Restraint on Protests at Judge’s Home Lifted

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge on Thursday lifted a restraining order that had prohibited demonstrations outside the home of the jurist who sentenced a Korean-born grocer to probation in the killing of a black teen-ager.

Judge Stephen O’Neil rejected arguments that critics of the sentence given to Soon Ja Du, 51, in the death of Latasha Harlins, 15, planned to gather at the residence of Judge Joyce A. Karlin solely to harass her. He called the restraining order “an unlawful prior restraint on 1st Amendment activity.”

O’Neil also rejected as irrelevant what Karlin’s attorney, Asst. County Counsel Frederick Bennett, said were threats against Karlin’s life and a videotape of a Dec. 12 demonstration at the courthouse where she works that resulted in protesters storming into the building.

The restraining order had been issued Jan. 1 after a lone demonstrator, William Tutt Hayes Jr., walked in front of Karlin’s home in Manhattan Beach with a sign that read “Shame” and “Recall Judge Karlin--Corrupt and Incompetent.”