San Diego Courts

Roger Sing Ip, convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of a 15-year-old boy in 1989 and sentenced to five years in prison, received a fair trial and a just sentence, a state appeal court has ruled. Ip, 35, of Spring Valley was convicted in February, 1991, of the July 10, 1989, shooting of Kurt Yokes, a Mission Bay High School freshman, after Ip's car nearly collided with a car in which Yokes was a passenger.

When the defendant in a court case tried his best to destroy the evidence against him, Pete Favor was there to save the day. "Four years ago, I caught a guy eating the evidence in a case," Favor said. "He tore off his signature from a court document . . . and placed it in his mouth, so I reported it right away to the bailiff." Favor is neither an ex-Marine nor a black belt in karate--but a proud member of the San Diego Court Watchers Assn.

It was more than a decade ago that Chris, a scrawny 13-year-old boy with a mop of long hair, posed nude for convicted child molester John Lewis, then 33. Lewis approached Chris at a California beach and complimented his surfing. The next day, Lewis shot frame after frame of the youth in various stages of undress. The photo session concluded with Lewis orally copulating Chris and telling him to "keep it between us," according to Chris. Lewis returned to his adopted home in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he continued to photograph and collect nude and semi-nude pictures of boys and men, amassing thousands of photos, prosecutors contended at Lewis' recent trial.

A federal judge Monday upheld San Diego's nighttime curfew for teenagers, one of the strictest and most vigorously enforced curfews in the nation. Judge Marilyn L. Huff ruled that an ordinance that, with few exceptions, orders teenagers off the streets at 10 p.m. is constitutional. The curfew had been on the books since 1947 but was sporadically enforced until the City Council ordered it applied rigorously two years ago as a way to fight crime.

Former San Diego police officer Henry Hubbard, who maintained for nearly a year that he was innocent of a string of rapes and robberies last summer along local beaches, abruptly reversed himself Thursday and pleaded guilty or no contest to all 38 felony charges against him. Under a deal that the lawyers in the case stressed was technically not a formal plea bargain, Hubbard pleaded guilty to 26 charges and no contest to 12 others.

When James and Patricia Miller went public with the news that the Ford Motor Co. was paying them $6 million to settle a lawsuit, their disclosure was the exception rather than the rule. Ford had wanted to keep secret the terms of the agreement ending the $23-million suit--which the Millers had brought in San Diego Superior Court over a car crash on a country road near Carlsbad.

For the second year in a row, San Diego's federal judges have the heaviest criminal caseload of any federal court in the United States, according to statistics just released in Washington. At 153 cases per judge, the filing rate at the San Diego court in fiscal 1992 was three times the national average, according to a federal judicial management office. In San Diego, where the federal court traditionally has been loaded with cases linked to the U.S.

San Diego Superior Court Judge Ross G. Tharp will not run for reelection, opening a spot on the bench that San Diego Municipal Court Judge Frederic L. Link will run for, both judges confirmed Thursday. Tharp, 61, said he delivered a letter Thursday to Judge Judith McConnell, the San Diego Superior Court's presiding judge, announcing that he will retire to write and travel "before heading for that big courthouse in the sky."

Declaring "let the people be heard," a judge Monday refused to block the vote count in a disputed mayoral election that has gripped this city while garnering national attention for the unlikely leader -- a last-minute write-in candidate, Councilwoman Donna Frye. With an estimated 30,000 provisional, write-in and absentee ballots yet to be counted, Frye, the owner of a surfboard shop, is clinging to a lead of just over 1,800 votes over incumbent Mayor Dick Murphy.