In June 1976, Governor
Jerry Brown appointed Reynoso to the
California Court of Appeal as an associate justice.
George Deukmejian, then the attorney general and on the commission on judicial appointments, voted against Reynoso's confirmation. In 1982, Reynoso was up for reconfirmation: under a measure adopted in 1934, California voters confirm a governor's appointments, and periodic unopposed elections are held for each justice during general elections, giving voters the opportunity to vote a justice out of office. Deukmejian, running as a
Republican candidate for governor, urged voters to vote against justices
Otto Kaus,
Allen Broussard, and Reynoso; he hoped to replace them with conservative appointees, creating a new majority on the Court. The campaign labelled Kaus, Broussard, and Reynoso "Jerry's Judges". A 1988 academic study of this election suggested that, although the retention election was theoretically nonpartisan and intended to retain justices based on their merit, partisan information (such as the affiliation of the governor who appointed the justice) is increasingly used by voters to structure their decisions in such elections. With that majority, he extended environmental protections, individual liberties, and civil rights. In May 1985, Reynoso cautioned about the negative effects of politicizing judicial elections.
Removal from the Supreme Court During the next retention vote in 1986, Bird,
Joseph Grodin, and Reynoso were targeted by conservative and victims-rights groups. The 1986 campaign again portrayed the targeted justices as "soft on crime", Reynoso believed Governor Deukmejian's decision to oppose him, Bird, and Grodin was the most important factor in that election. Deukmejian said that the justices' decisions on death-penalty cases demonstrated a "lack of impartiality and objectivity". he and the other justices lacked the funds to compete with the campaign, raising a collective $3 million to the opposition's $7 million. Reynoso, who had voted to uphold the state's death-penalty law, voted only once for a death sentence during his seven years on the court. The
Oxnard Press-Courier said in an editorial that Reynoso was Bird's "most consistent ally" and that "he has been second only to the chief justice in supporting decisions that favor criminal defendants over prosecutors". The California District Attorneys Association issued a 78-page report attacking the three justices, mainly over their death-penalty rulings, but dropped their campaign later because of fears a political campaign could affect the group's tax-exempt status. "There's clearly an effort to politicize the court", Reynoso told United Press International during the campaign. He was endorsed by the California Organization of Police and Sheriffs. Reynoso was rejected by 60 percent of voters. This made Deukmejian the first governor in California history to have the opportunity to appoint three justices to the court at once. Afterward, Donald Heller, a former Federal prosecutor who drafted the 1978 death-penalty initiative approved by California voters, disagreed with the campaign to unseat the justices, calling Reynoso "a thoughtful, decent man who got thrown out" and "a very capable judge who tried to do the right thing in cases." Reynoso said of the result, "you can't blame [the voters] when the governor of the state, who is a lawyer, says the justices aren't following the law. If I didn't know better, I would have voted against me, too." referring to the act of making a judicial decision without regard to the potential political consequences. "You know it's there, and you try not to think about it, but it's hard to think about much else while you're shaving." "You keep wondering whether you're letting yourself be influenced, and you do not know. You do not know yourself that well," he wrote.
Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor from the
University of Southern California, agreed with the ousted Justice Grodin, saying "the legacy of 1986 could be that justices facing retention elections will decide cases with an eye, perhaps subconsciously, on how their rulings will affect their chances at the polls." Chemerinsky called for abolishing judicial-review elections. Exit polls indicated that the death-penalty issue was the major reason why voters refused to retain the justices. The justices were also impacted by a lack of support from Democratic legislative incumbents in safe districts. Despite the fact that California Supreme Court justices undergoing a retention election are running uncontested, the median spending for justices' campaigns rose from $3,177 in 1976 to $70,000 in 1994. Campaigns similar to the one expelling Bird, Grodin, and Reynoso have since been mounted against judges in other states, such as Justice
Penny J. White of
Tennessee, who also lost a retention election due to a death-penalty issue. Retired California Supreme Court Chief Justice
Ronald George advocated eliminating retention elections and appointing justices to single 15-year terms, following an election in
Iowa where three justices were removed from office after that state's high court overturned a ban on
same-sex marriage. The campaign was largely funded by out-of-state organizations; George said that the January 2010
United States Supreme Court ruling allowing corporations and unions to contribute unlimited sums to independent political committees was likely to increase the influence of well-funded groups in nonpartisan judicial retention elections like those in Iowa and California. ==Post-judiciary==