Thursday, March 31, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Lawyer criticizes judicial panel over withholding of hearing notes

Elizabeth Halverson Las Vegas lawyer filed a campaign complaint last year with a state judicial panel

A Las Vegas lawyer is questioning why state officials have prevented her from obtaining transcripts of a meeting that featured the testimony of two prominent judges.

Last year, Elizabeth Halverson filed a complaint with the state Committee on Judicial Ethics and Election Practices against District Judge Gerald Hardcastle.

Halverson, a political opponent of the Family Court judge in last year's elections, alleged Hardcastle's wife, Chief District Judge Kathy Hardcastle, was helping him in his campaign, which Halverson said was against campaign rules.

The committee held a hearing last fall and issued an opinion advising that Kathy Hardcastle should refrain from handing out campaign literature for her husband.

Gerald Hardcastle won re-election to the bench over Halverson, who announced her candidacy after she lost her Clark County job because of an administrative decision by Kathy Hardcastle.

In January, about three months after the committee's hearing, Halverson said she approached the committee and made a routine request for a copy of the transcripts from the October hearing.

She said she was shocked when the committee's executive director, David Sarnowski, wrote her a letter saying she could not have the transcripts because the proceedings are confidential.

She was told that the proceedings were not tape-recorded and that no court reporter was used at the hearing.

She was told that an executive assistant took stenographic notes and that those notes would not be provided to her.

"It is outrageous because I was actually there participating, and I still can't see the transcripts," Halverson said. "They have people sworn under oath to tell the truth, but they have no court reporter to take it down."

Gerald Hardcastle said Wednesday he was unaware of Halverson's complaints about the meeting.

Sarnowski, called Wednesday by the Review-Journal, said the committee's rules are published by the Nevada Supreme Court, and they clearly prevent the public dissemination of the committee's notes.

" The rules don't allow for it," Sarnowski said. "Only the decision is to be made public."

Allen Lichtenstein, an attorney who represents the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said Halverson's dispute represents a bigger problem in the state: that proceedings involving complaints against judges are secret.

"They have tried to shroud it all in secrecy," Lichtenstein said. "When there are complaints about judges, the public has a right to know."

The ACLU is suing the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline over state law requiring that a person who files a complaint with the commission keep it confidential.

"The idea that a judge somehow needs special protection is against the spirit of what open government is all about," Lichtenstein said.

"It creates more suspicion, more disenfranchisement, more skepticism about what goes on in the judicial system."