THE JOHN GABBERT GALLERY - Riverside County Bar Association

goodness and respect for every person there was on display
and well-appreciated by all.
When I could be there for the lunch break, we would
walk together up Main Street – sometimes with Judge
Deegan and sometimes with Judge Bucciarelli, but never
both. This was a very proud moment for me, and for my
dad, who once saw us together out the window of his insurance
office. We would meet Randy Walker or Jud Waugh,
or both, at the new cafeteria on University or at the drug
store. However, even though they served the best hamburgers
in town, we never went to the Kiltlifter, a bar and
grill down the street. John told me why, when I suggested
it: he didn’t want any of his jurors seeing him, coming out
squinting into the sunlight, and thinking he had drunk
his lunch. John was the original source for me of the old
saying, “Not only must justice be done, it must be seen to
be done.”
Well, you say, get to it ... what happened at the murder
trial?
Judge Gabbert agreed to let the press take photographs
in his courtroom because of the hot interest, a decision
generations ahead of its time. Also, as the weeks wore on,
to give some competition to the local papers, he allowed a
new lawyer in town, Ray Lapica, who was trying to get a
competing radio station (KACE) going up against KPRO,
to tape and broadcast the trial. These were controversial
moves fifty years ago, but the good judge stood his ground
in favor of the public’s right to know.
After about three times as long as the original time
estimate, the jury found Nicholson guilty of murdering
her daughter, and, in the second trial required at the time,
it gave her the death penalty. Believe it or not, this meant
a third trial was required to decide if she was sane at the
time of the murder. She certainly wasn’t sane in the courtroom,
and controversy raged about whether it was just an
act, or if she was well and truly crazy. As the third trial
progressed, Judge Gabbert could not allow the spectacle to
continue; he stopped the proceedings, declared her insane
on the spot, and committed her to Patton State Hospital.
In theory, she was there awaiting the reconvening of that
third trial upon recovery of her faculties ... but that never
happened and she died at Patton.
All the lawyers at the counsel table were eventually
elevated to the bench. I am sure all of them took to their
own courtrooms what they learned that winter from John
Gabbert. Like a teacher, a good judge like John touches
eternity; he never knows where his influence stops.
Who ever thought I would end up as the judge in that
same department 40 years later? I know none of my law
partners did. All this time and remodeling later, it is still
John’s courtroom, and I am lucky to be able sometimes to
feel his presence when I try to figure out what justice and
the law require.
Judge Dallas Holmes, president of the RCBA in 1982, currently
sits in the Riverside Superior Court.
Riverside Lawyer, September 2006 11