When he went off to college, Ronald Coen was like plenty of other kids: young, liberal and brash. He joined the Peace and Freedom party, rallied against the death penalty and passionately spoke his mind. When he finished law school, he applied with the district attorney and the public defender, hiring on at the former just because he scored higher on the DA's exam.

The second day on the job, as he was still learning his way around the office, a colleague waved him in and showed him an autopsy photo of a dead body with hole in the chest. Everything changed.

"It was an epiphany for me," he said. "I didn't even know what side of the table to sit on yet, but I couldn't get that image out of my head. All I could think was, 'How could someone do that to somebody else?'"

And so the wide-eyed college student gave way to the tough deputy district attorney. He took on the case of a librarian killer and got the man convicted, getting him a death sentence. Twenty nine years later, the killer, Steven Lamar Fields, still sits on death row. Coen tried five more death penalty cases in his 11 years behind the prosecutor's table.

Most famously, he took on porn star John Holmes in the Wonderland murder trial. While he lost the case against Johnny Wadd, a heavily-covered showcase that left Coen in a cold sweat as he addressed the jury, the shaken deputy DA bounced back.

He became a Superior Court judge in 1985, where he cultivated a reputation as a tough, strict sentencing jurist who tolerates no guff in his San Fernando courtroom. On the bench, he can be tough on lawyers, particularly those who don't show up on time or indulge in excessive theatrics, but he goes out of his way to keep the jury happy.

When court is in session and he's dressed in his long, black robes, he's a commanding, fearsome figure. He can also easily shift, however, into a laidback, jocular mode where he trades jokes and shows off his wickedly sharp wit with attorneys whom he'd lectured just minutes earlier.

During a break during the Williamson trial, Coen showed off both sides of that persona when a group of young school kids came into the court to learn about the justice system. He adopted a stern tone and stared them down through steely eyes.

This was a high profile case, he warned them, with media attention and heightened security.

"The baliff behind you, he's got a gun, but no bullets," he said, as 10 sets of young eyes widened and swiveled to see the deputy calmly sitting at the back of the room. "And this guy up here, he's got bullets, but no gun, so, if anything happens... ."

As the kids gasped, Coen burst into laughter and dropped the charade.

"I'm kidding," he chuckled. "Come on!"

A few hours later, he was back on the bench, overruling objections and watching the lawyers' ill-fated attempts to save their clients' freedom.

In an ironic twist, the former death penalty hater has become the one of the state's leading authorities on capital cases. No California judge can try a death case without taking his 16-hour, two-day course on the subject.

"I could retire in June with full benefits," he said. "And I have no intention of doing so. This is the greatest soap opera in the world and I have the best seat in the house. The only thing missing is the popcorn."