Sex
in chambers and delegating decisions are just some of the errant behaviors by
California judges in 2014
Two judges
had sex with women in their chambers, one with his former law students, the
other with his court clerk.
A traffic
court judge delegated his job to his clerk. While the judge was in chambers,
the clerk heard pleas and imposed sentences.
A family
law court judge excoriated two parents who appeared before him as
"rotten" and the mother a "train wreck" and a
"liar."
The
judges, among 43 disciplined last year by California's Commission on Judicial
Performance, received rebukes ranging from public censure or admonishment to a
confidential "advisory" letter. The state watchdog agency documented
the transgressions in an annual reportthat provides a behind-the-scenes
look at errant behavior on the bench and how it is addressed.
Sexual
transgressions are likely to be viewed with gravity, as are repeated remarks
from the bench that belittle and humiliate lawyers and litigants, the new
report suggested. The vast majority of complaints against judges result in no
discipline, and most misconduct is resolved by sending judges private letters.
"Certainly,"
Kutz said, judges disparage lawyers and litigants "much more often than
the number of disciplinary cases would suggest. There is a lot of latitude for
judicial misbehavior."
Judicial
misconduct may be underreported because few people know there is even a
mechanism for filing complaints, said Victoria B. Henley, director and chief
counsel for the watchdog agency.
Judges
elected by voters to the trial bench are more likely to get in trouble than
jurists appointed by governors, and female judges and those with the most
seniority tend to have less misconduct, records show.
"It
does vary from year to year," Henley said. "Here it is only past
March and we already have three cases with formal charges" against judges.
Among the
five most serious offenders last year were Orange County Superior Court Judge
Scott Steiner, a former prosecutor elected to the bench, and Kern County
Superior Court Judge Cory Woodward, appointed by former Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger.
Steiner
had sex in his chambers with two former students and tried to get one of them a
job in the county prosecutor's office, the commission said. Woodward had sex
with his court clerk in chambers and passed her salacious notes during
proceedings, according to the report.
"Engaging
in sexual intercourse in the courthouse is the height of irresponsible and
improper behavior by a judge," the commission said.
Woodward's
misconduct could have led to his removal from the bench, the report said, but
being contrite, fully cooperating with investigators and earning reviews that
he was hard-working, intelligent and conscientious spared him.
Former Los
Angeles Superior Court Judge Ronald M. Sohigian, appointed by Gov. George
Deukmejian in 1988, received a public admonishment for treating attorneys in a
"sarcastic and belittling manner." Sohigian told a lawyer who
objected to a ruling that he would explain it to him "sometime when you
pay tuition."
The
commission said Sohigian was a repeat offender — he had been privately
disciplined twice before — and it rejected his defense that he was trying in
one case to curb a lawyer's disrespectful attitude.
"Even
when dealing with difficult litigants and counsel," the commission said,
'"judges are required to comport themselves in accordance with the Code of
Judicial Ethics." The rules say judges must be dignified and courteous.
Solano
County Superior Court Judge Daniel J. Healy, cited for denigrating family law
litigants, called parents "rotten," told others they were
"stupid and thuggish" and "a total human disaster."
In one
case, he told parents that if their child were like them, they "might as
well have her start walking the street as a hooker." In another, Healy
told a father that his plans to get a job represented "pie in the
sky" because he was "morbidly obese and at risk of dying any
time."
Healy,
elected to the bench in 2010, explained that he had to be blunt to send a
message.
The fifth
case of public punishment was fairly clear cut. San Mateo County Superior Court
Judge Joseph Scott, appointed by former Gov. Gray Davis in 2003, received a
public admonishment for driving under the influence.
Nearly 90%
of the complaints came from litigants or their relatives. Attorneys filed
complaints in 3% of the cases and judges and court staff in 2%.
The report
showed that the number of complaints has been generally rising since 2005, and
the percentage of those disciplined has been relatively flat. The commission has
recommended yanking judges from the bench only six times since 2005, a sanction
reserved for persistent and pervasive misconduct.
Misconduct
that led to removals in the past included ticket-fixing, accepting expensive
gifts from lawyers and litigants whose cases the judges decided, lying to the
commission and submitting false reports for court expenses, Henley said. Three
judges in San Diego County who were removed on the commission's recommendation
later went to federal prison for using the U.S. mail to transmit false
information to the commission, Henley said.
The bulk
of disciplinary cases result in confidential letters advising judges of their
errant ways or rebuking them. The governor and the president can see these
so-called stinger letters if the judges are under consideration for promotion.
Most
discipline last year and in the past involved judges who mistreated litigants
and lawyers. In 2014, people without lawyers appeared to suffer
disproportionally from judicial wrath. One unidentified judge not only berated
a criminal defendant representing himself but "sometimes appeared to
assume a prosecutorial role in questioning the defendant," the commission
said.
Several
judges received advisory letters for failing to disclose potential conflicts of
interest or showing favoritism. One judge got in trouble for comments on social
media that smacked of impropriety and partiality. Another was dinged for
waiting more than nine months to sign a proposed judgment in a civil case.
Henley
said most of the dismissed complaints involve judges' rulings. The commission,
made up of lawyers, judges and members of the public, does not discipline
jurists for legal errors. Some complaints cite behavior that is not misconduct,
such as asking a litigant questions during a small-claims hearing.
The point
of making public the circumstances behind confidential rebukes, the report
said, was to educate the public and "assist judges in avoiding
inappropriate conduct."
AUGUST
11, 2017
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A California
judicial commission that’s operated in secrecy for more than five and a half
decades is engaged in a legal battle to thwart an audit ordered by state
legislators and Judicial Watch has filed a court brief supporting the long overdue probe in the name of
transparency. A court hearing has been rescheduled three times and shuffled
around to different judges, with the latest scheduled for August 17 before
Judge Suzanne Bolanos in San Francisco Superior Court. The case sheds
much-needed light on the unbelievable history of a taxpayer-funded agency
that’s conducted its business in private—and with no oversight—for 56 years,
even though protecting the public is among its key duties. The agency is known
as Commission on Judicial Performance (CJP) and it’s charged with enforcing
rigorous standards of judicial conduct and disciplining judges in the nation’s
largest court system.
California’s
court system serves over 37 million people and has more than double the judges
(1,882) of the federal judicial system, which has 840. The CJP should serve as
a tool to keep the system in check. Instead the commission has dismissed 90% of
complaints about judges in the last decade, according to figures published in a
California newspaper. Only 3.4% ended in disciplinary action and less than 1% led to
public censure. None of the decisions were transparent, the news story reveals,
and critics have demanded accountability for CJP for years, asserting that the
commission gives “biased and inept judges a pass.” In its 2016 annual report, CJP discloses that 1,079 of the 1,210 complaints it received
were dismissed after “initial review.” Discipline was issued in only 45 cases
with more than half of the offenders receiving an “advisory letter.” Eleven
others received “private admonishment,” six got “public admonishment” and eight
“public discipline.” Only one judge was removed from office and another
received public censure. Offenses included on-bench abuse of authority,
administrative malfeasance, bias or appearance of bias and improper political
activities.
Last year, a
California legislative committee authorized State Auditor Elaine Howle to conduct the
first-ever examination into the CJP, including whether the commission upholds
due process when considering allegations against judges and how investigators
determine which complaints to dismiss. Lawmakers finally acted after mounting
pressure from a variety of sources, including Court Reform LLC, a group that
pushes for fair and transparent courts that’s found CJP is “ineffective at
enforcing judicial discipline, wastes public money and is too secretive about
its operations.” An in-depth probeconducted
by the group compares the data and policies of judicial disciplinary
commissions in California and three other states and finds that the CJP is
“under-investigating and under-disciplining judicial misconduct and
misappropriating public funds.” It calls for the state auditor to investigate.
Howle is appointed by the governor and her office functions as an independent
external auditor that provides nonpartisan, accurate and timely assessments of
California government’s financial and operational activities.
To stop the
audit, the CJP sued Howle and her office asserting that a probe would violate
its constitutionally granted power to conduct confidential investigations. The
complaint also says that allowing a review of its operations would violate the
separation of powers doctrine that prohibits one branch of government from
intruding on the powers of another. In her response, Howle fires back that the CJP does not have special immunity
because it was created by the state constitution and that the California
legislature regularly directs the auditor to audit other agencies established
by the constitution, including the State Bar, Public Utilities Commission and
the University of California. Furthermore, Howle’s attorneys write, audits of
other state agencies, including the Attorney General’s Office and Judicial
Council, have not interfered with their core functions. “No court has ever
blocked the Legislature’s effort to obtain information about a state agency’s
performance via an audit,” Howle’s response to the court states. “There is no
reason—and no legal justification—to start now.”
In its lengthy
friend of the court brief (officially known by its Latin term, amicus curiae), Judicial Watch acknowledges that there
may be a valid reason to keep certain parts of CJP’s work confidential, but the
lack of information regarding its procedures and overall judicial discipline
undermines public confidence in the integrity and independence of the state
judiciary. “An audit issued by a competent, neutral auditor advances public
confidence in the integrity of the audited public agency,” Judicial Watch
writes in its brief. Judicial Watch also mentions its firsthand experience with
CJP’s judicial complaint process and addresses CJP assertions that an audit
would damage confidentiality. “In Judicial Watch’s experience, CJP’s
disciplinary process is opaque with virtually no information publicly available
about how the CJP handles complaints or when, if at all, it acts. Judicial
Watch has been unable to ascertain if any action was ever taken regarding its
complaints.” Regarding the confidentiality issue, Judicial Watch points out
that confidential information is regularly shared between governmental agencies
without the information losing its confidential status.
CJP was
established in 1960 as a state agency to investigate complaints of judicial
misconduct and incapacity as well as for disciplining judges. It has 11 members
that include one appellate court justice and two superior court judges
appointed by California’s Supreme Court. The others include two attorneys and
two lay citizens appointed by the governor and four additional lay citizens
appointed by the Senate Committee on Rules and Speaker of the Assembly. Members
are appointed to four-year terms. The CJP’s mandate is to protect
the public, enforce rigorous standards of judicial conduct and maintain public
confidence in the integrity and independence of the judicial system. It’
difficult to accomplish that in absolute secrecy.
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