Gordon v. Justice Court

Opinion

BURKE, Acting C. J.

We are confronted here with the question whether the current practice of allowing non-attorney judges to preside over criminal trials of offenses punishable by a jail sentence, as is the situation in over 60 percent of the justice courts in California, violates the constitutional rights of the defendants in those proceedings. We have decided that this practice does violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, and that henceforth defendants in such courts are entitled to have an attorney judge preside over all criminal…