Ex-Justice Frank Richardson Dies

Former California Supreme Court Justice Frank K. Richardson, who provided the liberal court of the 1970s and early 1980s with a conservative vision, has died. He was 85.

Richardson, who died at his Sacramento home Tuesday of complications of Parkinson’s disease, wrote nearly 600 opinions during his nine years on the court. Many of those opinions were written for the majority.

They include major rulings that upheld Proposition 13, the 1978 tax-cutting initiative, and Proposition 8, the “Victims Bill of Rights,” which--among other things--called for restitution by criminals to their victims and longer prison terms for repeat offenders. He also was the author of two opinions that upheld the constitutionality of California’s death penalty law.

But the retired justice, who served on the courts led by Chief Justices Donald Wright and Rose Elizabeth Bird, may be remembered more for his role as the conservative voice of dissent.

In 1982, he dissented 36 times in 129 cases, more than twice as often as any other court member. He was in the minority when the court mandated state-paid abortions for low-income women, banned apartment owners from refusing to rent to families with children, and killed a proposed reapportionment initiative that opponents said favored Republicans. He also dissented from many of the court’s attempts to limit the scope of the death penalty.

An advocate of judicial restraint, he acknowledged that he often was “more interested in the brakes than the accelerator.” He said his lonely position as dissenter was “a wholesome thing” that served a vital function.

“A dissent can cause the majority to be perhaps a little more careful in their study and phrasing of an opinion. And today’s dissent,” he said, “may be tomorrow’s majority opinion.”

Richardson saw that happen to himself. Last year, Justice Marvin Baxter wrote the opinion that reversed a Bird court decision that gave defendants greater rights to have their juries instructed on lesser offenses. Richardson had been the lone naysayer when the same issue was brought to the high court 12 years earlier.

“The main thrust of [Baxter’s] opinion was that Richardson got it right. It was a resounding affirmation of a dissent. Judges don’t often live to see that,” said constitutional scholar Gerald F. Uelman of Santa Clara University, who described Richardson as “a conservative but not an ideologue,” who wrote very cogent and scholarly opinions.

Richardson was born in St. Helena, Calif., in 1914, the son of a Methodist minister whose scrupulous personal behavior later earned him the nickname “Deacon” among some of his legal colleagues.

He attended Stanford University during the Depression, receiving his bachelor’s and law degrees there. In 1939, he opened a law practice in Oroville, where he met and married the former Betty Kingdon a few years later.

During World War II he served as an Army intelligence officer and won two battle stars in Europe. After the war, he resumed his law practice in Sacramento, where he worked as an attorney for three decades.

In 1970 he became a judge pro tem in the Sacramento Superior Court. The next year he was named a justice in the state court of appeal by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan.

In 1974, Reagan appointed him to the state high court. Richardson was considered a moderate and fair-minded conservative, whose nomination was praised even by liberals.

Although soft-spoken in person, he could be scathing in his written opinions. In one of his last major cases, he provided the lone dissenting vote when the court ruled a proposed reapportionment initiative unconstitutional, which prevented the proposal from reaching voters in a special election. The initiative was opposed by the state’s Democratic legislators, who said the plan favored Republicans.

Richardson lashed out at his colleagues in his minority opinion, saying his colleagues had voted for “less democracy in California.” If the people “are denied any right to approve or disapprove a blatantly gerrymandered reapportionment plan,” he went on, “then there is absolutely no check on the Legislature’s abuse of power.”

He spoke for the majority in 1979 and 1980 when he wrote two bellwether opinions reaffirming the constitutionality of California’s death penalty law. In the cases known as People vs. Frierson and People vs. Jackson, Richardson’s opinions helped guide the liberal court toward a judicial acceptance of the death penalty, although the force of those opinions was somewhat diminished by the tendency of the court to scrutinize all death penalty cases and a de facto moratorium on capital punishment in the state.

He retired from the court at age 69, but he soon accepted a job in Washington as chief lawyer for the Interior Department when it was headed by a former Supreme Court colleague, William Clark.

Richardson taught law at McGeorge College of the Law in Sacramento and at Pepperdine University.

He is survived by his wife, Betty, and their four sons. Services are scheduled Sunday at First United Methodist Church in Sacramento.