Rose Bird

How dare we continue to ridicule and chastise someone who has so bravely and unselfishly stood against this barbarous and criminal form of revenge. Californians must move beyond their emotional disgust and hate for capital offenders to the reason and logic that guides us to value all human life. Do I as a taxpayer wish to pay some astronomical sum to keep a murderer in prison for the rest of his/her life? No. But rather than be a murderer myself, I would like our prisons to be more self-sufficient.

Most Californians will not remember Jerry Brown from his first two terms as governor. In those days, between 1975 and 1983, he was stunningly youthful, heir to his father's name yet slightly at odds with his legacy, brash, serious and intellectually adventurous. Brown could seem flighty ? the futon, the tumble of ideas, the pugnacity, the make-it-up-on-the-fly daily schedule ? but he mirrored California as it was. He was a young governor in a young state, energetic, optimistic, a little off-kilter.

Rose Bird showed more class in her concession speech than the political world has seen since the days of Adlai Stevenson. But then, Rose Bird was never of the political world. DAN JENKINS Pacific Palisades

Rose Bird: An article in Section A on Aug. 19 about California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, and previous articles in the Times, have described former California Chief Justice Rose Bird as having been recalled from office. Bird was the target of unsuccessful efforts to hold a special election to recall her. However, she lost her seat in a scheduled November 1986 election in which voters were asked whether she should receive another term on the court.

I'm beginning to wonder whether Deukmejian is running against Bradley or against Rose Bird. S. DELL SCOTT Sherman Oaks

Mayor Bradley thinks that by remaining neutral in the Rose Bird controversy he will not risk offending anyone, and not lose a single vote. Wrong! He's lost my vote! I will not vote for a man who refuses to take a position on a question as important to me as this one. As for the judiciary being nonpartisan, that's a howl! They are appointed by partisan bosses--not anointed by God. Running true to form, I believe that if Rose Bird did get a life-time term, she'd probably commute it to two years.

Re "Rose Bird Eulogized for Compassion, Strength," Jan. 10: Rose Bird is well known for her principled opposition to the death penalty, which ultimately led to her ouster from the California Supreme Court. But she should be remembered as well for authoring the most significant farm labor law in this country. Before she wrote the controversial Agricultural Labor Relations Act, farm workers had no legal protection when they organized to bargain collectively. Violence and intimidation in the fields were commonplace; farm workers were among the most oppressed workers in our society.

Compassion and conviction were the greatest virtues--and the seeds of the political downfall--of former California Chief Justice Rose Bird, speakers told hundreds of admirers at a memorial service for the late jurist Sunday. "Her constituency was the powerless and she made an easy target," declared federal appeals court Judge Stephen Reinhardt of Bird, who died of cancer Dec. 4 at 63. He praised Bird as "a woman of principle and passion--a passion for fairness and a passion for justice."

A public memorial service for former state Supreme Court Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird will be held Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Skirball Cultural Center's Magnin Auditorium, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Brentwood. Speakers will include Cruz Reynoso, former California Supreme Court justice; Delores Huerta, co-founder and secretary-treasurer of the United Farm Workers; Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Mission Hills); Judge Stephen Reinhardt of U.S.

Rose Elizabeth Bird was a pioneering public official and jurist who was driven from office on a single issue: her opposition to the death penalty. Appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown as chief justice of the California Supreme Court in 1977, Bird lasted nine years before she was turned out of office by voters by an overwhelming margin. At her death Saturday, at 63, Bird was a virtual recluse who did volunteer work for the poor and the blind. She had battled breast cancer off and on since 1976.

Former California Chief Justice Rose Bird, who died Saturday, will probably be remembered more for the anger she aroused in voters than for her pioneering legal and political career, her friends and colleagues said Sunday. Bird, 63, died at Stanford University Hospital on Saturday afternoon after many years of battling breast cancer.

Rose Elizabeth Bird, who headed the California Supreme Court for nearly 10 years before voters ousted her in a historic recall, died Saturday after a long fight with breast cancer. She was 63. Bird died about 3 p.m. at Stanford University Hospital, where she had been admitted less than two weeks ago. The exact cause of her death has not been determined, said Raj Chabre, a friend of Bird.

At some unknown, transformative moment, long before she died this weekend, even before the 1986 election that stripped off her black robe and booted her from the middle chair as California's Supreme Court chief justice, Rose Elizabeth Bird ceased to be a person. Instead she became, in the pidgin of politics, a cause celebre, a litmus test, a hot button.