LOOKING IN ON: COURTS

Friday, Dec. 14, 2007 | 7:24 a.m.

Judge Stewart Bell says he rarely has time to enjoy the sweeping near-panorama from his 15th-floor window at the Regional Justice Center.

Bell, 62, will soon have the time, but not the office, to appreciate the view.

He will retire next December when his term - his first - ends. His 39-year-old daughter, Linda Bell, plans to seek his judgeship.

Judges rarely retire after just one term, Court Administrator Chuck Short acknowledged, but "you have to take (Bell's) in the context of his service to the community."

Bell has been a public defender, a private attorney, president of the State Bar of Nevada and a two-term district attorney. He is now the presiding judge of the court's criminal division.

Even men not in trouble may have had their destinies swayed by Bell.

In the 1980s, the National Basketball Association overhauled its system of drafting college athletes to discourage inferior teams from intentionally losing to gain better draft position.

Bell identified a flaw in the new system: severely diminished favoritism to the league's least competent teams.

Summing up his solution to the problem, he said, "You want to give the worst teams a chance, but you don't want to guarantee it." Bell proposed an amended draft to executives of the NBA in a December 1986 letter.

The newest draft lottery is strikingly similar to the one Bell proposed, though the NBA isn't giving credit.

"I don't know if that should be my claim to fame," Bell said. "I have four kids and five grandkids."

Judge Sally Loehrer has told colleagues she also intends to retire next December. Loehrer, who is off this week and unavailable for comment, has been a judge since 1994.

About once a month, a plea document at Family Court disappears, officials there said this week.

It's unclear whether these documents, which are placed in bins exposed to the public, are misplaced or stolen. Court officials aren't ruling out vandalism, but it appears an investigation is unlikely.

Through March, these printed plea documents were the only official records. No longer; the documents are being scanned electronically.

"It might have been a bigger problem before, but now ... it's a bit of an inconvenience," said John Jensen, the court's assistant clerk, who also oversees facilities issues at the court on North Pecos Road.

"If it's not there," Judge T. Arthur Ritchie added, "we can make a copy so it doesn't get destroyed."

When Family Court is remodeled next year so a few new courtrooms can be added, the bins will be moved to an area accessible only to officials, attorneys and their runners, Jensen said.

No current or former member of the National Football League has appeared before a judge at the Regional Justice Center this week - thus far.

That's a departure from the previous two weeks, when the infamous O.J. Simpson and oft-arrested Tennessee Titan "Pacman" Jones were arraigned.

Predictably, media circuses trailed both athletes and enveloped the two arraignments, each of which took less than 20 minutes. Reporters from Los Angeles and Nashville flew in for the hearings, which had decidedly different tones.

An almost cheerful Simpson arrived early, whereas Jones and two other defendants were hidden from reporters until nearly 30 minutes after their arraignment was scheduled to begin.

Simpson, monitored by at least one guard, bolted from the courthouse before reporters could reach him and was promptly whisked from the building by an SUV that arrived on cue at the rear entrance.

Jones, who, like Simpson, had been instructed to ignore reporters, had no such luck. Two Sun journalists accompanied him on a courthouse elevator ride, causing attorney Robert Langford to warn: "Reporters on deck." Jones' departure wasn't well-coordinated, enabling reporters to follow him and others to two late-arriving SUVs.

Walking back to his office, court information officer Michael Sommermeyer mumbled, "Back to the grind."

Until the next celebrity run-in, anyway.