District judge asks justices to settle fight
District Judge Elizabeth Halverson filed an emergency motion with the Nevada Supreme Court on Tuesday seeking to force the District Court’s chief judge to allow her back into the courthouse.
Halverson also asked the justices to order Chief Judge Kathy Hardcastle to justify actions she has taken against Halverson since April.
Hardcastle has required Halverson to seek guidance from a panel of veteran judges and has taken Halverson’s criminal cases away from her in addition to ejecting Halverson from the Regional Justice Center.
“Just leave me alone; that’s all I want out of this,” Halverson was overheard saying to her attorneys at their offices on Tuesday.
Halverson said she wants to be able to hire whomever she wants.
“It’s not her (Hardcastle’s) business who’s in my office. It’s none of her business. I don’t go around asking who’s in her office,” Halverson said.
Hardcastle barred Halverson from the Regional Justice Center on Friday after Halverson brought in two bodyguards who had not been screened or fingerprinted as required by courthouse security.
Halverson will be allowed back to work if she will meet with presiding judges to discuss her security concerns, Hardcastle said.
“At this point, I welcome review by the Supreme Court into this matter,” Hardcastle said.
She has argued her position, which the state Supreme Court has deemed a “strong chief judge” position has broad authority. Hardcastle said she supervises the court administrator, who supervises court security, and, therefore, has the right to ensure all court employees abide by security procedures.
But Halverson and her lawyers, Bill Gamage and Dominic Gentile, said Hardcastle has no authority to punish judges, which is what the chief judge has done by prohibiting her from performing her elected duties and taking her caseload.
Only the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline and the Nevada Supreme Court have such punitive powers, Gamage said.
“How can you meet with people who may not have any authority over you to discipline?” Halverson said.
While the Supreme Court has given Hardcastle authority to regulate the smooth operation of court business, “it is arguable that in shutting down Department 23, Judge Hardcastle additionally trampled a portion of the constitutional right of the citizenry to unfettered court access,” Halverson’s motion states.
A senior judge is currently running the department.
Halverson said she must “stand up for the rights of everyone.”
Halverson said her purpose in filing the motions is to determine the scope of authority of the chief judge.
“I think a lot of people will be thankful,” said Gamage, who did most of the talking during Halverson’s five-minute interview with the Review-Journal.
Hardcastle formed an ad hoc committee of veteran judges to counsel Halverson after Halverson broke the law twice, unknowingly, when she spoke to deliberating juries without attorneys present.
On April 6, Halverson said in her affidavit to the Supreme Court that the ad hoc committee met with her staff for an hour.
Halverson said her bailiff came out of the meeting visibly upset and told her, “What they are doing is not right, and I do not want any part of it.”
The judges invited Halverson for their first meeting and “proceeded to berate me, stating that charges would be brought with judicial discipline, that I would be removed from the bench and that a senior judge was going to take over my functions and calendar,” she said in her affidavit.
According to the judicial executive assistant Halverson fired last week, Halverson was demeaning and tyrannical toward her staff.
Her bailiff filed a complaint against her with the Clark County Office of Diversity, and court administrators reassigned him. They cannot replace him until his complaint is resolved, court officials said.
On April 11, Halverson hired Bob Spretnak as her lawyer, and he told court officials that the bailiff, who is an at-will employee, was unlawfully removed and that Halverson was not going to attend accusatory meetings without her lawyer present and without first receiving an agenda for the meeting.
Halverson said she made repeated attempts to receive information about the status of her bailiff from court administrators through her lawyer, but received no response.
On April 24, Halverson said, Hardcastle entered her office, unannounced and informed Halverson the ad hoc committee had recommended taking her caseload.
Halverson said she believed the move to be punitive.
On May 9, a day after Halverson fired her judicial executive assistant, Ileen Spoor, Halverson said in her affidavit five armed bailiffs, Chuck Short, the court administrator, Spoor and a videographer entered her office to conduct an unauthorized search of the department offices and courtroom.
“The court administration group sought to force the doors to my inner chambers but were stopped by my personal security,” she wrote in her affidavit.
The video produced from that incident shows Spoor grabbing several files, some candy dishes and handing the items over to Short and bailiffs.
Short knocks on the door several times and explains they are there to collect the rest of Spoor’s items.
Spoor said she is missing a personal file, in which she said she kept traffic tickets for friends to give to attorneys.
Halverson on Tuesday accused Spoor of fixing tickets.
Court administrators have said they cannot investigate the allegations until Halverson gives them the file.
Halverson said that on May 10 bailiffs greeted her as she entered the courthouse and directed her bodyguard to walk through metal detectors.
That’s when court officials said they found a retractable metal rod. The body guard gave his name and Social Security number to the bailiffs and answered questions posed to him to explain his role.
Later that day, Halverson sent a letter to Short explaining she was hiring one bodyguard as her bailiff and the other as her new judicial executive assistant.
Halverson said she was concerned about a lack of safety in her chambers because of heightened tensions related to “heated personnel issues” and hired two unarmed bodyguards who had military experience.
Later that morning, Halverson said, she and the administrative bailiff, who was assigned to her courtroom and not her chambers, discussed her need for additional security.
“Upon relating the story of the previous day, I asked to whom his loyalty would be if other bailiffs were again to assault chambers. He replied that his loyalty would be torn and that his allegiance would need to be to his supervisor in administration,” she wrote.
Halverson and the chief judge have a contentious past. Hardcastle fired her from a 2004 position as law clerk, a temporary job which Halverson held for nine years. Halverson then ran and nearly beat Hardcastle’s then-husband for a family court position. Halverson ran last year for a District Court bench, won and became a judge in January.
Halverson said she envisions a coexistence with Hardcastle at the courthouse once the Supreme Court resolves the case.
I’ll do my job; she’ll do her job,” Halverson said.
