Appointed by Edmund G. Brown Jr. | Name Halim Dhanidia | |
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Majic gysd 15 judge halim dhanidina reflection
Halim Dhanidina is a judge in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. Appointed to the bench by Governor Jerry Brown in 2012, he is the first Muslim to ever be appointed judge in California. He is an Ismaili Shiite of Gujarati Indian heritage.
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Dissent in democracy halim dhanidina
Career
Halim Dhanidina was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1970. He was a Deputy District Attorney of Los Angeles County for fourteen years, prosecuting cases for the Hardcore Gang and Major Crimes Divisions. He is also a founding member of the Association of South Asian Prosecutors, and a member of the Asia Pacific American and South Asian Bar Association.
Prior to becoming a prosecutor, he obtained a Juris Doctorate degree from UCLA School of Law, where he was the co-chair of the Asia Pacific Islander Law Students Association. Before that, he completed a B.A. in International Relations at Pomona College, where he founded the Muslim Students Association.
Judge Dhanidina writes that when he was appointed a judge in 2012 the website “Jihad Watch.com” published the news under the headline “Sharia Law Judge Appointed in Mexifornia.” However the judge is mistaken. The title of the Jihad Watch article is "California’s first Muslim Superior Court Judge founded chapter of Muslim Brotherhood-linked Muslim Students Association".
In April 2016, while dismissing charges of lewd conduct and indecent exposure against a defendant in his court, Judge Dhanidina strongly criticized sting operations by the Long Beach Police Department directed at gay men seeking sex in public places, noting that the sting operations appeared to induce the conduct for which the defendants were then arrested, and that the police apparently did not conduct any similar sting operations directed at heterosexual conduct.