| Lance Ito | |
|---|---|
| Los Angeles County Superior Court | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | August 2, 1950 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Spouse(s) | Margaret Ann York |
Lance Allan Ito (born August 2, 1950) is an American Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, best known for his presiding decision during the O. J. Simpson murder trial. He currently hears felony criminal cases at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles.
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Ito was born to Jim and Toshi Ito. As children, both had been kept in Japanese American internment camps with their families during World War II. Ito attended John Marshall High School, where he was student body president and received the Scholar Athlete award in 1968. He earned his Bachelors Degree with honors from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1972, and his J.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley's Boalt Hall in 1975. He then joined the Los Angeles district attorney's office in 1977, working in the hardcore gang unit and the organized crime and terror unit, among others.[1]
In 1981, he married Margaret Ann York, the first woman to attain the rank of Deputy Chief in the Los Angeles Police Department and that department's highest ranking woman officer at the time of her retirement in 2002.[2] The two met while at an Eagle Rock murder scene. York was also the Chief of the Los Angeles County Police.
Republican Governor George Deukmejian appointed Ito, a Democrat, to the Municipal Court in 1987, and then elevated him to Superior Court in 1989.
In 1992, he presided over Charles H. Keating Jr.'s trial in the savings and loan scandal; Keating's 10-year sentence was later overturned on appeal because Ito had neglected to instruct the jury to determine whether Keating intended to defraud investors. It was the prosecution's position that Keating was liable as a matter of strict liability.[3]
Ito became familiar to American television viewers when he presided over the 1995 murder trial of O.J. Simpson at which Simpson was acquitted.
Among others, crime author Jay Robert Nash disliked Ito's handling of the Simpson case because they felt he allowed his courtroom to be turned into part of the media circus to the point where Ito would invite attorneys and courtroom staff into his chambers to watch the previous night's Jay Leno footage; however, Ito and others present in the courtroom dispute this characterization, challenging critics to identify a proceeding that was not under control. Because the jury was sequestered, an attorney gag order would not have been supported by any appellate court, leading to often chaotic scenes outside the courthouse. Ito allowed a jury field trip through O.J. Simpson's home after it had been stage dressed by the defense team, in one case replacing an artistic nude painting of Simpson's girlfriend with a reproduction of Norman Rockwell's painting of Ruby Bridges being escorted to school in the Little Rock desegregation struggle. Ito was also criticized for the way that the jury was handled, bowing to defense team pressure to dismiss juror Francine Florio-Bunten late in the trial. Outrage by Vincent Bugliosi illustrates a broad range of judicial incompetence attributed to Ito. For his part, Ito notes that his demeanor in his trials was a result of the Japanese way of shikata ga nai, or "it can't be helped".
Ito was the subject of parody with comedian Jay Leno's "Dancing Itos" sketch, a regular part of The Tonight Show during the Simpson trial, and has remained regular fodder for crossword puzzles.[4]
Ito continues to hold office as a Los Angeles Superior Court Judge. Although not himself fluent in any foreign language, Ito is regarded as an expert in the area of the use of spoken-language interpreters in courtroom proceedings and regularly teaches at the Judicial College of California and Chapman University School of Law.
Ito declines to give interviews regarding the O.J. Simpson trial because the Canons of Ethics that guide the conduct of California trial court judges forbid comment upon pending matters or matters likely to come before the courts.
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