LOS ANGELES, Jun. 21 – A scrappy former Golden Gloves boxer from Minnesota and a Brooklyn-born criminal law expert head up a sort of tag-team match now under way in a high-ceiling courtroom in the gray-stoned Los Angeles Hall of Justice.

The prize is the life of hippie cult leader Charles Manson and three members of his “family.”

On one side are four attorneys, each representing a different client. On the other are two veteran prosecutors from the district attorney’s office.

Refereeing is a stony-faced veteran of Chenault’s Flying Tigers.

News coverage of the legal battle is the finest the world can muster — TV, radio and newspaper reporters from around the world sit listening and watching, reporting their observations to every country in the world.

Heading the defense team — although not officially — is 33-year-old Paul Fitzgerald.

The former assistant chief of felony trials for the public defender’s office, quit his $25,000-a-year job to defend Patricia Krenwinkle, the 22-year-old member of Charles “family” who, prosecutors say, participated wholeheartedly in both the murders at the Sharon Tate home in Benedict Canyon and the Los Feliz home of market owner Leno La Bianca the next day.

A graduate of St. Thomas Military Academy in St. Paul, Minn., and a philosophy major at the University of Minnesota, where he graduated with honors, Fitzgerald came to California in 1964 after graduating from the University’s law school.

A brilliant lawyer, he was in charge of the special trials section of the public defender’s office, handling the department’s more complex cases after only four years. He defended seven cases in which the people asked the death penalty and lost only once. His client at the time he “lost” was charged with five counts of execution-type murders of liquor store clerks.

“I always wanted to he a criminal attorney,” the lanky father-of-two claims, “and I feel I’ve been trained in the finest criminal law firm in the nation — the public defender’s office.”

His ability to fight and his washboard nose, which was broken six times, he attributes to his days as a Golden Gloves boxer and the fact that he came from a large (five boys and two girls) Irish-Catholic family.

Strong on conviction — “I do what I think is best for my client, no matter what they say” — he quit his well-paying county job because he felt he was being “pressured” to handle the case not in the best interests of his client.

Fitzgerald’s backed on the defense team by another young attorney with an equally laudable record.

Thirty-four year-old Ira Reiner, defending Leslie Van Houten, the Manson “family” member charged exclusively with the murders of Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, is a former city prosecutor whose wife, Patricia, is an attorney with the same office. (“She puts them in — I try to get them out” he laughs.)

Los Angeles-born and the University of Southern California-educated, Reiner left the legal department of ABC-TV to join the city attorney’s office, criminal division. He stayed for three years before leaving to aid in the defense of William Archerd, accused and subsequently convicted of killing six persons through insulin-injection.

The handsome, bull-voiced lawyer lost that one, but his next two capital cases he won through straight acquittals.

Manson, the leader of the cult charged in the murders, is being defended by the third member of the team, Van Nuys attorney Irving Kanarek.

The 51-year-old Seattle-born lawyer, whose statements in court have at times amused, at times infuriated fellow barristers, was not always “one of them”.

A graduate in chemical engineering from the University of Washington, Kanarek worked for eight years with North America Aviation in chemical propulsion research.

“Some of the things I invented, they’ve got patents on now,” he admits candidly. “But I always wanted to go into law — patent law.”

Instead, he admits, he got into criminal law, and currently is defending the leading suspect in the most notorious case in recent history.

In private practice since 1957, the now-divorced attorney lays claim to “about five” capital cases. Their outcome is moot.

Final member of the defense team is Sacramento-born Daye Shinn, whose client, Susan Denise Atkins is credited, (through her confession) by prosecutors with the apprehension of the Manson “family.”

Of Korean descent, the 52-year-old University of California at Berkeley graduate is about as close-mouthed as his client is not.

A specialist in criminal law, the six-times married Shinn has been in private practice since his graduation from Southwestern Law School in 1961.

Opposing the defense team are two deputy District Attorneys — Aaron H. Stovitz and Vincent T. Bugliosi.

Forty-five year old Stovitz, who heads the District Attorney’s Trials Division, supervising 30 deputy district attorneys, lays claim to fame in only one way: “I went to school at Arasmus Hall in Brooklyn — where Barbra Streisend went.”

Brooklyn-born and a graduate of Brooklyn College, the darkly handsome prosecutor was graduated from Southwestern University in 1950 after flying 34 missions as an Air Force lieutenant during World War II. He worked for a year as a research assistant to justice Hartley Shaw before joining the district attorney’s office.

Since then his record shows he has prosecuted 14 capital cases in which two persons received the death penalty. Only one of the 14 was acquitted.

A veteran trial lawyer – “I’ve tried about 20 jury cases a year for the past 16 years.” — he is aided by another DA stand-out, 35-year-old Vincent Bugliosi.

A UCLA law school graduate in 1964, the Hibbing, Minn., native handled the first mass felony prosecution and conviction on felony charges of campus militants in the nation — the Valley State College trial.

Outspoken, and never one to mince words, Bugliosi was responsible for the death penalty verdicts in the bus driver killings in Los Angeles in January, and the first degree murder convictions in the double indemnity slaying.

Attempting to maintain decorum during the expected four-month-long trial will be Superior Court Judge Charles H. Older, a 52-year-old stone-faced jurist who has presided over the Superior Court for only two-and-a-half years.

Although he carries a distinguished military record as a fighter pilot in World War II and in the Korean conflict, the battle before the bench will undoubtedly tax not only his legal skill but his patience.

The father of three girls, the California-born jurist served as a Marine Corps fighter pilot for two years prior to the U.S. entry into World War II, flew with the famed Flying Tigers and then the U.S. Army Air Corps in the China – Burma – India Theater. He was a pilot and operations officer during the Korean conflict.

In 1952 he began a private law practice, specializing civil litigation, including business, corporate and aeronautical law actions.

Since his appointment to the Superior Court Bench in 1957, he has been assigned to the criminal courts.

It was by chance that he “drew” the biggest criminal case to come to the courts since the trial of Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, the convicted assassin of Sen. Robert Kennedy.

But he seems to be taking it seriously.

His admonitions to attorneys — “keep quiet or have the bailiff silence you,” “sit down and shut up,” and “don’t interrupt me again…” — have to let them know who’s in charge.

And his admonitions to the defendants, including the removal from the courtroom of all four because they wouldn’t face the bench, have made them aware he will tolerate nothing.

“It’s really a show — a game,” one of the female defendants told the court, “and the ball on the table is our lives.”

Judge Older will see that the game is played by the rules.

By MARY NEISWENDER