SAN DIEGO — They come to Judge William Mudd's chambers in many forms: Pretty pink thank you cards with perfect cursive. Sheets torn from notebooks and scrawled with blue ink. E-mails forwarded, forwarded again and finally printed out. And one statue of the Padres mascot.

Judge Mudd's mailbag has been full since he began presiding over the trial of David Westerfield. The murder of Danielle van Dam attracted unprecedented coverage in San Diego, and the trial of her accused killer is broadcast live on the radio, television and Internet. The judge's daily joking with jurors about the city's last-place baseball team and the inefficiency of government employees have made him a controversial cult figure in town, a status reflected in his mail.

"It is both disrespectful and disgraceful to intentionally make light of any discussions during the trial," one woman chided Mudd in a letter marked "PERSONAL" last week. "It's comparable to cracking a joke at a funeral."

But the same day another writer who signed his letter only "an admirer" urged the judge to ignore the "gloom and doomers" and keep cracking wise.

"Pieces of humor get one through the mess of it," he wrote in a letter addressed to "Judge Mudd, Courthouse, Downtown San Diego!!!"

A dozen of the letters are now part of the case's official court file. On the first day of trial, Mudd, a 13-year veteran of the Superior Court bench, told jurors that their pens were county issue and therefore only had a 50 percent chance of containing ink. Similarly, he told chuckling jurors, the clock on the courtroom wall was always wrong and the air conditioning unreliable.

The jokes prompted one civil servant to dash off an outraged e-mail.

"Judge Mudd is making a foul impression on the world concerning San Diego," the employee wrote.

Mudd, apparently a little outraged himself, read jurors the entire e-mail and promised to press on with his jokes. When he took the bench in 1989, he said, he vowed not to be like colleagues who "treated a courtroom like it was a dark, dank dungeon."

A case where a child is murdered is terrible for jurors, he told them, and by breaking the tension with humor, "you can do your job without going home in a basket case."

One former county employee immediately sent Mudd a letter praising his jokes as "very appropriate and comical" and assured him that during her eight years working for the county, "all air conditioning was erratic ... The clocks were never right, and you're right on the pens."

Another correspondent, however, called Mudd's humor "lame" and said the only laughter in the court came from the "sycophantic" press corps.

Jurors and witnesses "don't need to be humored or entertained with Ito-like levity," he wrote, referring to Judge Lance Ito, who presided over O.J. Simpson's murder trial — a name sure to sting a judge in a high-profile trial.

The judge's most consistent target is his favorite baseball team, the woeful San Diego Padres. On the first day of the trial, he told jurors there was an easy way they could avoid media coverage about the case.

"Become Padre fans," he told them. It takes courage and "you might not be watching good baseball either" but the broadcasts were free of trial news, he said.

He routinely opens court with analysis of the team's latest loss, to the amusement of many letter writers.

"Please go on with little a laughter about our Padres. Myself and all my neighbors think you're great," one divorcee from Oceanside wrote Mudd.

On Tuesday, he dismissed jurors at 4 p.m., saying of the Padres, who were playing Baltimore, "Hopefully, the Pads aren't four or five runs behind already."

The Padres lost that night in the 10th inning.

On Thursday, Mudd received a large package.

"Dear Judge Mudd,

We in the Executive Offices at the Padres have been watching the Westerfield trial.

Admittedly, we get a kick out of each time you mention the Club. We're glad you are able to create some humor at our expense in spite of the somber circumstances. Here are some goodies for you to enjoy!

From your friends at the Padres."

The package included hats and T-shirts and a statue of the Padres mascot, the Swinging Friar.