1/9/08 – Judge Accused of a Deadly Decision, Sex Offender Release on Technicality, $136,700 Isn’t Enough in NY, Halverson Formally Charged for Misconduct, Judicial Campaings in MN
Freed without bail — with a deadly result – The LA Times
L.A. County Superior Court Judge Tia Fisher released Curtis Harris, who had been deemed “unsuitable for release”. Harris killed his wife and himself last weekend.
Sex offender in KC area released because of loophole in federal law – The Kansas City Star
Convicted sex-offender Terry L. Rich was released by U.S. District Judge Howard F. Sachs because of a flaw in the law’s wording. Now the question everyone is asking is whose fault is it, the legislators or the judge?
Citing Economic Hardship, Upstate Judge Plans to Quit – The New York Law Journal
Oneida County Supreme Court Justice Robert F. Julian quit his job because his $136,700 salary is causing him to “deplete [his] savings and reduce [his] lifestyle.”
JUDICIAL DISCIPLINE COMMISSION: Judge faces misconduct charges – Complaint alleges Halverson fell asleep on bench, harassed employees – The Las Vegas Review-Journal
In the ongoing saga of District Judge Elizabeth Halverson, judicial misconduct charges are finally made formal. Complaints include falling asleep at the bench, improper contact with jurors and sexual and religious harassment of her employees.
At issue: Should judges campaign? – The St. Cloud Times
Minnesota examines the impact of big money in judicial elections and reflects on the Quie Commission, past elections, the changing culture of judicial elections and the potential threat to impartial courts.
Click here for more news on fair and impartial courts issues from the Brennan Center for Justice E-lerts.
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Tags: Attacks on Judges, Judicial Elections, Judicial misconduct, Judicial salary
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Dorothy Holmes Nash should be embarrased to turn in that complaint aganist Halverson. It is picky, ignorant, filled with bogus garbage. It clearly looks like they are digging for whatever they can find. None of it with any merit. Everything in that brief could be said about any Judges at the RJC, and the Supreme Court for that matter.
It took Nash 8 months to file this piece of dribble. There is nothing in this document that is not a reguritation of what has been said all along. By the way, much of the alledgations come from Spoor who is as dirty as they come. Yeah I belive a ticket fixer and a Jury tamperer who is so far up the behinds of court administration. Hey, whatever happened to those files with the fixed tickets? LOL..
Only in Las Vegas could people get away with this nonsense.
Funny how they waited till the election filing period to submit these bogus charges. NOT.
I have practiced both criminal and civil trial work for over 28 years and I could not disagree with the previous commenter more.
I have taken a great interest in Judge Halverson’s shortcomings, partly because they are so numerous and wide ranging as to be humorous.
The charges are not “dribble”.
Even a brief unauthorized contact with a deliberating jury is very serious judicial misconduct. And Halverson dined with the jurors and engaged in a wide ranging Q & A about the law with them. And she did this in several cases.
Almost nothing about Elizabeth Halverson is judicial on any level.
Her judicial wages are being garnished pursuant to a $40,000 judgment against her for back rent and attorneys fees because, even after she permanently moved to Las Vegas from San Francisco (bought a home, got married, got a Vegas Driver License, took a permanent job) Halverson let her sister stay in her rent controlled apartment. The landlord in San Francisco was told (falsely) that Halverson was returning “soon”, the scheme was discovered, Halverson fought it all the way to the court of appeal, and lost. (I have read the appellate opinion, and Halverson did not even comply with basic court rules in her brief, which was pathetic. No citations to the record and typed in all capital letters.)
Halverson is married to an ex-felon. We are not talking about some kind of white collar crime, but burglary, narcotics and firearms and he did hard prison time and was on parole when the couple wed.
Halverson’s yard was so filthy on the day she took office and for the next year that she was cited by Clark County for maintaining a public health hazard. I have seen the video footage of Halverson’s back yard. The swimming pool was like a filthy cesspool with mosquitoes and a layer of scum and garbage floating in it. With a $130,000 salary, Halverson could have paid some kids to clean the yard up but did not. She just continued to live like a pig in violation of the law.
Halverson required her clerk to swear in her husband so she could cross-examine him on his household duties. Halverson also put her staff under oath to see what other judges were saying about her and expected her bailiff to spy on her. This was a misuse of judicial power.
Halverson inappropriately treated staff like servants.
Halverson also referred to other persons (including court staff) using terms such as “bitch”, “Jew”, and “anti-Christ”.
Halverson fell asleep on the bench during a trial, then blamed it on her medication, then claimed that she was not sleeping at all but instead suffering a hypoglycemic attack.
According to her bailiff, Halverson also maintained her chambers as slovenly as her yard at home—it was littered with the food debris and seed husks from the food items that she was constantly eating to stay so a huge.
Halverson also takes no pride in her appearance, and appeared in court with her hair disheveled and sticking up. (The pictures are on the internet–just search Google immages.)
Halverson made her bailiff clean up the debris she dropped on her chambers floor and required him micro wave her food in her small private bathroom that constantly stunk to high heaven (as one could emagine).
Halverson is completely paranoid. She constantly accused her court recorder of allowing the chief judge to spy on her through the court room microphones. She hired private body guards even no one was after her.
The judge barricaded herself in the office when Chuck Short (the court administrator) came to collect Ilene Spoor’s personal effects, called 911 claiming there were intruders in the office, and then next day falsely told reporters on camera that she was being “assaulted”.
I could go on for 20 more pages. There are hundreds of pages of sworn affidavits on file with the Nevada Supreme Court that detail many of the charges. The documets are under oath, and anyone can read them. I did.
It is also interesting that there is not one affidavit uder oath from Judge Halverson denying the charges.
In summary, there is nothing judicial about Elizabeth Halverson on any level. So much so that she is a laughing stock all over the United States. The Journal of the American Bar association alone has done 5 articles on her—none flattering. Legal blogs all over the country—from East to West—are having a field day.
The August 2007 ABA Journal has a Halverson article aptly titled “Your not the boss of me”, and states, in part:
“In this particular showdown, taking place in the Eighth Judicial District Court—the state’s newest and biggest courthouse—newly elected Judge Elizabeth Halverson is cast as a mean, morbidly obese incompetent abusing her power to settle scores accumulated there in her nine years as a law clerk.”
The ABA Journal goes on:
“Halverson had kept a rent-controlled apartment for many years after relocating to Las Vegas in the mid-1990s. Halverson had litigated all the way to the California Supreme Court to keep from paying legal fees and interest to the former landlord.
“She lost at all levels in California. Then she lost in her own courthouse in Las Vegas, where the landlord came to enforce the judgment in 2004. The total was more than $42,000 at the time, and interest still accrues. Faziola v. La Macchia, aka Halverson, No. A497569 (Dist. Ct. Clark County Nev.).
“The Las Vegas news frenzy concerning Halverson has turned up a string of felony arrests of her 48-year-old husband, Edward Lee Halverson. According to court records, he served nearly four years in prison. The couple married in 1998, apparently while he was on probation and she was a law clerk.
“Then there’s the abatement movement in recent months by the county, which is trying to get the Halversons to clean up their home and property in a neighborhood she describes as “poor” in an appeal of the county action.
“Among other alleged infractions cited by the county, there was a large amount of trash in the backyard, overgrown weeds and shrubs, a near-collapsed shed, mosquito-ridden slime in the swimming pool, and the porch and two tents pitched on the driveway were choked with empty oxygen bottles, according to Deputy District Attorney Steven Sweikert.”
Halverson has turned the Clark County, Nevada courts into a laughing stock. She is literally a national joke.
I sincerely hope that she is reelected, so I can laugh for another year.
I am not from Las Vegas. But If I was, I would be tired of the joke.