Officials from Murrieta Monday will join community members and others at the city’s annual Memorial Day tribute, featuring a color guard ceremony, remarks by the mayor and a keynote address by a retired judge who served during combat operations overseas.
The “Memorial Day Observance & Ceremony” is slated for 8 a.m. at the Veterans Memorial in Town Square Park, near the intersection of Kalmia Street and Jefferson Avenue.
Members of the Murrieta Valley High School Marine Corps J-ROTC will present the colors, and the lead cadet, Ryan Valenzuela, will sing the National Anthem.
Following the ceremony’s invocation and remarks by Mayor Cindy Warren, retired Riverside County Superior Court Judge Mark Johnson will speak on his 28-year service in the active and U.S. Army Reserve.
Johnson, who served as a defense attorney for years before receiving an appointment to a judgeship by former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2009, was instrumental in establishing the county’s Veterans’ Court in 2012. The court provides alternate sentencing opportunities for former service members who have been convicted of non-violent offenses. They must generally attend therapy, substance abuse programs, vocational training and fulfill other requirements as part of their sentences.
An average of 50 former service members are on probation at any given time.
During his time on the bench, Johnson was known for making closing remarks to juries after their service had been completed in which he would compare the American judicial system to those in other parts of the world where he’d served, opining that the U.S. process was among the best, if not the best.
Toward the end of his Army service, he deployed to Baghdad, Iraq, during the first year of U.S. troops’ occupation of the Middle Eastern nation. He was a judge advocate and chief of a government support team in the city.