Discipline Body Removes Judge Halverson, Citing ‘Bizarre’ Staff Treatment
The voters have already decided that embattled Las Vegas Judge Elizabeth Halverson should not remain on the bench, and now the Nevada Judicial Discipline Commission has issued a strongly worded opinion that says she should never return.
The commission said Halverson’s relationship with her staff was “bizarre” and her interactions with superiors were sometimes paranoid and combative, the Las Vegas Review Journal reports. The ethics body found that Halverson had slept during portions of three jury trials, had improper contacts with two juries, was “unnecessarily disrespectful” toward staff, hired bodyguards without security clearance who accompanied her to court, and made improper statements to the press, according to the Las Vegas Sun.
The troubles began, the commission said, with Halverson’s apparent anger over a decision the chief judge had made before Halverson became a judge.
The commission said Halverson had been a law clerk with the Las Vegas court until Kathy Hardcastle was elected chief judge and fired Halverson because she wanted someone with outside experience. Halverson then ran for the bench and won the second time she sought a seat.
“It didn’t take long for [Halverson] to demonstrate that she truly believed the chief judge was her nemesis and that the chief judge was out to get her,” the commission said in its opinion (PDF). “There is no hard evidence to substantiate this paranoid outlook, and the commission has concluded that Judge Halverson went out of her way to create a conflict with the chief judge.”
The commission said a panel of judges convened by Hardcastle tried to assist Halverson “but she did not have the good judgment to accept.”
“Having been thrown a proverbial rope by the chief judge that could have been used to save her from professionally drowning in her own sea of inexperience as a litigator, her lack of technical knowledge in the area of criminal trial procedure and her limited and stilted interpersonal skills, Judge Halverson chose not to grab onto the rope,” the commission said. “Instead she chose to sink, and she chose to try to pull the district court down with her.”
The commission also said Halverson “had a bizarre relationship with her immediate or personal staff … [and] her treatment of them, as with so many others she encountered, was unnecessarily disrespectful.” It found that Halverson had asked her bailiff to massage her feet, neck and shoulders, and used profanity to refer to other employees.
Other accusations about Halverson’s mistreatment of staff did not meet high levels of proof, the commission said, but Halverson “should not take any solace” in the fact. “The commission finds it regrettable that any of the many allegations had a foundation at all. … No employee, even those inured to a judge’s mercurial temperament and foul mouth should have to experience what Judge Halverson made her immediate staff live and work through on a routine basis.”
The commission said most of Halverson’s actions were willful and there was no mitigating evidence to lessen the punishment. “The damage resulting from her antics and willful misconduct will be felt by the judicial system for a significant future period of time,” said the commission. “Some judges are in office for an entire career and do not accumulate the type of dismal professional history that the record in this case establishes.”
The commission’s decision had been delayed after Halverson received severe head injuries when her husband attacked her with a frying pan. Edward Halverson pleaded guilty to battery with a deadly weapon last month.
Michael Schwartz, Halverson’s lawyer, told the Las Vegas Review Journal that the facts of the case did not merit removing his client from office. Halverson has 15 days to appeal the decision with the Nevada Supreme Court.
The ABA Journal covered the controversial judge in a story last year.
