L. J. Rittenband; Superior Court Judge

Superior Court Judge Laurence J. Rittenband, whose piercing manner and brusque style often overshadowed even the high-profile cases in his courtroom, is dead.

Madeline Bessmer, his friend and companion for many years, said Rittenband--who retired in 1989 from the Santa Monica courthouse but continued to sit on trials occasionally--was 88 when he died Thursday in West Los Angeles.

Known for his impatience with unprepared or confused attorneys, he also drew antagonism for scowling at witnesses whose testimony he suspected was faulty.

But even the defense attorneys he frustrated and the prosecutors he cut short praised him as one of the sharpest jurists in the county.

His demeanor alone would have kept him in the public eye even had he presided over routine cases. But many highly publicized trials were held in his courtroom, including those of the Billionaire Boys Club murderers; Frederick Jerome Thomas, killer of Sarai Ribicoff, a newswoman and niece of a U.S. senator; the drifter who attacked actress Theresa Saldana, and film director Roman Polanski, who fled the country rather than serve a jail term for having sex with a minor.

Rittenband also ruled on the legality of many of Santa Monica’s rent control ordinances in the long battle over that issue.

Richard P. Byrne, presiding judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court when Rittenband retired, said the jurist’s assignment to well-known cases was not accidental.

“Whenever you have a case that is complicated . . . you want somebody who is experienced to do it, and he had the experience,” Byrne said.

He also had the style, recalled Robert Philibosian, the former Los Angeles County district attorney who as a young lawyer often found himself in Rittenband’s courtroom.

Philibosian remembered the day Charles Manson appeared before Rittenband.

“I’m not going to face this court,” said the mass murderer, turning his back to the bench.

“I will not proceed unless you face this court,” warned Rittenband. “You will turn around now . . . “

And Manson, who was flanked by his female followers, did.

“It was almost as if he were hearing the word of a much higher authority,” Philibosian said.

Rittenband was attracted to the law when he was only 10, he said in a post-retirement interview four years ago.

With a librarian as his tutor, he began reading the Code of Hammurabi, a set of Babylonian laws noted for their severity but much more humane than earlier statutes.

“Strict but fair,” said Rittenband, adding that the 4,000-year-old code was “as apt then as it would be today.”

He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York at 15 and studied law at New York University by night. It was not until he graduated at age 19 that he found he was too young to practice.

He attended Harvard University, and when he graduated magna cum laude three years later became a federal prosecutor. He was commissioned an Air Force intelligence officer in World War II, was injured in a raid over Algeria and sent to California to recuperate.

Rittenband remained in the state, practiced law in Los Angeles and met Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, who named him to the Los Angeles Municipal Court in 1961 even though Brown was a Democrat and he was a Republican. He was appointed to the Superior bench in 1962 and assigned to the west branch, where he remained.

Although he was prone to take over the cross-examination of witnesses himself when he felt attorneys had overlooked important testimony, and was known for sometimes taking written motions and throwing them in the trash, Rittenband said his record spoke for itself. He was reversed on appeal an average of only once every 20 cases.

Besides, he said, “a judge should not be an automaton or referee. He should participate in the case to make sure that justice is done, not just lie back.”