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three cases back to back before Judge Ritter, and, in fact, two of the Juries had even been out while the third case was being tried. So, by Friday afternoon, Hansen said to Ritter at the bench, "You worked my ass off all week long. You owe me a drink." Ritter laughed and invited him back to his chambers where he poured quite a few for Phil-Ritter not drinking much anymore-and they talked about Gilmore and waited for a call from Dick Giauque, and tried to find Giauque's partner, Daniel Berman, who was doing legal work for Judge Ritter, and then tried to call Matheson, the new Governor, and all the while, such calls failing to reach anybody, Hansen was brooding over the idiocy of the oncoming execution. "Yes," he said, "Sam Smith will never die of a brain tumor." And chuckled through his cigar smoke, and said, "If all else fails, I'm going to bring a suit that I believe is a novelty."

When he used to be Attorney General-one of the small irritations of Phil Hansen's life these days is that people still kept mixing him up with Bob Hansen-he used to bring in suits as the Attorney General, even called it an Attorney General's suit, on matters affecting the public good. Thinking on it now, his impression was that it might be feasible to start a suit as a citizen of the United States who happened to live in the State of Utah. "Why," he said to Ritter, "do I have to have a title to bring it in? Why can't a citizen just stop the execution?"

They talked about it awhile, and Hansen finally decided that what with the ACLU sending in a new plea tomorrow after losing this afternoon, he would save his bid for a last resort.

4

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Crochety or Creative?

Utah Judge Is a Caution

Salt Lake City-Somewhere between the charge by his enemies that he is a mean-tempered old man and the claim by his friends that he is a creative legal scholar, probably lies the truth about U.S. District Judge Willis W. Ritter.

For 28 years the controversial Ritter has been a dominant force in Utah legal affairs, despite the fact he is a liberal, anti-Mormon Democrat in a state ruled principally by conservatives and strongly influenced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"He has been lord of the manor and Utah has been his fiefdom," former U.S. Atty. Ramon Child said.

Now, however, the judge, 78, is facing an unprecedented challenge to his authority by federal and state officials.

State Atty. Gen. Robert B. Hansen has filed petitions with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver asking that Ritter be disqualified from hearing any cases to which the United States or the state of Utah is a party.

The petitions accuse Ritter of repeated misconduct on the bench, a strong prejudice against the state and federal governments, and, generally, behaving erratically.

Utah Sen. Jake Garn, a Republican who has called Ritter a "disgrace to the federal judiciary," is leading efforts in Congress to dilute the judge's authority.

But in a letter last October to Rep. Peter W. Rodino Jr. (D.N.J.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Ritter outlined how he sees his problems.

"Malice, Mormonism, McCarthy-Nixon dirty tricks are written all over it by extreme rightist elements in the Republican Party," Ritter wrote.

"The Mormon church has taken over practically every other public office in the State of Utah. They have been trying for a long time to take over the federal court for the district of Utah."

Ritter was a law professor at the University of Utah when he was appointed a federal judge in 1949 by President Harry S. Truman, but the appointment was hotly contested by Mormon forces. Ritter was accused of personal immorality and public corruption.

When Congress mandated age 70 as the retirement age for federal judges in 1958, it exempted 32 sitting chief judges. Ritter is now the lone survivor of that action.

Bob Hansen was just as annoyed when people mistook him for Phil Hansen. There was no doubt what he thought about Ritter. The Judge, he would say, had real malice of the heart. Of course, Hansen would not argue that Ritter was