforcement officers’ search and seizure powers and in cases concerning election law, welfare fraud, child abuse and the due-process rights of juveniles.

As a Municipal Court judge, she handled civil, criminal and traffic matters. Benke has spent most of her 18 months on the Superior Court hearing domestic matters, though she recently was reassigned to the equally high-pressure court that hears motions in civil cases.

Born in New Castle, Penn., Benke is married and the mother of two. She attended Pasadena City College and was graduated from San Diego State University in 1971. At USD, she was the managing editor of the law review.