"Could three people all be dead because someone stole a computer?"
Police: Wife says JP killed Kaufman County DA, spouse and prosecutor
Apr. 17, 2013
By Bill Hanna
star-telegram.com
The wife of a former Kaufman County justice of the peace told authorities that her husband shot and killed Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland, his wife, Cynthia, and Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
In an interview Tuesday with an investigator, Kim Williams, 46, "confessed to her involvement to the scheme and course of conduct in the shooting deaths," according to the affidavit signed by Sgt. Matt Woodall of the Kaufman County Sheriff's Department.
The affidavit said "Kim Williams described in detail her role with that of her husband, Eric Williams, whom she reported to have shot to death Mark Hasse on January 31, 2013, and Michael and Cynthia McLelland on March 30, 2013."
Kim Williams also "gave details of both offenses which had not been made public," the affidavit said.
Kim Williams was booked into the Kaufman County Jail at 2:58 a.m. Wednesday. Her bond was set at $10 million.
Eric Lyle Williams remains in jail on a terroristic threat charge in connection with a threatening email sent March 31, the day after the McLellands were killed in their home near Forney.
The email threat said that "unless law enforcement officials responded to the demands of the writer, another attack would occur," according to his arrest warrant affidavit. The affidavit said Eric Williams used "unique identifiers" found at his home to send the message.
Eric Williams, 46, a 1985 graduate of Azle High School, also graduated from TCU and the Texas Wesleyan University law school. He was arrested Saturday and is being held on $3 million bond. He has not been charged with the slayings.
Eric Williams, while working as a justice of the peace in Kaufman County, was convicted last year of stealing county computers in a case prosecuted by McLelland and Hasse. As a result, he lost his peace officer's license and his law license was revoked.
He has appealed his theft conviction, and a day before the McLellands' bodies were found, a state appeals court in Dallas agreed to hear oral arguments in the case.
During the sentencing phase of Eric Williams' trial, Kim Williams testified in her husband’s defense. She said she suffers from several illnesses, including rheumatoid arthritis and chronic fatigue syndrome. She said her husband is her sole caregiver as well as the caregiver for her two ailing parents.
"Eric is a loving man," she testified. "He wouldn't do anything to hurt anybody. I'm standing by him 100 percent."
Kaufman County Judge Bruce Wood said Tuesday that McLelland was steadfast in his belief that Eric Williams was responsible for Hasse's death, something he reiterated on the Wednesday before he was killed.
"He thought that from Day One," Wood said. "He never wavered. ... He said he knew he did it, but he just couldn't get the evidence to prove he did it."
Both McLelland and Hasse began carrying handguns regularly after Williams' trial "because they believed Eric Williams to be a threat to their personal safety," according to Kim Williams' arrest affidavit.
Glenda Rand, a Kaufman native and owner of the Daisy’s clothing store on the town square, said on Tuesday that she has mixed feelings about the recent developments.
"But I don’t know how I feel that it might have been one of our own who did this," Rand said. "Could three people all be dead because someone stole a computer?"
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Sandra Day O'Conner comes clean about Bush v. Gore twelve years after contested election
Retired Justice O’Connor suggests for 1st time that court should have avoided Bush v. Gore
By Associated Press
April 29, 2013
WASHINGTON — Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is suggesting for the first time that the court should have stayed out of the 2000 presidential election dispute between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
The 83-year-old O’Connor tells the Chicago Tribune editorial board that perhaps she and her colleagues should have turned down the Bush campaign’s appeal of a Florida Supreme Court decision to allow a recount requested by the Gore campaign.
O’Connor was in the majority in the high court’s 5-4 decision that stopped the recount and sealed Bush’s election. She has long lamented the controversy over the decision that she said gave the court a “less-than-perfect reputation.”
But in the past, O’Connor has said the court had no choice but to take on the case. She retired in 2006.
Ex-Supreme Court justice has second thoughts on Bush v. Gore
By Mark Murray, Senior Political Editor
NBC News
April 29, 2013
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor expressed doubts that the nation's highest court should have ruled on the controversial Bush v. Gore case that decided the outcome of the 2000 presidential election.
"It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue," O'Connor told the Chicago Tribune editorial board on Friday. "Maybe the court should have said, 'We're not going to take it, goodbye.'"
The Tribune has more from O'Connor:
The case, she said, "stirred up the public" and "gave the court a less-than-perfect reputation."
"Obviously the court did reach a decision and thought it had to reach a decision," she said. "It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn't done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day."
O'Connor, who was appointed to the court by Ronald Reagan in 1981, was part of the 5-4 majority deciding to stop the recount in the crucial battleground state of Florida.
By Associated Press
April 29, 2013
WASHINGTON — Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is suggesting for the first time that the court should have stayed out of the 2000 presidential election dispute between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
The 83-year-old O’Connor tells the Chicago Tribune editorial board that perhaps she and her colleagues should have turned down the Bush campaign’s appeal of a Florida Supreme Court decision to allow a recount requested by the Gore campaign.
O’Connor was in the majority in the high court’s 5-4 decision that stopped the recount and sealed Bush’s election. She has long lamented the controversy over the decision that she said gave the court a “less-than-perfect reputation.”
But in the past, O’Connor has said the court had no choice but to take on the case. She retired in 2006.
Ex-Supreme Court justice has second thoughts on Bush v. Gore
By Mark Murray, Senior Political Editor
NBC News
April 29, 2013
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor expressed doubts that the nation's highest court should have ruled on the controversial Bush v. Gore case that decided the outcome of the 2000 presidential election.
"It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue," O'Connor told the Chicago Tribune editorial board on Friday. "Maybe the court should have said, 'We're not going to take it, goodbye.'"
The Tribune has more from O'Connor:
The case, she said, "stirred up the public" and "gave the court a less-than-perfect reputation."
"Obviously the court did reach a decision and thought it had to reach a decision," she said. "It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn't done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day."
O'Connor, who was appointed to the court by Ronald Reagan in 1981, was part of the 5-4 majority deciding to stop the recount in the crucial battleground state of Florida.
Judge recommends disbarment for Del Norte DA
Judge recommends disbarment for Del Norte DA
By Amy Yarbrough
The California Bar Journal
Official Publication of the State Bar of California
May 2013
Noting that for 20 years he had “repeatedly violated his ethical and professional duties,” a State Bar Court hearing judge has recommended Del Norte County District Attorney Jon M. Alexander be stripped of his law license.
Alexander [bar # 129207], 64, was also placed on involuntary inactive status as a result of Judge Lucy Armendariz’s April 4 disbarment ruling.M Armendariz found Alexander culpable of communicating with a defendant without her attorney’s consent, withholding evidence from the defense and acts of moral turpitude. The disbarment does not go into effect until it is approved by the California Supreme Court.
It was the first time in recent memory that an elected district attorney was the subject of a disciplinary trial. According to published reports, Alexander was suspended without pay by the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors following the decision.
In her ruling, Armendariz wrote that Alexander’s misdeeds were aggravated by the fact he refused to acknowledge his wrongdoing, and that he had failed to uphold his duties as a district attorney.
“Respondent’s misconduct frustrated the administration of justice,” she wrote. “His abuse of his prosecutorial power has negatively impacted the reputation of the district attorney’s office and the public’s trust in the justice system.”
A controversial figure who overcame methamphetamine addiction and other personal struggles to win the district attorney election in 2010, Alexander had a string of State Bar disciplinary problems prior to the case that now threatens his law license. In 1996, he received a private reproval for failing to abide by agreements that were made in lieu of disciplinary prosecution, and for two misdemeanor convictions for driving with a suspended license. In 2003, he received a six-month actual suspension for failing to return unearned fees to a client and for the unauthorized practice of law while he was suspended for not paying his bar dues.
Alexander then received a 60-day actual suspension for misconduct in four matters, including failure to perform services competently, failure to communicate with clients, engaging in the unauthorized practice of law and engaging in an ex parte communication with a judge in a criminal case in order to influence the sentence. He was still on probation for this disciplinary action in 2011, when the conduct that triggered the current case against him occurred.
In the current case, Alexander was initially charged with seven counts of misconduct in three matters, although Armendariz found him culpable in only three of the charged counts. She found that he had talked with a defendant privately in his office about her drug case, despite knowing that the woman had an attorney. During the conversation the defendant recanted statements she made at the time of her arrest, in which she implicated her co-defendant and admitted to Alexander that the drugs at issue in the case actually belonged to her. Alexander failed to tell the defense attorneys about the conversation and did not share the woman’s incriminating statement with her co-defendant’s lawyer until after he learned their conversation had been tape-recorded.
During Alexander’s misconduct trial, 31 witnesses testified on Alexander’s behalf, attesting to his good moral character and extensive community service, much of it to help others struggling with substance abuse problems. Although Armendariz said that testimony carried some weight, she noted that Alexander’s community service had already been considered a mitigating factor in his third State Bar discipline case.
“The court finds that these character witnesses represent a demonstration of respondent’s good character attested to by a wide range of references in the legal and general communities. But they invariably dismissed respondent’s misconduct as either insignificant or not at all unethical,” she wrote. “Many did not comprehend its egregiousness.”
By Amy Yarbrough
The California Bar Journal
Official Publication of the State Bar of California
May 2013
Noting that for 20 years he had “repeatedly violated his ethical and professional duties,” a State Bar Court hearing judge has recommended Del Norte County District Attorney Jon M. Alexander be stripped of his law license.
Alexander [bar # 129207], 64, was also placed on involuntary inactive status as a result of Judge Lucy Armendariz’s April 4 disbarment ruling.M Armendariz found Alexander culpable of communicating with a defendant without her attorney’s consent, withholding evidence from the defense and acts of moral turpitude. The disbarment does not go into effect until it is approved by the California Supreme Court.
It was the first time in recent memory that an elected district attorney was the subject of a disciplinary trial. According to published reports, Alexander was suspended without pay by the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors following the decision.
In her ruling, Armendariz wrote that Alexander’s misdeeds were aggravated by the fact he refused to acknowledge his wrongdoing, and that he had failed to uphold his duties as a district attorney.
“Respondent’s misconduct frustrated the administration of justice,” she wrote. “His abuse of his prosecutorial power has negatively impacted the reputation of the district attorney’s office and the public’s trust in the justice system.”
A controversial figure who overcame methamphetamine addiction and other personal struggles to win the district attorney election in 2010, Alexander had a string of State Bar disciplinary problems prior to the case that now threatens his law license. In 1996, he received a private reproval for failing to abide by agreements that were made in lieu of disciplinary prosecution, and for two misdemeanor convictions for driving with a suspended license. In 2003, he received a six-month actual suspension for failing to return unearned fees to a client and for the unauthorized practice of law while he was suspended for not paying his bar dues.
Alexander then received a 60-day actual suspension for misconduct in four matters, including failure to perform services competently, failure to communicate with clients, engaging in the unauthorized practice of law and engaging in an ex parte communication with a judge in a criminal case in order to influence the sentence. He was still on probation for this disciplinary action in 2011, when the conduct that triggered the current case against him occurred.
In the current case, Alexander was initially charged with seven counts of misconduct in three matters, although Armendariz found him culpable in only three of the charged counts. She found that he had talked with a defendant privately in his office about her drug case, despite knowing that the woman had an attorney. During the conversation the defendant recanted statements she made at the time of her arrest, in which she implicated her co-defendant and admitted to Alexander that the drugs at issue in the case actually belonged to her. Alexander failed to tell the defense attorneys about the conversation and did not share the woman’s incriminating statement with her co-defendant’s lawyer until after he learned their conversation had been tape-recorded.
During Alexander’s misconduct trial, 31 witnesses testified on Alexander’s behalf, attesting to his good moral character and extensive community service, much of it to help others struggling with substance abuse problems. Although Armendariz said that testimony carried some weight, she noted that Alexander’s community service had already been considered a mitigating factor in his third State Bar discipline case.
“The court finds that these character witnesses represent a demonstration of respondent’s good character attested to by a wide range of references in the legal and general communities. But they invariably dismissed respondent’s misconduct as either insignificant or not at all unethical,” she wrote. “Many did not comprehend its egregiousness.”
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Linda L. Moore of Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz elected president of San Diego Legal Secretaries Association
Moore elected president of SD Legal Secretaries Association
By Daily Transcript Staff Report
March 29, 2013
Linda L. Moore of Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz APC was elected president of the San Diego Legal Secretaries Association (SDLSA) at the group's March meeting.
The other offices elected included Linda Gubba-Reiner of Sullivan, Hill, Lewin, Rez & Engel as vice president; Becky Neidhardt of Latham & Watkins as secretary; Cynthia Halvax of Neil, Dymott, Frank, McFall & Trexler APLC as treasurer; Leanna Pierce of Stokes, Roberts & Wagner ALC as immediate past president; and Annie Parrish of Hooper, Lundy & Bookman P.C. as governor.
Barb Bretherton of Network Depositions; Judy Johns of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP; Heather Schaefli of McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP; and Lynda West of Office Assistance 4 U were elected to the board of directors.
Delegates to the annual conference, which will be held in San Jose in May, will be Vanessa Luna, Michele Mitchell and Judy Johns.
By Daily Transcript Staff Report
March 29, 2013
Linda L. Moore of Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz APC was elected president of the San Diego Legal Secretaries Association (SDLSA) at the group's March meeting.
The other offices elected included Linda Gubba-Reiner of Sullivan, Hill, Lewin, Rez & Engel as vice president; Becky Neidhardt of Latham & Watkins as secretary; Cynthia Halvax of Neil, Dymott, Frank, McFall & Trexler APLC as treasurer; Leanna Pierce of Stokes, Roberts & Wagner ALC as immediate past president; and Annie Parrish of Hooper, Lundy & Bookman P.C. as governor.
Barb Bretherton of Network Depositions; Judy Johns of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP; Heather Schaefli of McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP; and Lynda West of Office Assistance 4 U were elected to the board of directors.
Delegates to the annual conference, which will be held in San Jose in May, will be Vanessa Luna, Michele Mitchell and Judy Johns.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Freed after 29 years in prison for crime he did NOT commit
Wrongful convictions happen everywhere, but they seem to happen more often in Texas. The post following this one is about another innocent man imprisoned in Texas for a crime he didn't commit. You'd think Bible belt folks would be more averse to people bearing false witness against their neighbors.
Randolph Arledge, right, embraces his son, Chris Rodgers, center; at left is Innocence Project of Texas policy director Cory Session
Freed after 29 years in prison for crime he did NOT commit
Man wrongfully convicted of stabbing a woman to death is released after DNA reveals he wasn't the killer
By ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTER
12 February 2013
A 58-year-old Texan Randolph Arledge walked free Monday after serving years for a crime he didn't commit -- the repeated stabbing of a woman whose body was found on a dirt road in rural North Texas.
Arledge was sentenced to 99 years in prison in 1984 for killing Carolyn Armstrong.
But a state district judge in Corsicana, about 50 miles southeast of Dallas, agreed with prosecutors and Arledge's attorneys that he could no longer be considered guilty after new DNA tests tied someone else to the crime.
Judge James Lagomarsino agreed to release Arledge on bond while the process of overturning his conviction is pending. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals must accept Lagomarsino's recommendation for the conviction to be formally overturned, a process that is considered a formality.
Arledge wore shackles around his wrists and ankles at the start of the hearing, but was later taken into a back room by two deputies to have them removed.
When he returned, Arledge hugged his two children. His daughter was 4 years old and his son 7 when he was sent to prison.
'They suffered more than anybody,' Arledge told reporters afterward. He gestured to his daughter, Randa Machelle Arledge. 'She's always talking about, she wanted me to come pick her up from school. Now she's picking me up.' His children said they remained hopeful through the years, not doubting his innocence.
'Every time he came up for parole, it was broken, shattered hopes,' his daughter said.
Armstrong's body was found in August 1981 on a rural dirt road in Navarro County, according to a court filing by Arledge's attorneys. She had been stripped naked from the waist down and stabbed more than 40 times.
Her abandoned car was found miles away with several pieces of evidence, including a black hairnet on the left side of the driver's seat. Hair taken from that net was preserved for three decades.
In 2011, more advanced DNA testing linked samples from the hair net and elsewhere to someone else.
Navarro County District Attorney Lowell Thompson said authorities are searching for the person matched to the DNA and believe they know where he is. The case 'will stay open until we solve it,' he said in an interview...
Like many wrongfully convicted inmates, Arledge was sent to prison with the help of faulty eyewitness testimony. Two co-conspirators in an armed robbery testified at his trial that he had admitted to stabbing someone in Corsicana and that he had blood on his clothes and knife, according to the filing by Arledge's attorneys.
One of those witnesses has since admitted to lying about Arledge due to a personal dispute, the filing said.
Arledge became the 118th person in Texas state courts to have his conviction overturned, according to the University of Michigan's national registry of exonerations...
Freed after 29 years in prison for crime he did NOT commit
Man wrongfully convicted of stabbing a woman to death is released after DNA reveals he wasn't the killer
By ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTER
12 February 2013
A 58-year-old Texan Randolph Arledge walked free Monday after serving years for a crime he didn't commit -- the repeated stabbing of a woman whose body was found on a dirt road in rural North Texas.
Arledge was sentenced to 99 years in prison in 1984 for killing Carolyn Armstrong.
But a state district judge in Corsicana, about 50 miles southeast of Dallas, agreed with prosecutors and Arledge's attorneys that he could no longer be considered guilty after new DNA tests tied someone else to the crime.
Judge James Lagomarsino agreed to release Arledge on bond while the process of overturning his conviction is pending. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals must accept Lagomarsino's recommendation for the conviction to be formally overturned, a process that is considered a formality.
Arledge wore shackles around his wrists and ankles at the start of the hearing, but was later taken into a back room by two deputies to have them removed.
When he returned, Arledge hugged his two children. His daughter was 4 years old and his son 7 when he was sent to prison.
'They suffered more than anybody,' Arledge told reporters afterward. He gestured to his daughter, Randa Machelle Arledge. 'She's always talking about, she wanted me to come pick her up from school. Now she's picking me up.' His children said they remained hopeful through the years, not doubting his innocence.
'Every time he came up for parole, it was broken, shattered hopes,' his daughter said.
Armstrong's body was found in August 1981 on a rural dirt road in Navarro County, according to a court filing by Arledge's attorneys. She had been stripped naked from the waist down and stabbed more than 40 times.
Her abandoned car was found miles away with several pieces of evidence, including a black hairnet on the left side of the driver's seat. Hair taken from that net was preserved for three decades.
In 2011, more advanced DNA testing linked samples from the hair net and elsewhere to someone else.
Navarro County District Attorney Lowell Thompson said authorities are searching for the person matched to the DNA and believe they know where he is. The case 'will stay open until we solve it,' he said in an interview...
Like many wrongfully convicted inmates, Arledge was sent to prison with the help of faulty eyewitness testimony. Two co-conspirators in an armed robbery testified at his trial that he had admitted to stabbing someone in Corsicana and that he had blood on his clothes and knife, according to the filing by Arledge's attorneys.
One of those witnesses has since admitted to lying about Arledge due to a personal dispute, the filing said.
Arledge became the 118th person in Texas state courts to have his conviction overturned, according to the University of Michigan's national registry of exonerations...
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Former prosecutor, now a judge, is facing investigation: innocent man spent 21 years in jail
Attorney testifies in Texas inquiry of former DA
By WILL WEISSERT
Associated Press
February 7, 2013
GEOGRETOWN, Texas (AP) — Attorneys representing a former Texas district attorney accused of prosecutorial misconduct in a wrongful murder conviction are trying to raise doubts about what occurred during the original trial.
Testifying Thursday is Bill Allison, a defense lawyer for Michael Morton.
Morton served nearly 25 years in prison for his wife's slaying — but was freed on DNA evidence in 2011.
Ken Anderson was the case's prosecutor but is now a judge. Morton's attorneys allege he withheld evidence indicating their client's innocence.
Anderson is now facing a court of inquiry on the matter. Allison detailed not receiving police case notes and other information at trial.
But Anderson's attorneys questioned whether he might have sought that evidence only after the fact.
Allison wavered. He eventually said: "You can't remember that which didn't happen."
Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/texas/article/Attorney-testifies-in-Texas-inquiry-of-former-DA-4258506.php#ixzz2KF5txZwE
By WILL WEISSERT
Associated Press
February 7, 2013
GEOGRETOWN, Texas (AP) — Attorneys representing a former Texas district attorney accused of prosecutorial misconduct in a wrongful murder conviction are trying to raise doubts about what occurred during the original trial.
Testifying Thursday is Bill Allison, a defense lawyer for Michael Morton.
Morton served nearly 25 years in prison for his wife's slaying — but was freed on DNA evidence in 2011.
Ken Anderson was the case's prosecutor but is now a judge. Morton's attorneys allege he withheld evidence indicating their client's innocence.
Anderson is now facing a court of inquiry on the matter. Allison detailed not receiving police case notes and other information at trial.
But Anderson's attorneys questioned whether he might have sought that evidence only after the fact.
Allison wavered. He eventually said: "You can't remember that which didn't happen."
Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/texas/article/Attorney-testifies-in-Texas-inquiry-of-former-DA-4258506.php#ixzz2KF5txZwE
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Michael Roddy silent after receiving reports of shenanigans by clerks at San Diego Superior Court
UPDATE JANUARY 30, 2013
In the same case discussed below, Stutz v. Larkins, we now have documents missing from the case file.
UPDATE JANUARY 3, 2013 re Michael Roddy silent about document falsified by clerk
Karen Dalton, in charge of public relations for the court, was able to get a response for me from Mr. Roddy. Here it is:
Dear Ms. Larkins,
The October 2012 inquiries cited in your blog were received and investigated by the court. After investigating the issues you raised, we concluded that no improper action has been taken by any court employees related to your case. The matter has been closed.
Sincerely,
Mike Roddy
Executive Officer
(I guess this means business as usual will continue in the court.)
Maria Hayes is the Supervisor of the Superior Court Appeals Division. Kathy Williams is the Manager of that Department and several other departments. Stephen Cascioppo is the Assistant Executive Officer, Central Division. And of course, Michael Roddy is the Executive Officer. Michael Roddy has clearly approved the creation of a false document to get rid of Appeal regarding one of the decisions of Judge Judith Hayes and her research attorney, Monica Barry.
ORIGINAL POST:
At a time of layoffs of clerks, why is the court forcing clerks to spend time creating false documents and then more time correcting the record?
Michael Roddy is silent regarding the bizarre and unsuccessful effort of the San Diego Superior Court Appeals Division to default my September 6, 2012 appeal regarding an injunction in the Stutz v. Larkins case.
The Court of Appeal has already ruled one of Judge Judith Hayes' injunctions unconstitutional in this same case. It would seem that Mr. Roddy wants to protect judges who ignore the law. He has not responded to either of the two letters below.
It appears that Superior Court Appeals division clerk ZZZ ordered her subordinate to dismiss my appeal, claiming that my Designation of Record was unacceptable because there were no hearings on three of the dates I had listed in my Designation of Record.
Even if the court had been correct regarding this issue, it is normal practice to allow the appellant a grace period to correct such mistakes.
In fact, the court was completely, absolutely, wrong.
Not only were there hearings on those dates, but the transcripts of those hearings had actually been received by the Superior Court Appeals division in 2010 for my earlier appeal about the other unconstitutional injunction in this same case. The court apparently invented this excuse in an effort to find any reason at all to justify defaulting my appeal.
What would be the motive? To make sure than Judge Judith Hayes didn't have another injunction overturned by the Court of Appeal in the Stutz v. Larkins case.
October 23, 2012
Michael Roddy, Executive Officer
Stephen Cascioppo, Assistant Executive Officer, Central Division
Third Floor
220 West Broadway
San Diego, CA 92101
Dear Executives of San Diego Superior Court:
Following is not necessarily word-for-word accurate, but all the ideas expressed are accurate. Not every word spoken is recorded here, but this transcript contains about 80% of what was spoken. Some parts were repeated.
I spoke to deputy clerk XXX in the Appeals Section on October 22, 2012 about the fact that all three of the dates she used to justify Defaulting my Appeal were, in fact, dates on which hearings had occurred.
Ms. XXX went to her computer and checked all three dates, then came back to me and said, “There were no minute orders on those dates.”
“Were there hearings on those dates?” I asked.
Instead of answering this question, she repeated a couple more times that there were no minute orders on those dates.
“What if the judge took the matter under submission?” I asked. “There wouldn’t be any minute order, even though there had been a hearing.”
Ms. XXX told me that her computer does not show whether a hearing has occurred—unless there was a minute order!!!!
I showed Ms. Rodriquez two Reporter’s Transcript cover sheets for my 2010 appeal in the same case. I had drawn circles around the three dates in question. Ms. XXX made copies of the two cover sheets, and said that this cleared up the problem.
I said, “No, it doesn’t. The fact that this happened is a problem. Someone told you to do this, didn’t they?”
She said that no one had told her to do it.
I said, “You’re going to take the fall for this?”
I said I didn’t believe she could have made three mistakes like this, and she didn’t have any motive to sabotage my appeal.
When she went to her desk, her supervisor ZZZ came up to her and told her she should leave. Then she said, “It’s your break. I’ll take care of it.”
Then they both came over to where I was sitting, and XXX explained the situation to ZZZ.
ZZZ said to XXX, “Did you look it up on the V3 system?”
XXX said she did.
I said, “So the name of the system you use is V3?
ZZZ waved her hand dismissively, ending the gesture with her palm stationary in front of my face, and said, “It’s nothing for you to worry about.”
I requested that she not stick her hand in my face and asked, “Do you not want me to have information about what system you use?”
ZZZ said she didn’t mind giving me the information, and said that V3 was the system used by the Court.
“Does it show when a hearing has occurred?” I asked.
“Yes,” ZZZ said.
“That’s interesting. XXX said that it didn’t,” I said.
ZZZ said, “No, it doesn’t show hearings. It shows the minute orders. The minute orders are printed on yellow paper and placed in the file.”
I said, “So there’s no record on your computer of hearings at which no minute order was issued?”
ZZZ said, “Well, yes, there’s a little one line notation showing that there was a hearing.” She held up her two index fingers, a short distance apart, to show how small the notation was, apparently to demonstrate how easily it could be overlooked. I said, “Someone must have told XXX to do this. Was it you?”
ZZZ said, “No.”
ZZZ turned to XXX and told her to leave.
XXX was obviously uncomfortable to be asked to leave. It was clearly not her normal break time. I happen to know that clerks sometimes take their breaks at their desks, so it was not necessary for XXX to leave even if it actually had been her break time. XXXX did not feel good to be told to leave; her facial expression and body movements revealed that she was unhappy and anxious. I interpreted the order to leave as ZZZ’s effort to prevent XXX from revealing that ZZZ had told her to create the Notice of Default. This was quite paranoid of ZZZ, since XXX was absolutely steadfast in sticking to the story that the Notice of Default was entirely her own idea.
I asked to speak to Ms. ZZZZ’s supervisor, but Ms. ZZZZ said the supervisor had her door closed and was in a meeting.
I gave ZZZ my 1-page letter with three attachments, addressed to Mr. Roddy, Mr. Cascioppo, and XXXX, and she stamped it received and stamped my copy. I went to Michael Roddy’s office, but it was closed for lunch. I went back and asked ZZZ to put another copy in Mr. Roddy’s mail box. I saw her put the letter in a mail box on the west wall.
It’s worse to force a young, vulnerable person to subvert justice than it is to simply subvert justice oneself. And whoever pressured ZZZ was worse than ZZZ. Sincerely,
Maura Larkins
October 21, 2012
Michael Roddy, Executive Officer
Stephen Cascioppo, Assistant Executive Officer, Central Division
XXXXXXXX, Deputy Clerk of the Superior Court, 3rd Floor, Room 3005
220 West Broadway, San Diego, CA 92101
Dear San Diego Superior Court:
Deputy Clerk of the Superior Court XXXXXX states in her October 18, 2012 Notice of Default (attached) that for the dates 4/25/08, 4/03/09 and 3/05/10 “there are no minutes/hearings for those dates according to our record.”
I can’t begin to imagine how Ms. XXX could come up with not one, but three separate mistakes of this type. Not only did hearings occur on all three of these dates, but court reporter Marvie Votaw delivered the transcripts of these three hearings to your Appeals Section in connection with my March 2010 appeal. I have attached Ms. Votaw’s cover pages showing that transcripts were prepared for these dates. Also, in September 2012 the court reporters had no trouble preparing estimates for the cost of preparing the current record because I obviously designated the record with adequate specificity.
It is bizarre that the Superior Court would interfere in this way with my appeals process. If the deputy clerk didn’t have enough time to check carefully, why would she go out of her way to prepare a Notice of Default? Left to her own devices, she would have left it alone rather than picking three dates and declaring that hearings didn’t happen on those days. More likely, someone else picked those three dates and told Ms. XXXX that no hearings occurred on those days.
I suspect that someone in San Diego Superior Court who wanted to get rid of my appeal asked XXXX to prepare this Notice of Default.
Please investigate this shocking subversion of the judicial process.
XXX had no motive to do this on her own initiative, but obviously there is at least one person in San Diego Superior Court who does have a motive. Judge Judith Hayes almost certainly wants to prevent another ruling by the Court of Appeal that finds one of her injunctions to be “exceedingly broad.” But Judge Hayes probably didn’t talk directly to Ms. XXXX. More likely it would have been xxxxxx or xxxxxx.
Sincerely,
Maura Larkins
The clerk seemed quite happy to reverse the default she had been forced to prepare. She sent me the following:
Here's a recent court transcript revealing the judge's bizarre behavior in this case.
See all posts re Stutz v. Larkins.
Michael Roddy is employed directly by the California Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC).
Friday, February 1, 2013
Court apologizes to Hells Angels
Court apologizes to Hells Angels
UPI News Service
04/29/2008
A San Diego court has apologized for ejecting two prospective jurors who refused to remove their Hells Angels motorcycle club vests.
Hells Angels members Timothy "Fuzzy" Timms and Mick Rush said sheriff's deputies escorted them from the San Diego Superior Court's Hall of Justice after they reported for jury duty and refused orders from the deputies to remove their leather vests, which bear the club's "death's head" insignia, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Tuesday.
A court spokeswoman said the Superior Court and the Sheriff's Department apologized to the two men, saying the ejection was the result of deputies and court officials "misunderstanding" an April 24 order by Superior Judge Jeffrey Fraser.
"He (the judge) does have a case before him involving Hells Angels members and his order applies only to that case and to his courtroom, not to the entire courthouse," court spokeswoman Karen Dalton said.
"She apologized and said they were embarrassed, and she sounded very sincere," Timms said of jury services manager Terri Brewton. "I told her I did not have any complaint about jury officials, but rather I was embarrassed to be surrounded by six deputies and told I had to leave because of my attire."
UPI News Service
04/29/2008
A San Diego court has apologized for ejecting two prospective jurors who refused to remove their Hells Angels motorcycle club vests.
Hells Angels members Timothy "Fuzzy" Timms and Mick Rush said sheriff's deputies escorted them from the San Diego Superior Court's Hall of Justice after they reported for jury duty and refused orders from the deputies to remove their leather vests, which bear the club's "death's head" insignia, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Tuesday.
A court spokeswoman said the Superior Court and the Sheriff's Department apologized to the two men, saying the ejection was the result of deputies and court officials "misunderstanding" an April 24 order by Superior Judge Jeffrey Fraser.
"He (the judge) does have a case before him involving Hells Angels members and his order applies only to that case and to his courtroom, not to the entire courthouse," court spokeswoman Karen Dalton said.
"She apologized and said they were embarrassed, and she sounded very sincere," Timms said of jury services manager Terri Brewton. "I told her I did not have any complaint about jury officials, but rather I was embarrassed to be surrounded by six deputies and told I had to leave because of my attire."
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Vista Superior Court Judge Cline leaves problems behind in the probate department
Judge Richard G. Cline
Perhaps this lawsuit is the reason attorney Rusty Grant recently decided to retire from her legal practice.
See case documents HERE.
SHOULD ATTORNEYS THAT COMMIT FIDUCIARY ABUSE AND PERJURY BE ABOVE THE LAW?
Jennifer Grant
January 19, 2013
In July 2011 a petition was filed to remove attorney Rusty Grant (no relation to Jennifer Grant) as trustee from the Schwichtenberg Family Revocable Trust. Reasons included expenditures against trust terms, incuding penalties for Rusty's failure to pay property taxes on time, failure to follow trust terms, illegitimate takeover of two subsections of the trust which had become irrevocable prior to the amendment which made Rusty trustee of the other subsection, and severe discrimination against the trustor's daughter Jennifer who had served as her mom's personal assistant and subsequently cared for her during her long battle with breast cancer.
Rusty Grant and Constance Larsen (Rusty’s own attorney, friend and officemate) had served as co-vice-presidents of the North County Bar with the current president back in 2006. Judge Cline made the majority of the decisions while the case was in Vista (when Vista court still had a probate division), including one in violation of federal and state constitutional law. Judge Cline had long standing bar ties with Richard MacGurn, the attorney of Jennifer's disgruntled brother.. Additionally, Rusty was a pro-tem judge in Vista.
In September 2012, with the closure of Vista's probate division, the case was moved to San Diego's Central division where it was inherited by Judge Jeffery Bostwick. Judge Bostwick is an ethical and professional judge. However, most likely due to the huge number of Vista cases dumped on him and the slow wheels of the justice system, he failed to grasp the urgency of the matter before him. He left Rusty Grant and Constance Larsen to continue their reign of fiduciary abuse, mispenditure of trust funds and violations of law unchecked, despite Jennifer filing a motion to suspend the trustee until the court could hear the case. Judge Bostwick denied the motion because it was “not urgent”.
How exactly, if Jennifer prevails, is all the misspent money supposed to get reimbursed?
In the meantime, there is no money available to pay the ongoing expenses of the trust property, so it will likely be lost if there is no intervention before the case can go to trial. Since Constance Larsen has illegally denied Jennifer the right to be in the property, it sits neglected and further deteriorating.
When Jennifer sought help from the California state fiduciary abuse organization, she was told that they could not touch attorneys though it sounded like Constance Larsen and Rusty Grant had committed crimes. Was there any other category of fiduciary out of their jurisdiction? The answer was “no”. So basically, they were saying if you are an attorney in California, you can break the law with no repercussions.
Both attorneys were also reported to the State Bar. How much their own North County Bar connections may have weighed in is unknown. However the complaint was closed. Jennifer received a letter which basically stated that, while her complaint might have merit, that the Bar could not get involved because there was a civil case in court.
The county DA was contacted but said a police report must first be filed. Since Constance Larsen forbids Jennifer to be in the property left her, there is a pending issue with the police as to who has jurisdiction to take the report.
In the latest incident, Constance Larsen tried to create a circumstance of double jeopardy by filing an accounting petition which contained issues already under contest in the case's other three petitions.
See pleading: Objections to Accounting Petition
Judge Cline allowed Rusty to conduct the forensic accounting ahead of trial on the contested petition where the question of who should conduct the accounting was at issue. Constance Larsen was blatantly trying to press her luck twice to get rid of the Remove Trustee petition and get fees for herself and further ones for Rusty.
This was an attempt to violate Jennifer's constitutional right to due process (US constitutional 14th amendment and California Constitution Section I Article I) as it had been in the circumstance with Cline.
Fortunately Judge Bostwick listened to Jennifer's due process argument on the Accounting Petiton and thwarted Larsen by consolidating it with the three other pending petitions putting it on the same civil justice snail track. However, if one takes a look at the objections he asked Jennifer to file, one can get a small taste of what is being allowed to continue by the State Bar as well as an overburdened, inefficient justice system here in San Diego. To top it off, as can be seen from Jennifer's objections, and looking at the exhibits, Constance Larsen and Rusty Grant have made false statements, committing perjury, when they signed their petitons. The question remains, are attorneys above the law? If not, then how can they be held accountable and by whom?
(Case # 37-2011-00150239-PR-TR-NC)
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Court executive salaries released by the AOC
This story was published 3 years ago. The salaries are most likely higher at present, and hopefully so are the ethical standards in places like Placer County.
Survey says: Pay for state's court executives released
By Greg Moran
SDUT
DEC. 3, 2009
As the head of the San Diego Superior Court, Executive Officer Michael Roddy runs the second-largest court system in the state, with 154 judges and judicial officers and 1,709 full time employees.
For his efforts, Roddy is paid $223,953, with another $41,000 in benefits per year.
Though San Diego’s court trails only Los Angeles in size, Roddy’s salary is not the second highest for court executives in the state.
He might consider the job in Contra Costa County, far smaller than San Diego with 38 judges and 428 employees. The chief executive there makes $229,338 per year, and another $37,000 in benefits. That's the highest paid court executive salary job in the state, surpassing even Los Angeles County, with 441 judges and 5,540 employees. (The CEO there makes $220,980 per year but gets the most in benefits -- $75,388, pushing the total compensation ahead of Contra Costa).
Or Santa Clara County, with 79 judges, 889 employees, and a chief executive who earns $225,528 per year.
In tiny Inyo County, with two judges and 21 employees, the chief executive there is paid $139,869 —more than half of what Roddy makes in San Diego overseeing a system dozens of times larger in terms of judges and employees.
These wide disparities in pay and benefits among the state’s 58 court chief executives are laid out for the first time in recently-completed survey by the state Administrative Office of the Courts.
Unlike state court judges, whose salaries are the same regardless of where they serve, the pay and benefits of the court systems top executives are set on a county-by-county basis. Each county has its own policy for setting and modifying salaries of court executives.
That patchwork system is a vestige of the time when individual counties funded the courts. That all changed 12 years ago when the state took over trial court funding.
Individual Superior Courts, however, remain the employers for all court workers. Court executive officers are employees of their individual courts, reporting to the presiding judge for each court system.
All of that has led to a spectrum of pay and benefit policies, and some controversy.
The survey done by the AOC was sparked by revelations that the salary of the former chief executive in Placer County increased 11 times in seven years, rising from $162,000 in 2002 to $304,0000 in 2008. A special audit conducted by the AOC said that for many of the increases there were no records showing who approved it.
This month the Judicial Council, the policy making arm for the state courts, is expected to review the survey and propose policies and guidelines for setting pay for court executives.
The council can’t set individual policy and benefits for the state’s court systems, said Peter Allen, senior communications manager for the AOC. But it will be presented with a model personnel policy each court could use when setting CEO pay, he said. It will be interesting to see how widely that model is accepted in the current contentious environment between some trial court judges and the Judicial Council/AOC...
Survey says: Pay for state's court executives released
By Greg Moran
SDUT
DEC. 3, 2009
As the head of the San Diego Superior Court, Executive Officer Michael Roddy runs the second-largest court system in the state, with 154 judges and judicial officers and 1,709 full time employees.
For his efforts, Roddy is paid $223,953, with another $41,000 in benefits per year.
Though San Diego’s court trails only Los Angeles in size, Roddy’s salary is not the second highest for court executives in the state.
He might consider the job in Contra Costa County, far smaller than San Diego with 38 judges and 428 employees. The chief executive there makes $229,338 per year, and another $37,000 in benefits. That's the highest paid court executive salary job in the state, surpassing even Los Angeles County, with 441 judges and 5,540 employees. (The CEO there makes $220,980 per year but gets the most in benefits -- $75,388, pushing the total compensation ahead of Contra Costa).
Or Santa Clara County, with 79 judges, 889 employees, and a chief executive who earns $225,528 per year.
In tiny Inyo County, with two judges and 21 employees, the chief executive there is paid $139,869 —more than half of what Roddy makes in San Diego overseeing a system dozens of times larger in terms of judges and employees.
These wide disparities in pay and benefits among the state’s 58 court chief executives are laid out for the first time in recently-completed survey by the state Administrative Office of the Courts.
Unlike state court judges, whose salaries are the same regardless of where they serve, the pay and benefits of the court systems top executives are set on a county-by-county basis. Each county has its own policy for setting and modifying salaries of court executives.
That patchwork system is a vestige of the time when individual counties funded the courts. That all changed 12 years ago when the state took over trial court funding.
Individual Superior Courts, however, remain the employers for all court workers. Court executive officers are employees of their individual courts, reporting to the presiding judge for each court system.
All of that has led to a spectrum of pay and benefit policies, and some controversy.
The survey done by the AOC was sparked by revelations that the salary of the former chief executive in Placer County increased 11 times in seven years, rising from $162,000 in 2002 to $304,0000 in 2008. A special audit conducted by the AOC said that for many of the increases there were no records showing who approved it.
This month the Judicial Council, the policy making arm for the state courts, is expected to review the survey and propose policies and guidelines for setting pay for court executives.
The council can’t set individual policy and benefits for the state’s court systems, said Peter Allen, senior communications manager for the AOC. But it will be presented with a model personnel policy each court could use when setting CEO pay, he said. It will be interesting to see how widely that model is accepted in the current contentious environment between some trial court judges and the Judicial Council/AOC...
Friday, January 4, 2013
Kevin Keenan says ACLU used to focus on civil rights, now it focuses on "relationships"
See all posts on San Diego ACLU from this blog.
Kevin Keenan says ACLU used to focus on civil rights, now it focuses on "relationships".
Unfortunately, the "relationships" that ACLU lawyers focus on are too often with lawyers, such as school attorneys, who are defending violations of civil rights.
San Diego ACLU attorney David Loy has gone out of his way to support violations of the First Amendment such as Judge Judith Hayes' December 11, 2010 injunction. Mr. Loy gave me legal advice without being my lawyer. He told me to erase all mention of Stutz Artiano Shinoff and Holtz from my website. Also, see this update on that case.
from: ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties
date: Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 2:48 PM
subject: New year, new ACLU
"We've changed from the local civil-rights powerhouse that you know to a more community-connected, relationship-based, comprehensive advocacy organization. I don't have a good name for what that is...It may just be the new ACLU." – Kevin Keenan, Executive Director.
As you may have read in the San Diego Union Tribune last week, the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties will celebrate its 80th anniversary this year. To put it simply, "We've come a long way, baby."
Thanks to a long legacy of members, volunteers, board members, and staff in San Diego, we have had a solid foundation on which to build. Thanks to your most recent support, we have been able to triple in size over the past six years. We are now a staff of twenty-one, including teams of legal, policy, and organizing experts who work proactively on the issues most affecting our community today.
With this growth, we are adapting to our new proactive, community orientation and keeping up with changes in the area. We've promoted our organizing director Norma Chavez-Peterson to the new position of Associate Director in charge of supervising our array of justice-making programs and tools.
Norma's ability to build strong relationships with the community to affect positive change reflects a new emphasis in the way we work. It was exemplified most recently in a campaign to enlist local volunteers to mobilize thousands of Latino voters in Escondido – a city fraught with civil liberties abuses.
Our relationships with you, the community, and lawmakers, combined with our organizing, litigation, and advocacy capacity, will help us move closer to our vision of an equitable and just society.
Please share your thoughts and ideas on the new ACLU with us. You can respond to this email, "like" us and post on our Facebook page, and follow us on Twitter.
Thank you again for making us more effective through your consistent support. Happy New Year!
Kevin Keenan
Executive Director
ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties
Comments on ACLU Facebook page:
James Thinkstoomuch
decent article, but the local ACLU has seriously dropped the ball on local police accountability issues - especially with respect to their illegal and criminal acts during the suppression of Occupy San Diego. December 31, 2012 at 3:14pm ·
Maura Larkins
Unfortunately, the "relationships" that San Diego ACLU lawyers focus on are too often with lawyers who are defending violations of civil rights, such as school attorneys. San Diego ACLU attorney David Loy has gone out of his way to support violations of the First Amendment such as Judge Judith Hayes' December 11, 2010 injunction. The Court of Appeal disagreed with David Loy that I should remove all mention of Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz from my website.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Federal judge denied Michael Roddy's Motion to Dismiss lawsuit by Michael Coulter
See also recent shenanigans on Michael Roddy's watch.
See decision in Coulter v. Roddy
Michael Roddy seems to be compiling a record of repeated efforts to deny justice.
From the Coulter v. Roddy ruling:
"...According to Plaintiff, in May of 2009, Murrell obtained a “request for dismissal” of the state court action executed by Plaintiff on an outdated form, knowing the form would not be accepted by the superior court clerk’s office.
"Plaintiff alleges Roddy, the Executive Officer of the clerk’s office, enacted and enforced “policies, regulations and customary practices” which caused the clerk’s office employees to “improperly and illegally deny filing” the request for dismissal.
"Murrell’s and Roddy’s actions allegedly prevented Plaintiff from proceeding with the state court action, in violation of his due process rights. In addition, during the six-month period between when Plaintiff signed the request for dismissal form in May of 2009 and when the state court finally dismissed the action in November of 2009, the Estate of Daniel T. Shelley was depleted, leaving nothing to satisfy his claims...
"Roddy’s only argument is that Plaintiff fails to sufficiently allege a conspiracy between Roddy and Murrell. Roddy cites Simmons v. Sacramento County Superior Court, 318 F.3d 1156, 1161 (9th Cir. 2003), for the proposition that conclusory allegations that the lawyer was conspiring with state officers to deprive him of due process are insufficient to support a § 1983 claim.
"However, in Simmons, the Ninth Circuit held that such conclusory allegations were insufficient to support a § 1983 claim against a private attorney who was not acting under color of state law. Id. Here, Roddy does not dispute that as Executive Officer of the clerk’s office, he was acting under color of state law with respect to the allegedly unlawful conduct.
"Thus, the only issue is whether Plaintiff sufficiently alleged Roddy’s conduct violated Plaintiff’s rights under the Constitution or federal law. Construing the FAC in light most favorable to Plaintiff, as the Court must, the § 1983 claim against Roddy does not depend on a conspiracy theory.
"Indeed, Plaintiff only alleges the clerk’s office confirmed for Murrell that the outdated form would not be accepted. (FAC ¶ 5.) Plaintiff alleges Roddy, by enacting and enforcing certain policies and practices, caused the deprivation of Plaintiff’s due process rights."
signed by Judge Irma Gonzalez
See decision in Coulter v. Roddy
Michael Roddy seems to be compiling a record of repeated efforts to deny justice.
From the Coulter v. Roddy ruling:
"...According to Plaintiff, in May of 2009, Murrell obtained a “request for dismissal” of the state court action executed by Plaintiff on an outdated form, knowing the form would not be accepted by the superior court clerk’s office.
"Plaintiff alleges Roddy, the Executive Officer of the clerk’s office, enacted and enforced “policies, regulations and customary practices” which caused the clerk’s office employees to “improperly and illegally deny filing” the request for dismissal.
"Murrell’s and Roddy’s actions allegedly prevented Plaintiff from proceeding with the state court action, in violation of his due process rights. In addition, during the six-month period between when Plaintiff signed the request for dismissal form in May of 2009 and when the state court finally dismissed the action in November of 2009, the Estate of Daniel T. Shelley was depleted, leaving nothing to satisfy his claims...
"Roddy’s only argument is that Plaintiff fails to sufficiently allege a conspiracy between Roddy and Murrell. Roddy cites Simmons v. Sacramento County Superior Court, 318 F.3d 1156, 1161 (9th Cir. 2003), for the proposition that conclusory allegations that the lawyer was conspiring with state officers to deprive him of due process are insufficient to support a § 1983 claim.
"However, in Simmons, the Ninth Circuit held that such conclusory allegations were insufficient to support a § 1983 claim against a private attorney who was not acting under color of state law. Id. Here, Roddy does not dispute that as Executive Officer of the clerk’s office, he was acting under color of state law with respect to the allegedly unlawful conduct.
"Thus, the only issue is whether Plaintiff sufficiently alleged Roddy’s conduct violated Plaintiff’s rights under the Constitution or federal law. Construing the FAC in light most favorable to Plaintiff, as the Court must, the § 1983 claim against Roddy does not depend on a conspiracy theory.
"Indeed, Plaintiff only alleges the clerk’s office confirmed for Murrell that the outdated form would not be accepted. (FAC ¶ 5.) Plaintiff alleges Roddy, by enacting and enforcing certain policies and practices, caused the deprivation of Plaintiff’s due process rights."
signed by Judge Irma Gonzalez
Friday, December 28, 2012
California State Auditor blasts Superior Court Executive Michael Roddy for kowtowing to judges who ignore the law
San Diego Superior Court judges blasted by state auditor for waiving domestic violence payments
Matt Potter
San Diego Reader
October 1, 2012
The California State Auditor has issued a blast at the San Diego Superior Court, saying that judges here have been waiving legally required payments due from those convicted of crimes of domestic violence.
According to the state auditor's report, issued September 6, San Diego courts have the worse collection record of four counties the office sampled over a four-year period. The other counties were Los Angeles, Santa Clara and Sacramento.
The money paid by the domestic violence probationers is earmarked to fund a network of local shelters for domestic violence victims.
"Because of the relatively low rate of collections of payments in the four counties, fewer resources are available for local shelters to provide services to victims of domestic violence."
"Some counties had higher collection rates than others—collections in Los Angeles County averaged 57 percent of the amounts owed while collections in San Diego County were only 12 percent," the audit found.
The state auditor identified one San Diego court problem in particular: its judges, who according to the audit have been arbitrarily reducing some probationers’ payments.
"Although state law specifies that assessed domestic violence payments may be reduced or waived if the court finds that the defendant has an inability to pay, judges in one of the counties reduced or waived the payment for other reasons, such as the probationer’s successful completion of batterer intervention programs."
“This practice results in fewer resources being available for domestic violence programs."
"In San Diego County, of the probationers in the 16 misdemeanor cases that we reviewed at San Diego Court’s central division, eight had completed batterer intervention programs. For each of those eight cases, the court reduced domestic violence payments, and the reductions ranged from 25 percent to 43 percent.
"San Diego Court should ensure that procedures are in place so that courts do not reduce or waive domestic violence payments for reasons other than a probationer’s inability to pay."
In their response to the audit's findings, San Diego court officials generally agreed with most of its findings and said they would implement the auditor's recommended reforms.
But San Diego Superior Court executive director Michael Roddy said in a letter dated August 17 that he didn’t have the authority to overrule judges when they reduced the domestic violence payments.
"Judges are independently elected officials and have the discretion to impose a sentence that they deem to be appropriate for the offense," wrote Roddy.
"Court administration is not in a position to establish procedures to ensure that domestic violence payments are not reduced or waived for reasons other than inability to pay.
"The court has established Sentencing Guidelines, which include a recommended fine amount and also include information about each fine and fee and whether they can legally be reduced for reasons other than inability to pay.”
That drew this response from the auditors:
"We recognize that the San Diego Court administration is not in a position to establish procedures unilaterally that affect sentencing practices.
“However, as discussed at our exit conference, we would expect the court administration to discuss our report findings with the court’s judicial officers and work together to establish procedures so that the San Diego Court can ensure that domestic violence payments are not reduced or waived for reasons other than inability to pay.”
Comments
SurfPuppy619
Oct. 2, 2012 @ 1:32 p.m.
"Judges are independently elected officials and have the discretion to impose a sentence that they deem to be appropriate for the offense," wrote Roddy.
That is an outright, whopper lie. Roddy better go back to court executive school and get a clue.
Judges must follow the laws passed by the state legislature, they are not kings and courtrooms are not their fiefdoms. They cannot impose, or not impose, legally mandated laws-including fines. The Auditor should file for a writ of mandamus with the DCA and force the idiot judges to comply with the law.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Judges don’t reveal relationships; fairness questioned
Judges don’t reveal relationships; fairness questioned
By Jeff Chirico
CBS ATLANTA
Oct 29, 2012
A CBS Atlanta News investigation revealed some Georgia judges fail to disclose relationships they have with attorneys in open court. It raises questions about how fairly the judges dispense justice.
In August, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Bensonetta Tipton Lane awarded custody of Usher's two sons to the Atlanta-based singer and actor. The decision stunned Usher's ex-wife, Tameka Raymond, according to her attorney, Lisa West.
Since the decision was rendered, West said she learned Usher's celebrity attorney, John Mayoue, may have helped Lane get reelected in 2008. According to campaign finance reports, Mayoue's law firm donated $1,000 to Lane's campaign and hosted a fundraising reception that raked in thousands of dollars. According to West, Mayoue also sat on Lane's reelection committee.
"I would classify the relationship as a special relationship," said West.
West said she believes Lane should have disclosed that relationship in open court so she has asked for a new trial and for Lane to recuse herself.
Georgia law allows for attorneys to contribute to judicial campaigns but judges have a heavy legal burden to avoid even the appearance of being biased.
Lane isn't the only judge accused of not revealing special relationships with attorneys. Lane's colleague, Judge Gail Tusan, also failed to tell Ed Dort that his ex-wife's attorney, Robert Boyd, sat on her reelection committee.
"The final judgment and divorce decree basically financially buried me," Dort said.
According to records, Boyd donated to Tusan's campaign days before Dort's wife filed for divorce.
"There's no question she was influenced by the attorneys," Dort said.
Joanna Shepherd Bailey, a professor for Emory University School of Law, said money does influence judicial outcomes.
Shepherd Bailey conducted an extensive study of more than 21,000 State Supreme Court cases and found a strong correlation between judicial campaign contributions and judges' decisions.
"A $1,000 contribution will increase the likelihood of a judge voting in a particular way by, depending on the case, between 1 percent and 7 percent increase in likelihood," Shepherd Bailey said.
Some are calling on judges to be more transparent in open court about contributions they receive and relationships they have with attorneys arguing before them.
"There's no harm in laying all your cards on the table," said Charles Hall, representative of the Justice At Stake Campaign, a group fighting against money's influence on courts.
Hall recommends judges be up front about connections they have with parties involved in a case. If there's any question whether a judge can be fair, then he or she should step aside, Hall said.
Tusan, the judge who presided over Dort's divorce, denied that she is influenced by contributions to her campaign or attorney's efforts to help her get elected.
Tusan said she is in full compliance with state law and discloses all campaign contributions as required by state law.
But after Dort launched an online petition calling for Tusan to step aside, she recused herself.
If there's any question that attorneys know contributions can influence judges, Ken Sullivan of Forsyth County said he has proof.
His divorce attorney, Margaret Washburn, sent him an email in 2010 discussing strategies for their case.
The email suggested, "We find who [the judge's] campaign manager or treasurer was, hopefully an attorney, and add him/her to the team ASAP."
Sullivan said he believes Washburn was suggesting that he contribute to the judge's campaign.
"I don't think padding the judge's campaign manager should have any bearing on the outcome of your case," Sullivan said.
Campaign finance records reveal Washburn, who is also a municipal court judge, has contributed more than $15,000 to judicial campaigns in the last six years.
Washburn emphatically denied she recommends clients make campaign contributions to curry favor with judges.
She claimed the email was intended to help Sullivan find a new attorney.
By Jeff Chirico
CBS ATLANTA
Oct 29, 2012
A CBS Atlanta News investigation revealed some Georgia judges fail to disclose relationships they have with attorneys in open court. It raises questions about how fairly the judges dispense justice.
In August, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Bensonetta Tipton Lane awarded custody of Usher's two sons to the Atlanta-based singer and actor. The decision stunned Usher's ex-wife, Tameka Raymond, according to her attorney, Lisa West.
Since the decision was rendered, West said she learned Usher's celebrity attorney, John Mayoue, may have helped Lane get reelected in 2008. According to campaign finance reports, Mayoue's law firm donated $1,000 to Lane's campaign and hosted a fundraising reception that raked in thousands of dollars. According to West, Mayoue also sat on Lane's reelection committee.
"I would classify the relationship as a special relationship," said West.
West said she believes Lane should have disclosed that relationship in open court so she has asked for a new trial and for Lane to recuse herself.
Georgia law allows for attorneys to contribute to judicial campaigns but judges have a heavy legal burden to avoid even the appearance of being biased.
Lane isn't the only judge accused of not revealing special relationships with attorneys. Lane's colleague, Judge Gail Tusan, also failed to tell Ed Dort that his ex-wife's attorney, Robert Boyd, sat on her reelection committee.
"The final judgment and divorce decree basically financially buried me," Dort said.
According to records, Boyd donated to Tusan's campaign days before Dort's wife filed for divorce.
"There's no question she was influenced by the attorneys," Dort said.
Joanna Shepherd Bailey, a professor for Emory University School of Law, said money does influence judicial outcomes.
Shepherd Bailey conducted an extensive study of more than 21,000 State Supreme Court cases and found a strong correlation between judicial campaign contributions and judges' decisions.
"A $1,000 contribution will increase the likelihood of a judge voting in a particular way by, depending on the case, between 1 percent and 7 percent increase in likelihood," Shepherd Bailey said.
Some are calling on judges to be more transparent in open court about contributions they receive and relationships they have with attorneys arguing before them.
"There's no harm in laying all your cards on the table," said Charles Hall, representative of the Justice At Stake Campaign, a group fighting against money's influence on courts.
Hall recommends judges be up front about connections they have with parties involved in a case. If there's any question whether a judge can be fair, then he or she should step aside, Hall said.
Tusan, the judge who presided over Dort's divorce, denied that she is influenced by contributions to her campaign or attorney's efforts to help her get elected.
Tusan said she is in full compliance with state law and discloses all campaign contributions as required by state law.
But after Dort launched an online petition calling for Tusan to step aside, she recused herself.
If there's any question that attorneys know contributions can influence judges, Ken Sullivan of Forsyth County said he has proof.
His divorce attorney, Margaret Washburn, sent him an email in 2010 discussing strategies for their case.
The email suggested, "We find who [the judge's] campaign manager or treasurer was, hopefully an attorney, and add him/her to the team ASAP."
Sullivan said he believes Washburn was suggesting that he contribute to the judge's campaign.
"I don't think padding the judge's campaign manager should have any bearing on the outcome of your case," Sullivan said.
Campaign finance records reveal Washburn, who is also a municipal court judge, has contributed more than $15,000 to judicial campaigns in the last six years.
Washburn emphatically denied she recommends clients make campaign contributions to curry favor with judges.
She claimed the email was intended to help Sullivan find a new attorney.
Friday, December 21, 2012
San Diego Superior Court Judge-to-be Gary Kreep thinks City Beat is the voice of "powers that be"
Poor Gary Kreep. He's being picked-on by City Beat, one of the few progressive papers in San Diego.
Mr. Kreep says that City Beat is trying to court the favor of the movers and shakers of San Diego by writing about him. (See the last two paragraphs of the story below.) No, Mr. Kreep. City Beat is writing about you because your becoming a judge in San Diego is an affront to the constitutions of California and the United States. The June 2012 election was one of those rare occasions when progressives voted for a Republican, Garland Peed, for Superior Court judge, because you don't respect the institutions on which our country is based.
I believe Mr. Kreep should not accept the position as judge, since his judicial integrity is hopelessly compromised after he sent out deceptive mailers to fool South Bay citizens into voting for him. In South Bay, progressives did vote for Gary Kreep because he sent out a mailer linking himself to Obama.
Gary Kreep's family-law record
Birther judge-elect opposed parental rights for communists and lesbians as a lawyer, and faced allegations of spousal abuse
By Dave Maass
City Beat
Dec 19, 2012
“You give muckrakers a bad name…. Now, you’re even using the legendary ‘when’s the last time that you beat your wife’ ploy.”
—Judge-Elect Gary Kreep, Nov. 30, 2012
The signs were staked in the ground across the street from Gary Kreep’s law office in Escondido. One read “Divorce Lawyers Lie,” the other “You’re in Good Hands With Kreep—Not.”
It was 1991, and Kreep—who’ll be sworn in as a Superior Court judge in January— was being stalked by a client who’d gone off the deep end. The signs were just the beginning of a Cape Fear-style threat to Kreep and his staff; the man allegedly idled outside Kreep’s office and sent postcards featuring images of skeletons and bloody bodies. The client defended his actions in court, saying his goal was “to protest Kreep’s unscrupulous, careless and impious actions towards me and to warn the community about an archetype of ill repute.” Kreep successfully obtained a restraining order, and the court record indicates that was the end of it.
Among attorneys who practice family law, unhinged clients are considered part of the cost of doing business. Yet, as Kreep hopes to be assigned to domestic court next year, the controversial attorney’s record in family law certainly deserves scrutiny.
After running a stealth campaign, Kreep won the June 6 primary election by less than half a percentage point. His election has raised grave concerns in the legal community and the press due to his history as a polarizing political force. A lifelong Republican, Kreep pursued a career as a self-styled constitutional-law attorney. Over three decades, he’s represented myriad conservative interests, such as the anti-abortion and Minutemen movements, and, as a Republican activist, headed up numerous political action committees. These days, he’s best known as one of the primary “Birther” attorneys suing over the supposed illegitimacy of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
(Read CityBeat's previous in-depth reporting on Kreep here.)
Soon, he’ll leave all that behind to become a judge in the Superior Court of California, serving San Diego County. He’s told multiple media outlets that he won’t let his right-wing and Christian fundamentalist leanings (such as his ardent opposition to LGBT marriage equality) impact his rulings. However, Kreep’s record in family court—as a private attorney, as the executive director of a far-right nonprofit and as a party in his own domestic matters—raises questions about whether families will be in good hands.
One of Kreep’s earliest family-related cases is stored on microfilm at the Vista courthouse. The records from 1983 and 1984 detail his representation of two foster parents who needed to obtain a restraining order against their troubled, adult adopted son, specifically to keep him away from their younger adopted child. Kreep had been hired to file the injunction, and he quoted the parents a fee of between $250 and $500. As the case became more complicated, involving Carlsbad police and a private investigator, Kreep racked up fees in excess of $1,500. When the couple couldn’t pay, Kreep took them to court.
Related content Birther attorney in the lead for judge seat Who’s behind Gary Kreep robocall? Gary Kreep needs your help to throw Obama off the ballot
The judge took the rare move of ruling that Kreep must write the case off as pro-bono.
“The lawyers of California have been told by the California Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal [sic] that they must contribute their time and talent to those less fortunate than themselves,” Judge Ross Tharp wrote in his ruling. “Such is the case at hand. Defendants, being borderline indigents, simply could not, and cannot, afford to pay $90 per hour for plaintiff’s professional services, no matter how exemplary or successful they may have been.”
Kreep declined to comment on this case, or any other case for that matter, citing attorney-client privilege, even though, at the time some of the cases were happening, he was eager to publicize them.
Through the U.S. Justice Foundation (USJF), often described as the right-wing’s answer to the American Civil Liberties Union, Kreep has inserted himself into several family-law cases. A 1987 profile in the Los Angeles Times referenced USJF’s assistance to a San Francisco man who was attempting to gain custody of his daughter. The argument was that the mother was an unfit guardian, since she’d been a leader in the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Maoist radical group. Kreep sent out a newsletter with the headline “USJF Wins First Round of Battle to Save 12-Year-Old From Communism,” the Times reported.
More than 20 years later, USJF signed on to Miller vs. Jenkins, a landmark custody dispute that cut to the core of LGBT parental rights.
The case involved a lesbian couple in a civil union who had a child together. The biological mother became an ex-gay, born-again Christian and sought to dissolve the relationship. Although a Vermont court awarded the other parent visitation rights, the biological mother—for whom the USJF served as cocounsel—left for Virginia, which doesn’t recognize LGBT unions, to invalidate the visitation rights. A federal law explicitly prohibits this kind of interstate judge-shopping; however, Kreep’s organization sought to publicize the case as a front in a larger culture war.
“We anticipate that this litigation, which centers around the issue of child custody and visitation rights resulting from a domestic partnership, will soon wind up before the United States Supreme Court as state courts are involved in more of these cases,” Kreep said in a press release. “The United States Justice Foundation believes that the time is now to engage in this battle to preserve the sanctity of traditional marriage and the best interests of children.”
The case didn’t reach the Supreme Court. When it was resolved in the other mother’s favor, the biological mother fled to Nicaragua with the child. A Mennonite pastor was convicted of kidnapping for helping the mother leave the country.
Ask Kreep about his own domestic life, and he’ll talk about how he cared for his terminally ill wife for two-and-a-half years. After she passed away, Kreep cared for his terminally ill mother-inlaw for another eight months.
He remarried in 2004, but after three years, they separated. Kreep filed for dissolution in September 2007, citing irreconcilable differences. A legal battle ensued over splitting property, including real estate, timeshares, insurance policies, IRS returns, Corvettes, art work, coin and sports-card collections and a cache of firearms. The protracted case grew bitter as Kreep accused his wife of a gambling addiction and she countered with multiple allegations of abuse.
“Since my marriage to my husband it has become very clear that he has a very strong need to control me emotionally, physically and financially,” Kreep’s ex-wife, a psychologist, wrote in a declaration on file at the East County court house. “The reason I left my husband is because he was verbally and physically and emotionally abusive. He is a recovering alcoholic and unfortunately has to lay blame on me for things he cannot accept in himself. He accuses me of addictive behaviors I don’t have, throws bottles at me, punches holes in walls, and belittles me.” Confronted with these allegations, Kreep points out they were not made at the beginning of the case, but two years into the dispute.
“I have never touched either of my wives in anger,” Kreep writes in an email to CityBeat. “The charges of ‘verbally and physically and emotionally abusive’ are completely false. As far as being ‘a recovering alcoholic,’ I have only been ‘blasted’ once in the past 30+ years. I do not feel that it is appropriate to comment on my ex-wife’s addictions. I never threw a bottle at her, never punched walls during our marriage, and I should point out that my ex-wife was 6’ tall in stocking feet, and not exactly petite.” [Maura Larkins comment: Apparently Mr. Kreep thinks that it's a fair fight for a man to assault a tall woman. A woman on steroids, perhaps, but in general a short man is much stronger than a tall woman. I'll bet Mr. Kreep would choose to fight the woman if he were forced to make a choice as to whether he'd fight a tall woman or a short man.]
CityBeat unsuccessfully attempted to reach his ex-wife directly or through her attorney of record.
Although Kreep has made a career of smearing politicians, he believes it’s unfair to bring up these issues about him.
“You REALLY must hate me, or you’re REALLY being paid a lot to go after me by the downtown crowd,” he writes. “I hope that your bootlicking is getting you the crumbs from the table of the ‘powers that be’ that you are seeking, as your journalistic integrity, and accuracy, certainly is lacking.”
Kreep will be sworn into office on Jan. 7, after which Presiding Judge Robert Trentacosta will assign him to a department.
Mr. Kreep says that City Beat is trying to court the favor of the movers and shakers of San Diego by writing about him. (See the last two paragraphs of the story below.) No, Mr. Kreep. City Beat is writing about you because your becoming a judge in San Diego is an affront to the constitutions of California and the United States. The June 2012 election was one of those rare occasions when progressives voted for a Republican, Garland Peed, for Superior Court judge, because you don't respect the institutions on which our country is based.
I believe Mr. Kreep should not accept the position as judge, since his judicial integrity is hopelessly compromised after he sent out deceptive mailers to fool South Bay citizens into voting for him. In South Bay, progressives did vote for Gary Kreep because he sent out a mailer linking himself to Obama.
Gary Kreep's family-law record
Birther judge-elect opposed parental rights for communists and lesbians as a lawyer, and faced allegations of spousal abuse
By Dave Maass
City Beat
Dec 19, 2012
“You give muckrakers a bad name…. Now, you’re even using the legendary ‘when’s the last time that you beat your wife’ ploy.”
—Judge-Elect Gary Kreep, Nov. 30, 2012
The signs were staked in the ground across the street from Gary Kreep’s law office in Escondido. One read “Divorce Lawyers Lie,” the other “You’re in Good Hands With Kreep—Not.”
It was 1991, and Kreep—who’ll be sworn in as a Superior Court judge in January— was being stalked by a client who’d gone off the deep end. The signs were just the beginning of a Cape Fear-style threat to Kreep and his staff; the man allegedly idled outside Kreep’s office and sent postcards featuring images of skeletons and bloody bodies. The client defended his actions in court, saying his goal was “to protest Kreep’s unscrupulous, careless and impious actions towards me and to warn the community about an archetype of ill repute.” Kreep successfully obtained a restraining order, and the court record indicates that was the end of it.
Among attorneys who practice family law, unhinged clients are considered part of the cost of doing business. Yet, as Kreep hopes to be assigned to domestic court next year, the controversial attorney’s record in family law certainly deserves scrutiny.
After running a stealth campaign, Kreep won the June 6 primary election by less than half a percentage point. His election has raised grave concerns in the legal community and the press due to his history as a polarizing political force. A lifelong Republican, Kreep pursued a career as a self-styled constitutional-law attorney. Over three decades, he’s represented myriad conservative interests, such as the anti-abortion and Minutemen movements, and, as a Republican activist, headed up numerous political action committees. These days, he’s best known as one of the primary “Birther” attorneys suing over the supposed illegitimacy of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
(Read CityBeat's previous in-depth reporting on Kreep here.)
Soon, he’ll leave all that behind to become a judge in the Superior Court of California, serving San Diego County. He’s told multiple media outlets that he won’t let his right-wing and Christian fundamentalist leanings (such as his ardent opposition to LGBT marriage equality) impact his rulings. However, Kreep’s record in family court—as a private attorney, as the executive director of a far-right nonprofit and as a party in his own domestic matters—raises questions about whether families will be in good hands.
One of Kreep’s earliest family-related cases is stored on microfilm at the Vista courthouse. The records from 1983 and 1984 detail his representation of two foster parents who needed to obtain a restraining order against their troubled, adult adopted son, specifically to keep him away from their younger adopted child. Kreep had been hired to file the injunction, and he quoted the parents a fee of between $250 and $500. As the case became more complicated, involving Carlsbad police and a private investigator, Kreep racked up fees in excess of $1,500. When the couple couldn’t pay, Kreep took them to court.
Related content Birther attorney in the lead for judge seat Who’s behind Gary Kreep robocall? Gary Kreep needs your help to throw Obama off the ballot
The judge took the rare move of ruling that Kreep must write the case off as pro-bono.
“The lawyers of California have been told by the California Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal [sic] that they must contribute their time and talent to those less fortunate than themselves,” Judge Ross Tharp wrote in his ruling. “Such is the case at hand. Defendants, being borderline indigents, simply could not, and cannot, afford to pay $90 per hour for plaintiff’s professional services, no matter how exemplary or successful they may have been.”
Kreep declined to comment on this case, or any other case for that matter, citing attorney-client privilege, even though, at the time some of the cases were happening, he was eager to publicize them.
Through the U.S. Justice Foundation (USJF), often described as the right-wing’s answer to the American Civil Liberties Union, Kreep has inserted himself into several family-law cases. A 1987 profile in the Los Angeles Times referenced USJF’s assistance to a San Francisco man who was attempting to gain custody of his daughter. The argument was that the mother was an unfit guardian, since she’d been a leader in the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Maoist radical group. Kreep sent out a newsletter with the headline “USJF Wins First Round of Battle to Save 12-Year-Old From Communism,” the Times reported.
More than 20 years later, USJF signed on to Miller vs. Jenkins, a landmark custody dispute that cut to the core of LGBT parental rights.
The case involved a lesbian couple in a civil union who had a child together. The biological mother became an ex-gay, born-again Christian and sought to dissolve the relationship. Although a Vermont court awarded the other parent visitation rights, the biological mother—for whom the USJF served as cocounsel—left for Virginia, which doesn’t recognize LGBT unions, to invalidate the visitation rights. A federal law explicitly prohibits this kind of interstate judge-shopping; however, Kreep’s organization sought to publicize the case as a front in a larger culture war.
“We anticipate that this litigation, which centers around the issue of child custody and visitation rights resulting from a domestic partnership, will soon wind up before the United States Supreme Court as state courts are involved in more of these cases,” Kreep said in a press release. “The United States Justice Foundation believes that the time is now to engage in this battle to preserve the sanctity of traditional marriage and the best interests of children.”
The case didn’t reach the Supreme Court. When it was resolved in the other mother’s favor, the biological mother fled to Nicaragua with the child. A Mennonite pastor was convicted of kidnapping for helping the mother leave the country.
Ask Kreep about his own domestic life, and he’ll talk about how he cared for his terminally ill wife for two-and-a-half years. After she passed away, Kreep cared for his terminally ill mother-inlaw for another eight months.
He remarried in 2004, but after three years, they separated. Kreep filed for dissolution in September 2007, citing irreconcilable differences. A legal battle ensued over splitting property, including real estate, timeshares, insurance policies, IRS returns, Corvettes, art work, coin and sports-card collections and a cache of firearms. The protracted case grew bitter as Kreep accused his wife of a gambling addiction and she countered with multiple allegations of abuse.
“Since my marriage to my husband it has become very clear that he has a very strong need to control me emotionally, physically and financially,” Kreep’s ex-wife, a psychologist, wrote in a declaration on file at the East County court house. “The reason I left my husband is because he was verbally and physically and emotionally abusive. He is a recovering alcoholic and unfortunately has to lay blame on me for things he cannot accept in himself. He accuses me of addictive behaviors I don’t have, throws bottles at me, punches holes in walls, and belittles me.” Confronted with these allegations, Kreep points out they were not made at the beginning of the case, but two years into the dispute.
“I have never touched either of my wives in anger,” Kreep writes in an email to CityBeat. “The charges of ‘verbally and physically and emotionally abusive’ are completely false. As far as being ‘a recovering alcoholic,’ I have only been ‘blasted’ once in the past 30+ years. I do not feel that it is appropriate to comment on my ex-wife’s addictions. I never threw a bottle at her, never punched walls during our marriage, and I should point out that my ex-wife was 6’ tall in stocking feet, and not exactly petite.” [Maura Larkins comment: Apparently Mr. Kreep thinks that it's a fair fight for a man to assault a tall woman. A woman on steroids, perhaps, but in general a short man is much stronger than a tall woman. I'll bet Mr. Kreep would choose to fight the woman if he were forced to make a choice as to whether he'd fight a tall woman or a short man.]
CityBeat unsuccessfully attempted to reach his ex-wife directly or through her attorney of record.
Although Kreep has made a career of smearing politicians, he believes it’s unfair to bring up these issues about him.
“You REALLY must hate me, or you’re REALLY being paid a lot to go after me by the downtown crowd,” he writes. “I hope that your bootlicking is getting you the crumbs from the table of the ‘powers that be’ that you are seeking, as your journalistic integrity, and accuracy, certainly is lacking.”
Kreep will be sworn into office on Jan. 7, after which Presiding Judge Robert Trentacosta will assign him to a department.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
New Media Rights will continue to defend Internet underdogs
Geek vs. Troll
Separating from UCAN, New Media Rights will continue to defend Internet underdogs
By Dave Maass
City Beat
Dec 05, 2012
There are some Internet questions that aren’t easy to answer online.
Let’s say you’re a citizen journalist who wakes up one morning to an alert from Google that, due to purported copyright infringement, it has removed one of your blog posts about a student in Scotland who’d been posing online as a Syrian lesbian to score a book deal. You know the copyright claim is crap, but what then?
“Yes, I’ll use the F-word: Frightening,” says gay-rights blogger Michael Petrelis, whose blog, The Petrelis Files, received such a “takedown notice” in August 2011. “To get that email from Google, I just knew, to keep my stress level down I was going to need expertise to challenge Google. Just saying that—‘challenging Google’—gives me tingles in a way. I’m a person with AIDS, struggling with disability in San Francisco, who now has to navigate Google’s rules.”
During the last decade-and-a-half, major online communities—most notably Google’s Blogger.com and You- Tube—have instituted a largely automatic, frustratingly bureaucratic system of censor-first self-regulation when it comes to alleged copyright infringement. It’s easily, and often, abused and tends to favor aggressive “trolls,” who use the system as a weapon. These trolls are sometimes corporate legal teams; other times, they’re just independent bullies seeking to block critical content from release.
“I think he saw me as an easy target,” Petrelis says of his troll. “He’s certainly intelligent, smarty-pants enough that he knew how to lodge the right kind of complaint with Google.”
After talking to attorneys at Harvard University’s Citizen Media Law Project, Petrelis was referred to a San Diego legal clinic, New Media Rights, whose executive director, Art Neill, personally talked him through the process and helped him file a successful counter-claim.
“For everybody who was exposing him as a fraud, [the faux Syrian] tried to get their sites taken down and their posts taken down using DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act],” Neill says. “I think one of the problems with those kind of small-scale copyright takedowns is, obviously, folks don’t have an attorney on call, and they’re sort of worried because they get nasty letters that say, ‘You’re going to owe $150,000 for infringement,’ and they’re, like, ‘Well, I don’t want to lose my house... so I’m not going to do anything; I’m just going to let the content bully win.’”
New Media Rights (NMR) is one of the few programs in the country that offer one-to-one, free legal assistance to Internet users and creators. Since 2005, NMR had been a program of the Utility Consumers’ Action Network (UCAN), the well-regarded public-interest watchdog group, but NMR separated this year as political infighting and alleged financial mismanagement brought UCAN to its knees. NMR has found a new nonprofit home at California Western School of Law and a new physical home at the Ansir Innovation Center in Kearny Mesa. Now, with a solid foundation, NMR is prepared to move forward in not only championing the rights of bloggers like Petrelis, but also musicians, filmmakers and programmers.
A two-lawyer operation working on a budget of less than $135,000— hardly a competitive salary for one corporate intellectual-property attorney—NMR now has the administrative resources of the university, as well as a stable of law students eager for legal-clinic experience. That was a big part of the sell for Cal Western.
Neill says the idea for NMR began while he was at law school in 2004. A musician on the side, he was looking for ways to blend his interests. Meanwhile, social media was beginning to show its potential. “Certainly, this generation of students coming into law school have a great deal of personal experience with this,” Associate Dean for Academic Affairs William Aceves says. “I think for students to be able to learn more about how the law regulates their communication, their email usage, their Internet usage, their Facebook and Twitter accounts, I think that’s particularly interesting to them, and also gives them a chance to actually enhance their skills set with substantive law by working on real cases with real clients.”
“I realized that all of that stuff implicates the law,” he says. “I realized that there’s millions of folks that are just going to need to have more awareness of the laws they’re interacting with when they share content, when they’re out there speaking on the web.”
After graduation, Neill found a receptive outlet at UCAN and its then-director, Michael Shames, who’d begun to field calls from local businesses and artists on web matters.
“The musicians, the artists, they’re all wandering through this sort of Internet wilderness that has developed,” Shames says. “The rules, the laws are not clear, and they’re not clearly enforced. So, creating New Media Rights was the means by which we could sort of try to bring order and provide some degree of sheriffing to what otherwise was a Wild West frontier, and, to this day, still is.”
Shaun Spalding and Art Neill are the dynamic duo at New Media Rights.
Scrolling through his database, Neill counts hundreds of individuals who’ve been helped, including the high-profile case of Canadian-American pop-culture critic Anita Sarkeesian, founder of Feminist Frequency, whose music-video-style commentary on video-game characters, “Too Many Dicks,” was inexplicably removed from YouTube in early 2011. But Neill says that roughly 30 percent of NMR’s interactions are with locals, whether it’s helping freelance artproject manager Susan Myrland recapture a personal website that had been taken over by spammers or representing a San Diego app developer when his word game for Android devices was removed from the online store after Hasbro filed a complaint.
In that case, Neill went head-to head with the corporation’s legal team, explaining in detail how the game didn’t infringe on Scrabble. Hasbro backed down, but some of the damage was already done.
“A few weeks after they had withdrawn their DMCA notice, they actually launched Scrabble on the Android platform,” says David Almilli, CEO of Second Breakfast Studios. “I’m not sure if it was a tactic to disrupt my ecosystem to make their app look like a better player on the Android market, but I had a good number of users using Wordsmith, and it actually dropped significantly during that month of down time.”
Much of NMR’s work is geared toward preventive lawyering—that is, educating media creators to prepare in advance so they don’t need an attorney later. This is particularly important when an artist or writer intends to publish something they foresee could invite pushback.
Trolls “are going to find that one thing and that’s what’s going to give you a lot of problems,” says NMR’s other staff attorney, Shaun Spalding. “General resources can’t help with that. I’m pretty happy I’m able to use how much I know about board games, movies, video games for an actual purpose of helping someone else, and not just for doing well in trivia contests.”
NMR regularly receives grants for outreach through the California Consumer Protection Foundation and was recently awarded an $18,200 grant from city of San Diego’s Small Business Enhancement Program to work with 30 local businesses and host a series of workshops. The organization is also prolific in producing instructional web videos, including its 120-part “LAGD” (Legal Assistance for Game Developers) series, which features interviews with popular game designers, such as Edmund McMillen of Super Meat Boy (a central figure in the 2012 documentary Indie Game). NMR is crowd-funding now for “Season 2” of LAGD.
Then there’s NMR’s policy work. Neill and Spalding are gearing up for a battle over the implementation of a small-claims-court system for copyright infringement cases. At the end of November, Neill provided testimony at a U.S. Copyright Office hearing on the concept, which he says may not be a bad thing, but, done haphazardly, could be catastrophic.
“There’s a lot folks at the table saying, ‘Hey, we want to be able to sue Internet users, and we want to be able to sue people for copyright infringement,’ but there’s not a lot of people saying, ‘Well, wait, what are the consequences of that?’” Neill says. “Should these folks have the right to defend themselves? Shouldn’t they have representation? Aren’t there going to be a lot of dolphins caught in the tuna net, getting screwed in this process? [We’re there] to make sure there’s due process, that the process is fair, and this isn’t just some new way where large media companies or copyright holders can simply steamroll the little guy.”
Separating from UCAN, New Media Rights will continue to defend Internet underdogs
By Dave Maass
City Beat
Dec 05, 2012
There are some Internet questions that aren’t easy to answer online.
Let’s say you’re a citizen journalist who wakes up one morning to an alert from Google that, due to purported copyright infringement, it has removed one of your blog posts about a student in Scotland who’d been posing online as a Syrian lesbian to score a book deal. You know the copyright claim is crap, but what then?
“Yes, I’ll use the F-word: Frightening,” says gay-rights blogger Michael Petrelis, whose blog, The Petrelis Files, received such a “takedown notice” in August 2011. “To get that email from Google, I just knew, to keep my stress level down I was going to need expertise to challenge Google. Just saying that—‘challenging Google’—gives me tingles in a way. I’m a person with AIDS, struggling with disability in San Francisco, who now has to navigate Google’s rules.”
During the last decade-and-a-half, major online communities—most notably Google’s Blogger.com and You- Tube—have instituted a largely automatic, frustratingly bureaucratic system of censor-first self-regulation when it comes to alleged copyright infringement. It’s easily, and often, abused and tends to favor aggressive “trolls,” who use the system as a weapon. These trolls are sometimes corporate legal teams; other times, they’re just independent bullies seeking to block critical content from release.
“I think he saw me as an easy target,” Petrelis says of his troll. “He’s certainly intelligent, smarty-pants enough that he knew how to lodge the right kind of complaint with Google.”
After talking to attorneys at Harvard University’s Citizen Media Law Project, Petrelis was referred to a San Diego legal clinic, New Media Rights, whose executive director, Art Neill, personally talked him through the process and helped him file a successful counter-claim.
“For everybody who was exposing him as a fraud, [the faux Syrian] tried to get their sites taken down and their posts taken down using DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act],” Neill says. “I think one of the problems with those kind of small-scale copyright takedowns is, obviously, folks don’t have an attorney on call, and they’re sort of worried because they get nasty letters that say, ‘You’re going to owe $150,000 for infringement,’ and they’re, like, ‘Well, I don’t want to lose my house... so I’m not going to do anything; I’m just going to let the content bully win.’”
New Media Rights (NMR) is one of the few programs in the country that offer one-to-one, free legal assistance to Internet users and creators. Since 2005, NMR had been a program of the Utility Consumers’ Action Network (UCAN), the well-regarded public-interest watchdog group, but NMR separated this year as political infighting and alleged financial mismanagement brought UCAN to its knees. NMR has found a new nonprofit home at California Western School of Law and a new physical home at the Ansir Innovation Center in Kearny Mesa. Now, with a solid foundation, NMR is prepared to move forward in not only championing the rights of bloggers like Petrelis, but also musicians, filmmakers and programmers.
A two-lawyer operation working on a budget of less than $135,000— hardly a competitive salary for one corporate intellectual-property attorney—NMR now has the administrative resources of the university, as well as a stable of law students eager for legal-clinic experience. That was a big part of the sell for Cal Western.
Neill says the idea for NMR began while he was at law school in 2004. A musician on the side, he was looking for ways to blend his interests. Meanwhile, social media was beginning to show its potential. “Certainly, this generation of students coming into law school have a great deal of personal experience with this,” Associate Dean for Academic Affairs William Aceves says. “I think for students to be able to learn more about how the law regulates their communication, their email usage, their Internet usage, their Facebook and Twitter accounts, I think that’s particularly interesting to them, and also gives them a chance to actually enhance their skills set with substantive law by working on real cases with real clients.”
“I realized that all of that stuff implicates the law,” he says. “I realized that there’s millions of folks that are just going to need to have more awareness of the laws they’re interacting with when they share content, when they’re out there speaking on the web.”
After graduation, Neill found a receptive outlet at UCAN and its then-director, Michael Shames, who’d begun to field calls from local businesses and artists on web matters.
“The musicians, the artists, they’re all wandering through this sort of Internet wilderness that has developed,” Shames says. “The rules, the laws are not clear, and they’re not clearly enforced. So, creating New Media Rights was the means by which we could sort of try to bring order and provide some degree of sheriffing to what otherwise was a Wild West frontier, and, to this day, still is.”
Shaun Spalding and Art Neill are the dynamic duo at New Media Rights.
Scrolling through his database, Neill counts hundreds of individuals who’ve been helped, including the high-profile case of Canadian-American pop-culture critic Anita Sarkeesian, founder of Feminist Frequency, whose music-video-style commentary on video-game characters, “Too Many Dicks,” was inexplicably removed from YouTube in early 2011. But Neill says that roughly 30 percent of NMR’s interactions are with locals, whether it’s helping freelance artproject manager Susan Myrland recapture a personal website that had been taken over by spammers or representing a San Diego app developer when his word game for Android devices was removed from the online store after Hasbro filed a complaint.
In that case, Neill went head-to head with the corporation’s legal team, explaining in detail how the game didn’t infringe on Scrabble. Hasbro backed down, but some of the damage was already done.
“A few weeks after they had withdrawn their DMCA notice, they actually launched Scrabble on the Android platform,” says David Almilli, CEO of Second Breakfast Studios. “I’m not sure if it was a tactic to disrupt my ecosystem to make their app look like a better player on the Android market, but I had a good number of users using Wordsmith, and it actually dropped significantly during that month of down time.”
Much of NMR’s work is geared toward preventive lawyering—that is, educating media creators to prepare in advance so they don’t need an attorney later. This is particularly important when an artist or writer intends to publish something they foresee could invite pushback.
Trolls “are going to find that one thing and that’s what’s going to give you a lot of problems,” says NMR’s other staff attorney, Shaun Spalding. “General resources can’t help with that. I’m pretty happy I’m able to use how much I know about board games, movies, video games for an actual purpose of helping someone else, and not just for doing well in trivia contests.”
NMR regularly receives grants for outreach through the California Consumer Protection Foundation and was recently awarded an $18,200 grant from city of San Diego’s Small Business Enhancement Program to work with 30 local businesses and host a series of workshops. The organization is also prolific in producing instructional web videos, including its 120-part “LAGD” (Legal Assistance for Game Developers) series, which features interviews with popular game designers, such as Edmund McMillen of Super Meat Boy (a central figure in the 2012 documentary Indie Game). NMR is crowd-funding now for “Season 2” of LAGD.
Then there’s NMR’s policy work. Neill and Spalding are gearing up for a battle over the implementation of a small-claims-court system for copyright infringement cases. At the end of November, Neill provided testimony at a U.S. Copyright Office hearing on the concept, which he says may not be a bad thing, but, done haphazardly, could be catastrophic.
“There’s a lot folks at the table saying, ‘Hey, we want to be able to sue Internet users, and we want to be able to sue people for copyright infringement,’ but there’s not a lot of people saying, ‘Well, wait, what are the consequences of that?’” Neill says. “Should these folks have the right to defend themselves? Shouldn’t they have representation? Aren’t there going to be a lot of dolphins caught in the tuna net, getting screwed in this process? [We’re there] to make sure there’s due process, that the process is fair, and this isn’t just some new way where large media companies or copyright holders can simply steamroll the little guy.”
Friday, November 9, 2012
News of the World's Former Top Lawyer Arrested
News of the World's Former Top Lawyer Arrested
August 30, 2012
By PAUL SONNE And CASSELL BRYAN-LOW
Wall Street Journal
LONDON—British police on Thursday arrested the former top lawyer at News Corp.'s News of the World tabloid on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, a person with knowledge of the matter said, marking one of the most high-profile arrests in a continuing police probe into wrongdoing at the shuttered tabloid.
London's Metropolitan Police confirmed Thursday that officers investigating illegal voicemail interception at the News of the World had arrested a 60-year-old man and brought him in for questioning at a South London police station, but the force declined to identify the suspect.
A person with knowledge of the situation, however, identified the person as Tom Crone, the lawyer who served as the News of the World's in-house counsel for more than 25 years until News Corp. closed the weekly tabloid at the apex of the phone-hacking scandal in July 2011.
A call to Mr. Crone went unanswered mid-day Thursday.
The 60-year-old lawyer became one of the phone-hacking saga's most visible figures last year when he and former News of the World editor Colin Myler broke ranks with their former employer to dispute an element of News Corp. executive James Murdoch's testimony to a parliamentary committee.
Messrs. Crone and Myler said they had informed Mr. Murdoch in 2008 of a controversial email whose contents suggested the practice of hacking mobile-phone voicemails went beyond what the company had initially admitted. But Mr. Murdoch said he hadn't been informed of the email's contents at the time and learned the scope of the wrongdoing at the paper only in late 2010, a position he reiterated upon further questioning.
A spokeswoman for News International, the U.K. newspaper unit of News Corp., declined to comment on Thursday's arrest. She didn't say whether the company is paying Mr. Crone's legal bills. News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Crone was a veteran lawyer on Fleet Street. He often vetted the News of the World's raciest stories ahead of publication and went to court to defend the paper against high-profile libel claims brought by celebrities.
The longtime News of the World lawyer was one of three people the U.K. Parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee censured in a May report for misleading Parliament during hearings on the phone-hacking matter.
August 30, 2012
By PAUL SONNE And CASSELL BRYAN-LOW
Wall Street Journal
LONDON—British police on Thursday arrested the former top lawyer at News Corp.'s News of the World tabloid on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, a person with knowledge of the matter said, marking one of the most high-profile arrests in a continuing police probe into wrongdoing at the shuttered tabloid.
London's Metropolitan Police confirmed Thursday that officers investigating illegal voicemail interception at the News of the World had arrested a 60-year-old man and brought him in for questioning at a South London police station, but the force declined to identify the suspect.
A person with knowledge of the situation, however, identified the person as Tom Crone, the lawyer who served as the News of the World's in-house counsel for more than 25 years until News Corp. closed the weekly tabloid at the apex of the phone-hacking scandal in July 2011.
A call to Mr. Crone went unanswered mid-day Thursday.
The 60-year-old lawyer became one of the phone-hacking saga's most visible figures last year when he and former News of the World editor Colin Myler broke ranks with their former employer to dispute an element of News Corp. executive James Murdoch's testimony to a parliamentary committee.
Messrs. Crone and Myler said they had informed Mr. Murdoch in 2008 of a controversial email whose contents suggested the practice of hacking mobile-phone voicemails went beyond what the company had initially admitted. But Mr. Murdoch said he hadn't been informed of the email's contents at the time and learned the scope of the wrongdoing at the paper only in late 2010, a position he reiterated upon further questioning.
A spokeswoman for News International, the U.K. newspaper unit of News Corp., declined to comment on Thursday's arrest. She didn't say whether the company is paying Mr. Crone's legal bills. News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Crone was a veteran lawyer on Fleet Street. He often vetted the News of the World's raciest stories ahead of publication and went to court to defend the paper against high-profile libel claims brought by celebrities.
The longtime News of the World lawyer was one of three people the U.K. Parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee censured in a May report for misleading Parliament during hearings on the phone-hacking matter.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
U.S. Attorney: Members Felt Filner 'Embarrassed Himself' at Temple Forum
It's okay to lie, but not okay to call someone a liar? I think Laura Duffy should also have apologized to Filner for Carl DeMaio's making a false statement about Filner's pension.
U.S. Attorney: Members Felt Filner 'Embarrassed Himself' at Temple Forum
October 18, 2012
By SCOTT LEWIS
Voice of San Diego
U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy, the federal government's top law enforcement official in San Diego, was not very happy with U.S. Rep. Bob Filner Sunday.
Filner appeared with his rival for the mayor's office Carl DeMaio at Temple Emanu-El Sunday in a forum designed to let a number of candidates speak and take questions from the audience. Duffy, as a member of the temple, helped organize the event. She was not working in her capacity as head of the Justice Department's presence in San Diego.
The candidates had been told not to treat it as a debate. Filner, Duffy told me, "had issues."
"I know the event that was intended and it went far afield from what he was invited to do and I was sorry to see that happen," she told me.
Wherever Filner took it, DeMaio helped him get there. DeMaio challenged Filner to say he would not take a city pension if elected mayor. DeMaio said it would be a $120,000 pension and cited a Voice of San Diego report, which actually shows the majority of that pension would not come from the city.
DeMaio didn't mention that part.
It set Filner off.
"I wanted this to be a civil debate, but he's a liar. He knows he's a liar," Filner said from the podium at the temple. DeMaio's team posted a video of the exchange here.
Duffy sent an email apologizing to DeMaio's campaign, which the campaign then passed on to reporters. It was underneath an email with story ideas and links to that YouTube video and others.
Campaign Manager Ryan Clumpner claims forwarding the email to reporters was inadvertent. It showed Duffy was not pleased with Filner in the apology she sent DeMaio's team.
"Our apologies that Filner had to be admonished about his uncivil 'debate-style' remarks," Duffy wrote in the email to a DeMaio aide, Tommy Knepper. "If it is any consultation (sic), I heard more than one temple member express their view that he embarrassed himself and that they thought Carl appeared far more mature and capable of addressing the challenges San Diego faces."
If Filner was guilty of making “’debate-style’ remarks,” it’s hard to see how DeMaio didn’t also bend the rules (though he kept a cooler head)...
U.S. Attorney: Members Felt Filner 'Embarrassed Himself' at Temple Forum
October 18, 2012
By SCOTT LEWIS
Voice of San Diego
U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy, the federal government's top law enforcement official in San Diego, was not very happy with U.S. Rep. Bob Filner Sunday.
Filner appeared with his rival for the mayor's office Carl DeMaio at Temple Emanu-El Sunday in a forum designed to let a number of candidates speak and take questions from the audience. Duffy, as a member of the temple, helped organize the event. She was not working in her capacity as head of the Justice Department's presence in San Diego.
The candidates had been told not to treat it as a debate. Filner, Duffy told me, "had issues."
"I know the event that was intended and it went far afield from what he was invited to do and I was sorry to see that happen," she told me.
Wherever Filner took it, DeMaio helped him get there. DeMaio challenged Filner to say he would not take a city pension if elected mayor. DeMaio said it would be a $120,000 pension and cited a Voice of San Diego report, which actually shows the majority of that pension would not come from the city.
DeMaio didn't mention that part.
It set Filner off.
"I wanted this to be a civil debate, but he's a liar. He knows he's a liar," Filner said from the podium at the temple. DeMaio's team posted a video of the exchange here.
Duffy sent an email apologizing to DeMaio's campaign, which the campaign then passed on to reporters. It was underneath an email with story ideas and links to that YouTube video and others.
Campaign Manager Ryan Clumpner claims forwarding the email to reporters was inadvertent. It showed Duffy was not pleased with Filner in the apology she sent DeMaio's team.
"Our apologies that Filner had to be admonished about his uncivil 'debate-style' remarks," Duffy wrote in the email to a DeMaio aide, Tommy Knepper. "If it is any consultation (sic), I heard more than one temple member express their view that he embarrassed himself and that they thought Carl appeared far more mature and capable of addressing the challenges San Diego faces."
If Filner was guilty of making “’debate-style’ remarks,” it’s hard to see how DeMaio didn’t also bend the rules (though he kept a cooler head)...
Judicial temperament? Facebook posts, lawsuit raise judgment issues in election for San Diego judge
Kudos to reporter Miriam Raftery for this important article. By shedding light on Jim Miller's actions, this information helped the Lincoln Club's decision to switch its endorsement to Robert Amador, Stirling reveals.
JUDICIAL TEMPERAMENT? FACEBOOK POSTS, LAWSUIT RAISE JUDGMENT ISSUES IN CONTENTIOUS SUPERIOR COURT RACE
By Miriam Raftery
East County Magazine
May 30, 2012
San Diego
Accusations are flying in the contentious race for San Diego Superior Court seat 25. Candidate Jim Miller has been removed as a Judge Pro Tem by the Superior Court—and now he’s crying foul.
Miller claims he’s a victim of dirty politics. He’s accused one of his opponents, Robert Amador, of involvement in his ouster, a claim denied by Amador, who previously sued Miller over ballot statement claims.
Miller maintains he knows of no legitimate reason for the court to remove him from its list of approved Judges Pro Tem.
Posts on Miller’s Facebook page, however reveal some intemperate remarks made about cases he heard while serving as a Judge Pro Tem--as well as barbed criticisms of local attorneys, judges, and parties in cases he handled as a lawyer.
Some of the remarks appear to violate California’s judicial canon of ethics, which prohibit judges from discussing pending cases including cases which could be appealed. The rules also require judges to maintain impartiality, avoid the appearance of bias, and refrain from political activities.
Use of social media by judges and attorneys is among the hottest ethics issues today in the legal profession, according to Wendy Patrick, a legal ethics expert.
At a panel on legal ethics presented by Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego in April 2011 (Miller's alma mater), Justice Richard Huffman of the Fourth District Appeals Court told attendees that "it is unethical to publicly discuss any pending case, whether it is yours or not. Social media is becoming a problem for judges who should ask themselves - `what does this look like?'" He reminded those present that "a judge must disclose any fact where a reasonable person may believe a judge cannot be impartial."
While serving as Judge Pro Tem, Miller discussed facts of a case in mid-hearing. The dispute involved two sisters suing each other over an attack.
“One was in post pardum [cq] depression and living with her own husband and family at the home of the other sister’s ex husband who is/was not paying child support,” Miller wrote, among other personal details of the case divulged. He likened the scenario to the Jerry Springer or Judge Judy televisions hows.
After winning a custody case in which he represented the father, he referred to the mother in these derogatory terms: “This mom was a piece of…”
He called one local lawyer “a shining example of a greedy unprepared attorney…”
He also blasted law enforcement. “If this CHPer was a “good guy” he wouldn’t have to lie his butt off to get a conviction,” Miller said of an officer who testified in cell phone ticket case that Miller handled for a friend.
He went on to complain that “The commissioner will not hear anymore cases from me as she seems more concerned with her own version of the law than what it says and what the facts are."
Miller even criticized judges, a taboo in the legal profession.
“I bet you didn’t know that the CA Supreme Court a few days ago wiped out a century of law that protects those injured in accidents and handed billions to the insurance industry,” he wrote, calling the decision a "low point” and a “horrible decision.”
He railed against a PETA lawsuit against Sea World, noting “I hope the judge who gets this case tosses it out as fast as procedure allows.”
Miller criticized Governor Jerry Brown for a bill he signed, noting, “I don’t know the constitutional rational for granting it.” He slammed President Barack Obama for not deporting illegal immigrants. He also expressed political views on the war and on Pakistan.
In addition, Miller took pot-shots at his opponents as “retread government lawyers.”
To say that Miller and Amador have run a less than amicable race would be a severe understatement. Amador filed a lawsuit against Miller over claims made in his ballot statement; Miller in turn has accused Amador of committing perjury.
Miller, Schaefer, Foothills Bar Assocation's Mark Raftery, and Amador
Amador contacted ECM yesterday to state that during an interview with the UT San Diego editorial board at which all three candidates were present (Amador, Miller, and George Schaefer), Miller was asked if he had been delisted as a Judge Pro Tem.
“That was shocking to Mr. Schaefer and I,” Amador told ECM.
ECM contacted both the court and Miller for comment.
“I can confirm that he is no longer on the Pro Tem list,” said Karen Dalton, public affairs officer at the San Diego Superior Court. Dalton said she was unable to disclose why Miller was no longer on the list, nor what reasons would warrant removal of a Pro Tem judge from the list.
Miller advised ECM that he been on the list from 2008 until late April. “I believe someone is playing gamesmanship with me in an election year,” he said.
Asked if he has been the subject of any complaints or disciplinary action as a Judge Pro Tem, Miller replied, “No.” He further defended his record:“I have never had a decision that I made as Pro Tem overturned on a de novo appeal.”
Then he blasted his opponent. “I am not happy with Mr. Amador’s gamesmanship or the reach of the D.A.’’s office onto our bench.”
Amador has spent 29 years as a prosecutor in the San Diego District Attorney’s office. He disputed Miller’s assertion. “No one from the D.A.’s office had anything to do with the Superior Court,” he said, adding that his first inkling of Miller’s delisting came at the UT San Diego editorial board meeting. “As with ost things with Mr. Miller, when things don’t go his way, his response is to attack and blame rather than to accept responsibility.
In a judicial candidate forum last week hosted by Foothills Bar Association, Miller first raised allegations of political bias by suggesting that a “lacking qualifications” rating of his candidacy by the San Diego Bar Association reflected a bias toward “government lawyers.”
Both Amador Schaefer, have backgrounds as prosecutors with district attorneys’ offices. Amador is a career prosecutor; Schaefer has worked both as a prosecutor and public defender. Both received “well qualified” ratings. Miller, by contrast, is an El Cajon attorney in private practice who has run a campaign centered around a need for judges with backgrounds in family and civil law.
Amador filed a lawsuit seeking to force Miller to remove key information from his ballot statement. “Mr. Miller has tried to imply that he has a significant amount of judicial experience when he does not,” said Amador. “We did discovery and found that he has only been a Judge Pro Tem a total of 23 times…he hasn’t been an arbitrator for three years..”
Miller’s ballot statement lists him as an attorney and arbitrator. Amador sought to have the term arbitrator removed. Amador also asked to have Miller’s experience as a Judge Pro Tem removed, but the Judge ruled that Miller had a right to include both in his ballot statement.
“Mr. Amador committed perjury in his lawsuit against me,” Miller charged.
Amador denies that, adding, “The judge found he [Miller] made false and misleading statements .” Indeed, the Judge ruled that Miller’s claim of 440,000 votes in 2010 was “misleading” because he apparently combined votes in the Primary and General elections. In addition, Miller closed his statement by referring “a judge from San Diego, for San Diego,” which the court required be changed to a “judicial candidate.”...
Mr. Miller contacted us after this story ran to clarify that he did not intend to suggest Mr. Amador committed perjury, but rather to state that “If Mr.Ottilie was to be believed in his version of the conversation than Mr. Amador committed perjury,” a reference to Miller’s attorney, Bob Ottillie.
JUDICIAL TEMPERAMENT? FACEBOOK POSTS, LAWSUIT RAISE JUDGMENT ISSUES IN CONTENTIOUS SUPERIOR COURT RACE
By Miriam Raftery
East County Magazine
May 30, 2012
San Diego
Accusations are flying in the contentious race for San Diego Superior Court seat 25. Candidate Jim Miller has been removed as a Judge Pro Tem by the Superior Court—and now he’s crying foul.
Miller claims he’s a victim of dirty politics. He’s accused one of his opponents, Robert Amador, of involvement in his ouster, a claim denied by Amador, who previously sued Miller over ballot statement claims.
Miller maintains he knows of no legitimate reason for the court to remove him from its list of approved Judges Pro Tem.
Posts on Miller’s Facebook page, however reveal some intemperate remarks made about cases he heard while serving as a Judge Pro Tem--as well as barbed criticisms of local attorneys, judges, and parties in cases he handled as a lawyer.
Some of the remarks appear to violate California’s judicial canon of ethics, which prohibit judges from discussing pending cases including cases which could be appealed. The rules also require judges to maintain impartiality, avoid the appearance of bias, and refrain from political activities.
Use of social media by judges and attorneys is among the hottest ethics issues today in the legal profession, according to Wendy Patrick, a legal ethics expert.
At a panel on legal ethics presented by Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego in April 2011 (Miller's alma mater), Justice Richard Huffman of the Fourth District Appeals Court told attendees that "it is unethical to publicly discuss any pending case, whether it is yours or not. Social media is becoming a problem for judges who should ask themselves - `what does this look like?'" He reminded those present that "a judge must disclose any fact where a reasonable person may believe a judge cannot be impartial."
While serving as Judge Pro Tem, Miller discussed facts of a case in mid-hearing. The dispute involved two sisters suing each other over an attack.
“One was in post pardum [cq] depression and living with her own husband and family at the home of the other sister’s ex husband who is/was not paying child support,” Miller wrote, among other personal details of the case divulged. He likened the scenario to the Jerry Springer or Judge Judy televisions hows.
After winning a custody case in which he represented the father, he referred to the mother in these derogatory terms: “This mom was a piece of…”
He called one local lawyer “a shining example of a greedy unprepared attorney…”
He also blasted law enforcement. “If this CHPer was a “good guy” he wouldn’t have to lie his butt off to get a conviction,” Miller said of an officer who testified in cell phone ticket case that Miller handled for a friend.
He went on to complain that “The commissioner will not hear anymore cases from me as she seems more concerned with her own version of the law than what it says and what the facts are."
Miller even criticized judges, a taboo in the legal profession.
“I bet you didn’t know that the CA Supreme Court a few days ago wiped out a century of law that protects those injured in accidents and handed billions to the insurance industry,” he wrote, calling the decision a "low point” and a “horrible decision.”
He railed against a PETA lawsuit against Sea World, noting “I hope the judge who gets this case tosses it out as fast as procedure allows.”
Miller criticized Governor Jerry Brown for a bill he signed, noting, “I don’t know the constitutional rational for granting it.” He slammed President Barack Obama for not deporting illegal immigrants. He also expressed political views on the war and on Pakistan.
In addition, Miller took pot-shots at his opponents as “retread government lawyers.”
To say that Miller and Amador have run a less than amicable race would be a severe understatement. Amador filed a lawsuit against Miller over claims made in his ballot statement; Miller in turn has accused Amador of committing perjury.
Amador contacted ECM yesterday to state that during an interview with the UT San Diego editorial board at which all three candidates were present (Amador, Miller, and George Schaefer), Miller was asked if he had been delisted as a Judge Pro Tem.
“That was shocking to Mr. Schaefer and I,” Amador told ECM.
ECM contacted both the court and Miller for comment.
“I can confirm that he is no longer on the Pro Tem list,” said Karen Dalton, public affairs officer at the San Diego Superior Court. Dalton said she was unable to disclose why Miller was no longer on the list, nor what reasons would warrant removal of a Pro Tem judge from the list.
Miller advised ECM that he been on the list from 2008 until late April. “I believe someone is playing gamesmanship with me in an election year,” he said.
Asked if he has been the subject of any complaints or disciplinary action as a Judge Pro Tem, Miller replied, “No.” He further defended his record:“I have never had a decision that I made as Pro Tem overturned on a de novo appeal.”
Then he blasted his opponent. “I am not happy with Mr. Amador’s gamesmanship or the reach of the D.A.’’s office onto our bench.”
Amador has spent 29 years as a prosecutor in the San Diego District Attorney’s office. He disputed Miller’s assertion. “No one from the D.A.’s office had anything to do with the Superior Court,” he said, adding that his first inkling of Miller’s delisting came at the UT San Diego editorial board meeting. “As with ost things with Mr. Miller, when things don’t go his way, his response is to attack and blame rather than to accept responsibility.
In a judicial candidate forum last week hosted by Foothills Bar Association, Miller first raised allegations of political bias by suggesting that a “lacking qualifications” rating of his candidacy by the San Diego Bar Association reflected a bias toward “government lawyers.”
Both Amador Schaefer, have backgrounds as prosecutors with district attorneys’ offices. Amador is a career prosecutor; Schaefer has worked both as a prosecutor and public defender. Both received “well qualified” ratings. Miller, by contrast, is an El Cajon attorney in private practice who has run a campaign centered around a need for judges with backgrounds in family and civil law.
Amador filed a lawsuit seeking to force Miller to remove key information from his ballot statement. “Mr. Miller has tried to imply that he has a significant amount of judicial experience when he does not,” said Amador. “We did discovery and found that he has only been a Judge Pro Tem a total of 23 times…he hasn’t been an arbitrator for three years..”
Miller’s ballot statement lists him as an attorney and arbitrator. Amador sought to have the term arbitrator removed. Amador also asked to have Miller’s experience as a Judge Pro Tem removed, but the Judge ruled that Miller had a right to include both in his ballot statement.
“Mr. Amador committed perjury in his lawsuit against me,” Miller charged.
Amador denies that, adding, “The judge found he [Miller] made false and misleading statements .” Indeed, the Judge ruled that Miller’s claim of 440,000 votes in 2010 was “misleading” because he apparently combined votes in the Primary and General elections. In addition, Miller closed his statement by referring “a judge from San Diego, for San Diego,” which the court required be changed to a “judicial candidate.”...
Mr. Miller contacted us after this story ran to clarify that he did not intend to suggest Mr. Amador committed perjury, but rather to state that “If Mr.Ottilie was to be believed in his version of the conversation than Mr. Amador committed perjury,” a reference to Miller’s attorney, Bob Ottillie.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Lincoln Club reverses its endorsement of unqualified candidate for superior court
I posted about this bizarre election HERE.
Someone apparently convinced the Lincoln Club that they were already far enough to the right without endorsing a crackpot.
Lincoln Club Reverses Miller Endorsement, Switches Support To Amador
October 11, 2012
By Ryann Grochowski
A prominent pro-business political club reversed its endorsement of attorney, Jim Miller Jr., for a seat on the Superior Court bench after it discovered Miller had not been forthright about his credentials.
The board of the San Diego Lincoln Club voted instead to support the other candidate in the race, veteran prosecutor Robert Amador.
The group’s Wednesday night decision is the latest twist in the only judicial election on the ballot next month. Campaigns for judge are usually low-key races, but the race for seat 25 has attracted endorsements from local tea parties, been the subject of a lawsuit and sparked debate on illegal immigration.
The issue of qualifications has been front and center: the San Diego County Bar Association rated Miller “lacking qualifications” and Amador “well-qualified.”
The Lincoln Club revoked its endorsement of Miller, an attorney in private practice in El Cajon, after it discovered Miller had misled the club about being removed from the county’s list of pro-tem, or fill-in, judges.
In a statement, the club said, “Mr. Miller failed to mention the adverse action on the club’s questionnaire and later misrepresented the facts when asked to comment on the allegations in private. Such conduct does not meet the high ethical standards that Lincoln Club members believe are required for judicial officers.”
Miller was quoted in an I-Newsource/KBPS story last month, saying he was removed from the pro-tem list in the spring, but that the court did not provide him with a reason for the dismissal.
Miller, who has been endorsed by the San Diego County Republican Party and local tea parties, e-mailed a comment.
“I am attempting to discuss the matter directly with the club,” he said. “I hold the Lincoln Club in high respect but think, without hesitation, they are working off of incorrect information. No one should consider this issue over for now.”
Miller’s campaign for judge highlights his “outsider” status and is critical of the large number of former prosecutors on the bench. He ran for Superior Court in 2010 on essentially the same platform and only narrowly lost.
The Lincoln Club, a political organization that supports business-friendly candidates, had originally endorsed Miller in March after interviews with both candidates. Though Superior Court races are nonpartisan, it is common for political groups to make endorsements.
Above: Bob Amador, candidate for San Diego Superior Court Judge No. 25 Larry Stirling, a club member and retired Superior Court judge, said revoking an endorsement is unusual but not unprecedented. He could not recall specifics.
“We were presented with additional information after the initial endorsement,” he said.“We checked at great length and we became concerned that the initial endorsement needed to be changed.”
The club received confirmation of Miller’s removal from the Superior Court, but the court would not reveal the reason behind the removal.
The Lincoln Club donated $2,500 to Miller’s campaign on Sept. 27, according to campaign finance filings. Stirling said the club would not ask Miller to return the money.
“We made a contribution in due course, and that was before we were able to confirm the information that caused us to reverse,” Stirling said.
As far as the endorsement, however, Stirling said the Lincoln Club had no choice once they determined Miller had misrepresented facts.
“We could have let it go and just crossed our fingers, but we felt that we had a responsibility to the voting public to tell them what we knew about it and urge them to change their vote,” Stirling said.
Reached by phone on Thursday, Amador was pleased with the club’s decision. Amador is also a Republican, but has the support of people on both sides of the political aisle, as well as much of the legal community’s establishment.
“A judge or judicial candidate’s ethics should be beyond question,” Amador said. “Apparently the Lincoln Club was misled by Mr. Miller, but they followed up and had the courage to change their endorsement. I thank them for the support and endorsement.”
On Oct. 9, Miller wrote a post on his campaign’s Facebook page, thanking the Lincoln Club for their support. The post was removed on Thursday.
Amador, a 29-year veteran of the county district attorney’s office, has raised nearly $115,000 in outside contributions this election, about $53,000 more than Miller. Amador sued Miller in the primary over ballot language. And though immigration is not a subject within the purview of Superior Court judges, it has played a part in Miller’s campaign. Former Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, primary sponsor of SB 1070, the state’s strict anti-illegal immigration bill, appeared at a fundraiser for Miller in April.
There are more than 110 active Superior Court judges in San Diego County. Some are appointed by the governor and then subject to election by the voters. Others, like Amador and Miller, run for an open seat outright. Judges serve six-year terms.
Someone apparently convinced the Lincoln Club that they were already far enough to the right without endorsing a crackpot.
Lincoln Club Reverses Miller Endorsement, Switches Support To Amador
October 11, 2012
By Ryann Grochowski
A prominent pro-business political club reversed its endorsement of attorney, Jim Miller Jr., for a seat on the Superior Court bench after it discovered Miller had not been forthright about his credentials.
The board of the San Diego Lincoln Club voted instead to support the other candidate in the race, veteran prosecutor Robert Amador.
The group’s Wednesday night decision is the latest twist in the only judicial election on the ballot next month. Campaigns for judge are usually low-key races, but the race for seat 25 has attracted endorsements from local tea parties, been the subject of a lawsuit and sparked debate on illegal immigration.
The issue of qualifications has been front and center: the San Diego County Bar Association rated Miller “lacking qualifications” and Amador “well-qualified.”
The Lincoln Club revoked its endorsement of Miller, an attorney in private practice in El Cajon, after it discovered Miller had misled the club about being removed from the county’s list of pro-tem, or fill-in, judges.
In a statement, the club said, “Mr. Miller failed to mention the adverse action on the club’s questionnaire and later misrepresented the facts when asked to comment on the allegations in private. Such conduct does not meet the high ethical standards that Lincoln Club members believe are required for judicial officers.”
Miller was quoted in an I-Newsource/KBPS story last month, saying he was removed from the pro-tem list in the spring, but that the court did not provide him with a reason for the dismissal.
Miller, who has been endorsed by the San Diego County Republican Party and local tea parties, e-mailed a comment.
“I am attempting to discuss the matter directly with the club,” he said. “I hold the Lincoln Club in high respect but think, without hesitation, they are working off of incorrect information. No one should consider this issue over for now.”
Miller’s campaign for judge highlights his “outsider” status and is critical of the large number of former prosecutors on the bench. He ran for Superior Court in 2010 on essentially the same platform and only narrowly lost.
The Lincoln Club, a political organization that supports business-friendly candidates, had originally endorsed Miller in March after interviews with both candidates. Though Superior Court races are nonpartisan, it is common for political groups to make endorsements.
Above: Bob Amador, candidate for San Diego Superior Court Judge No. 25 Larry Stirling, a club member and retired Superior Court judge, said revoking an endorsement is unusual but not unprecedented. He could not recall specifics.
“We were presented with additional information after the initial endorsement,” he said.“We checked at great length and we became concerned that the initial endorsement needed to be changed.”
The club received confirmation of Miller’s removal from the Superior Court, but the court would not reveal the reason behind the removal.
The Lincoln Club donated $2,500 to Miller’s campaign on Sept. 27, according to campaign finance filings. Stirling said the club would not ask Miller to return the money.
“We made a contribution in due course, and that was before we were able to confirm the information that caused us to reverse,” Stirling said.
As far as the endorsement, however, Stirling said the Lincoln Club had no choice once they determined Miller had misrepresented facts.
“We could have let it go and just crossed our fingers, but we felt that we had a responsibility to the voting public to tell them what we knew about it and urge them to change their vote,” Stirling said.
Reached by phone on Thursday, Amador was pleased with the club’s decision. Amador is also a Republican, but has the support of people on both sides of the political aisle, as well as much of the legal community’s establishment.
“A judge or judicial candidate’s ethics should be beyond question,” Amador said. “Apparently the Lincoln Club was misled by Mr. Miller, but they followed up and had the courage to change their endorsement. I thank them for the support and endorsement.”
On Oct. 9, Miller wrote a post on his campaign’s Facebook page, thanking the Lincoln Club for their support. The post was removed on Thursday.
Amador, a 29-year veteran of the county district attorney’s office, has raised nearly $115,000 in outside contributions this election, about $53,000 more than Miller. Amador sued Miller in the primary over ballot language. And though immigration is not a subject within the purview of Superior Court judges, it has played a part in Miller’s campaign. Former Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, primary sponsor of SB 1070, the state’s strict anti-illegal immigration bill, appeared at a fundraiser for Miller in April.
There are more than 110 active Superior Court judges in San Diego County. Some are appointed by the governor and then subject to election by the voters. Others, like Amador and Miller, run for an open seat outright. Judges serve six-year terms.
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