Rose Bird - Reconfirmation Loss

Reconfirmation Loss

Bird was the first and remains the only Chief Justice to be removed from that office by a majority of the state's voters. California justices are selected by the governor but must be regularly reconfirmed by the electorate; prior to Bird, no California appellate judge had ever failed such a vote.

She was removed in the November 4, 1986 election by a margin of 67 to 33 percent after a high-profile campaign that cited her categorical opposition to the death penalty. She reviewed a total of 64 capital cases appealed to the court. In each instance she issued a decision overturning the death penalty that had been imposed at trial. She was joined in her decision to overturn by at least three other members of the court in 61 of those cases. This led Bird's critics to claim that she was substituting her own opinions and ideas for the laws and precedents upon which judicial decisions are supposed to be made. In addition, the Bird court struck down California's "use a gun, go to jail" law that made a prison term mandatory for any crime in which the use of a gun was involved. The anti-Bird campaign ran television commercials featuring the relatives of the victims of the murderers whose sentences Bird and her fellow justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin had voted to reverse. In addition to Bird, Reynoso and Grodin were also voted off the seven-justice California state supreme court bench. Justice Stanley Mosk, who often joined Bird, Reynoso, and Grodin, was not challenged nor were the other three justices.

12 years later, Mosk explained why he was able to stay and Bird was not:

Rose Bird was pilloried because she generally voted to find some defect in death penalty convictions and to reverse them. I probably don't like the death penalty any more than she does. As a matter of fact, I think the death penalty is wrong, that a person has no right to kill, and the state has no right to kill. But the difference is that I took an oath to support the law as it is and not as I might prefer it to be, and therefore, I've written my share of opinions upholding capital judgments.

As a result of the 1986 election, newly-reelected Governor George Deukmejian was able to elevate Justice Malcolm Lucas to Chief Justice and appoint three new associate justices that more closely matched his generally conservative legal or judicial convictions and philosophy.