Local News in Brief : No-Contest Plea on Threat

An aspiring screen writer has pleaded no contest to writing a threatening letter to a judge who had ruled against him in a lawsuit, prosecutors said Wednesday.

James E. Hetherington, 38, of Los Angeles entered the plea to one felony count of threatening a jurist. Hetherington, who remains in custody in lieu of bail, is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 16.

Deputy Dist. Atty. John Spence said Hetherington threatened Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs in a signed letter May 9 that described how he sat in her courtroom May 6 with a loaded pistol.

Referring to her ruling against him, Hetherington wrote that the judge made “a tactical mistake . . . that could have cost you your life.”

Janavs ruled in favor of a talent agency that had been sued by Hetherington, who claimed he had written a script that had been made into the movie “Beverly Hills Cop II.”

Hetherington faces a maximum sentence of three years in state prison, but Superior Court Judge Kathleen O’Leary has indicated that the most time she will give him is 16 months.