Thursday, May 29, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

ACLU: Court held woman `hostage'

George Assad Municipal judge who says he did nothing wrong when ordering woman held Ann Chrzanowski talks about being detained because her boyfriend failed to pay traffic fines. At left is daughter Elizabeth. Photo by Ralph Fountain.

A Las Vegas woman said she was handcuffed and jailed for nearly three hours in Municipal Court to ensure her boyfriend's appearance in court on $310 in traffic fines.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, the March detention of Ann Chrzanowski is the latest in a series of illegal detentions by Southern Nevada judges.

"She was essentially a hostage," said Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the ACLU of Nevada. "No one can point to any state statute that allows for someone to be taken hostage like this."

Municipal Judge George Assad, whose order led to Chrzanowski's detention on March 31, says he did nothing wrong in the case.

At the time, Assad said, he suspected Chrzanowski had lied to him in court. He said he showed her mercy by not finding her in contempt.

Instead, Assad said he ordered Chrzanowski to call her boyfriend into court. During the process, Chrzanowski was handcuffed and detained.

"I was actually trying to cut her a break," Assad said this week.

The series of events can be tracked to city traffic fines owed by Chrzanowski's boyfriend, Joshua Madera. Traffic tickets date to 2000, and as of March 28, Madera still had not paid them.

If the tickets were not paid in Assad's courtroom by March 31, Madera said he faced the possibility of arrest.

Madera said he telephoned a clerk at Municipal Court on March 28 to discuss the tickets. He said he got into an argument with the clerk because she was obnoxious and rude.

Court officials have a far different account. They report Madera was verbally abusive and threatened the clerk.

As a result, on Madera's Municipal Court case file, it was noted that he threatened the clerk with bodily harm.

Madera said he was starting a new job March 31, so he asked Chrzanowski, to go to court and ask for a continuance to pay the fines.

In a tape recording of the proceedings, played for the Review-Journal by Municipal Court Administrator James Carmany, Assad informs Chrzanowski that her boyfriend was accused of threatening the clerk. Chrzanowski tells the judge she has talked to a city clerk about the tickets and that "she didn't say anything about that."

The judge asks Chrzanowski which clerk she talked to.

"I don't recall, your honor," she replies.

Chrzanowski, sounding very nervous, then offers the name of a clerk she had written down on a piece of paper she brought to court.

In an interview this week, Assad said the clerk was in the courtroom at the time and shook her head in his direction, indicating she never talked to Chrzanowski.

Assad said he believed Chrzanowski was lying about the conversation with the clerk.

Assad said he then ordered Chrzanowski to go with a marshal to a phone to the rear of his court and call Madera. She was to tell Madera that if he didn't come to court, she was going to go to jail.

"I didn't want to lock her up," said Assad, who was appointed to a Municipal Court vacancy last summer and ran unopposed for a six-year term this year. "I don't like to lock anybody up. I really wanted the boyfriend to come to court."

Chrzanowski, a mother of three with no prior criminal record, said after she made the phone call and couldn't reach her boyfriend, she was handcuffed and spent the next three hours in a holding cell.

"I couldn't believe it," she said. "I kept asking them why I was being arrested."

She said she was taken out of the cell two times to call Madera. Both attempts failed.

"The marshal was apologizing, saying 'Of all the time I've been with this court, we've never had this type of procedure,' " she said.

Chrzanowski said another city marshal eventually showed up at her boyfriend's place of work and arrested him. Madera was brought into court and given a continuance by Assad. He and Chrzanowski then were released.

"I don't know what they were thinking," Chrzanowski said. "Maybe the judge thought Josh might skip town or maybe the judge was on a power trip."

Assad said he did nothing wrong.

"I could have found her in contempt for lying in open court, remanded her, set bail, give her a hearing and then you go from there," he said.

Instead, he ordered Chrzanowski to call her boyfriend and get him into court.

"I didn't want to go that far with it," Assad said of filing a contempt charge. "I was trying to cut her a break."

There is no mention of a potential contempt charge on the audiotape of the proceedings.

"I could have spelled it out more," Assad said.

Carmany described the decision to handcuff and place Chrzanowski in a holding cell as an error, but he said it was done for safety concerns.

Carmany explained that the court, which handles about 140,000 cases a year, has a general policy of restraining people who are taken to the room in back of Assad's courtroom. The restraints are intended to protect court officials, judges and attorneys.

"Most of the people going through there are coming from jail to court or they are going to jail from court. They are usually not happy people," Carmany said.

"I'd say 99.9 percent of the time that this occurs it is appropriate," he continued. "It was an error based on actual policy, and I would not ask it be changed."

As of Wednesday, Carmany said Madera's fines still have not been paid, and a warrant has been issued.

Chrzanowski's account emerged two weeks after the Review-Journal reported about the sentencing of two men on contempt charges by District Judge Jessie Walsh. Gregory Robinson said when Walsh was a Las Vegas Municipal Court judge, she sentenced him to 14 days in jail after Robinson talked back to a bailiff.

John Lee McClure said Walsh sentenced him to seven days in jail for talking loudly in a courthouse hallway.

Both men said they were never given a hearing on the matters, and that they never were appointed an attorney.

The Review-Journal also reported that a third man served seven days in jail in March after a company mistakenly informed Walsh that he failed to undergo two drug tests. A source said the company quickly notified the court of the mistake, but the man served the full seven days.

Walsh has denied any wrongdoing in all three cases.

ACLU Executive Director Gary Peck said his organization has taken affidavits from Chrzanowski, McClure and Robinson. However, he declined to say whether the organization plans to file complaints with the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline.