Halverson vows ’08 re-election bid

Suspended District Judge Elizabeth Halverson said Monday she knows she is not blameless but wants another shot at the bench and plans to run again in 2008.

"It is hurtful to not be able to go to work everyday," she said in an interview with the Review-Journal's editorial board, columnists and a reporter.

But it's clear she does not intend to try to speed a return to the courthouse by making nice with her fellow judges.

"I didn't promise (the voters) to go in and join a corrupt field," she said of the courthouse environment.

She described the Regional Justice Center as a place where top officials moved against her to protect their friends and unfairly punished her for mistakes that any rookie judge could make.

"Which side are you going to take? You're not going to take the little person's side; you're going to take the big chief's," she said, referring to Chief District Judge Kathy Hardcastle, who had fired Halverson from her law clerk position years ago.

Halverson said Hardcastle asked District Judges Stewart Bell, Sally Loehrer and Arthur Ritchie to investigate her. Hardcastle has said she asked the trio to help Halverson.

The three judges met with Halverson's former staff April 6 and heard allegations that Halverson fell asleep at the bench, had her bailiff massage her feet and insulted staff constantly, according to court documents.

Records from the subsequent meeting with Halverson quote Bell telling her to seek therapy. Halverson complied.

When she was asked Monday about Bell telling her to get therapy, Halverson shot back, "Has he?"

She said his first words to her in the April meeting were yelled: "'We're going to get rid of you right away.'"

Loehrer, she said, was equally vocal, and Ritchie "kept throwing his hands in the air."

Bell denied her version of the meeting. He said Hardcastle asked them to determine the veracity of rumors but said the three judges had decided that their job was to help Halverson to become a better jurist.

"We've got about 100 years of collective legal experience," said Bell, a former Clark County district attorney.

The Nevada Supreme Court last week heard Halverson's appeal of the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline's suspension of her. A decision is pending on whether she will be allowed to return.

Commissioners ordered the suspension, with pay, on July 25 while they investigate allegations against her and decide whether to file charges. They found she poses a threat of serious harm to the public and the administration of justice.

They said substantial evidence existed that Halverson lacked the ability to preside over criminal cases properly and that she was impatient and discourteous to staff and litigants and failed to treat them with dignity.

The commissioners also said substantial evidence existed that Halverson fell asleep on the bench and failed to cooperate with other judges and administrators.

Halverson, who did not attend the court hearing, said Monday she listened to a broadcast of most of the arguments and was pleased particularly with Justice James Hardesty's questioning of the four claims of evidence the commission cited against her.

Halverson contested the commission's allegations that she lacks the skills to preside over criminal cases, accusations that stem from instances in which she inadvertently broke the law and spoke to deliberating juries without counsel present.

The first time, she said, attorneys badgered her into doing so; the second time, she said, her judicial executive assistant, Ileen Spoor, told her the attorneys had declined to come.

Spoor could not be reached for comment.

Halverson said the court's video records of the jury discussions prove her innocence, but "no one will watch the tapes."

A third allegation that surfaced during the commission's July hearing was that Halverson had dinner with a deliberating jury during her second criminal trial.

"There's nothing wrong with that," she said.

She said the jurors ate barbecue with her and staff. No attorneys were present, but she said they did not speak about the case. She recalled other judges having eaten with juries at the Golden Nugget.

Bell said judges have never been allowed contact with deliberating jurors during meals or any other time. The bailiff is sworn to prevent anyone from speaking to them.

Disgruntled former employees are responsible for the commission's second charge that her treatment of staff created a hostile working environment, Halverson said.

Her new staff members have no complaints against her, and the commission should not place her on interim suspension for alleged past acts that have no bearing on her current behavior, her lawyers have argued.

Five people are to blame, Halverson said, naming her former staff members who quit or requested transfers, with the exception of Spoor who was fired and then re-hired by the county.

She lamented that her newer staff members have been terminated in her absence while the court found a way to keep Spoor, who is working for the senior judge substituting for Halverson.

Halverson said she hired the five former staffers from the department of former District Judge Michael Cherry, who was elected to the Supreme Court in November.

"I felt sorry for them; my mistake," she said.

The problems between her and her former staff were because they were used to an "eight to five existence," and she was more concerned about the welfare of litigants.

"Cherry was not known as the hardest worker in town," she said.

Cherry declined to comment.

She questioned why other district judges, who have had high staff turnover, have not received the same scrutiny.

In a previous interview, Hardcastle said she never had witnessed the exodus of an entire staff within such a short period of time.

Spoor was the last to go in May after Halverson found a folder marked "quick fix" that contained a number of traffic tickets.

Spoor has said she gave tickets from friends and family to local attorneys, who would get those adjudicated before a judge who often would reduce the fine.

"My legal opinion is it's illegal," Halverson said.

Court officials have said the reductions are available to the public during traffic court sessions.

Court Administrator Chuck Short said the court conducted an internal investigation and found nothing illegal and that no tickets were eliminated.

But Halverson said Short came to her office trying to solicit the folder and its evidence of illegal activities to give back to Spoor.

Halverson did not give the folder to Short but handed it over to authorities.

"The tickets were eliminated. Some were referred to lawyers," Halverson said.

Spoor, denying she did anything immoral or illegal, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Halverson.

Spoor's attorney, James Adams, said, "The truth is going to come out in the lawsuit, and she (Halverson) is going to have to justify and prove what she has said."

After Spoor's dismissal, Halverson hired two private security guards, which got her temporarily barred from the courthouse by the chief judge. Halverson acknowledged Monday that hiring the guards was a mistake.

She said she hired them after a court clerk, who formerly worked for Cherry, "assaulted" one of her staff members in an attempt to retrieve Spoor's Rolodex.

Halverson thought the Rolodex, which Spoor had compiled over the past eight years, belonged to the court, and Halverson had fired Spoor .

The two guards did not have the proper licenses, Halverson later learned, adding she could have handled her security concerns in a better manner.

"Was it the wisest course? No. Probably not. But I thought to myself, 'What am I going to do to protect my staff?'"

Halverson and her attorneys have denied the commission's allegations against her, but Halverson acknowledged that she has made errors.

"It doesn't make me a horrible person," she said.

"Give me a chance to try to get a little smarter."