The Law: Spiking Cannon

Although her chambers at one time were done in shocking pink, Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge Noel Cannon often chose language that was decidedly blue. She once inquired in the vernacular whether guards conducting a search had looked up the rectum of a lawyer whom she had just jailed for contempt. On another occasion off the bench, she threatened to give a traffic policeman "a vasectomy with a .38." To round out her reputation, she sometimes heard cases with her pet Chihuahua in her lap, and for a while had a toy canary that punctuated lawyers' arguments with mechanical peeps. Few attorneys dared to pipe back publicly. So for twelve years Judge Cannon presided as a choice gossip topic in the L.A. bar.

But her increasing propensity to jail and dismiss defense attorneys for minor or nonexistent infractions led finally to an effort to spike Cannon. Last week a California judicial commission formally asked the state supreme court to remove the Stanford Law School graduate for willful misconduct and actions "prejudicial to the administration of justice." Judge Cannon was forthwith suspended pending the court's decision. She has yet to shoot back with her reaction—at least in public.