Judge Tranbarger not biased

The Press Enterprise reports here http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_H_tranbarger07.3ee4073.html
that Orange County Superior Court Judge Kim G. Dunning rejected RivCo DA's Rod Pacheco's motion to deem local judge Gary Tranbarger biased against the DA's office. This row started when RivCo's grossly understaffed Superior court became inundated with criminal cases. Pacheco caused this flood by refusing to plea bargain cases in good faith. Defense counsel thus had to demand trials. Because criminal matters take priority over all other matters (the state constitution guarantees criminal defendants a speedy trial) the superior court halted all civil matters and reassigned the civil judges to criminal matters. This still wasn't sufficient as the flow continued. This matter came to a head when Judge Tranbarger dismissed two misdemeanor cases for violating the speedy trial guarantee. Pacheco wanted the court to reassign all judges to criminal matters. Judge Tranbarger published a well publicized tract questioning why the DA wasn't taking steps to ease the flood of criminal cases. Pacheco responded brazenly in this writer's opinion why the courts were not more efficient. For instance, Pacheco asked why the courts are dark on Fridays.

All in all, I suspect Judge Dunning's ruling will have little effect on the DA. In fact, I suspect the DA will continue to seek Judge Tanbarger's disqualification every time he is assigned a criminal case. This is fine with me because at least some civil matters will get trial dates. The fact that all civil cases were put on hold while civil courts held criminal cases has been a disaster for the administration of justice.