Judge’s husband has long rap sheet

Edward Lee Halverson, the embattled judge’s husband of eight years, is no stranger to the criminal justice system. The 48-year-old has been arrested at least 10 times in at least three states, and he has been convicted of at least three felonies and served nearly four years in prison.

Although the checkered history of the judge’s spouse wouldn’t be enough to force her from the bench, "as a matter of taste and appearance, it’s not great," said Jeff Stempel, a law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The 49-year-old judge, through a spokeswoman, refused to comment on her husband’s past. Edward Halverson could not be reached for comment.

Edward Halverson’s life of crime began as early as 1979 in Las Vegas, when the then-20-year-old was arrested on burglary and auto theft charges in the same month. Both of those cases were dismissed the following year.

In 1986, Las Vegas police arrested him three times on a fugitive warrant out of New Mexico for illegal possession of a firearm by an ex-felon. Local authorities dropped the fugitive charge the first two times before extraditing him to New Mexico after the third arrest, according to police records.

The outcome of that case is unclear, as is the nature of the original felony conviction.

Two years later, authorities in Dallas County, Texas, arrested Edward Halverson on a cocaine possession charge. He pleaded guilty in June 1989 and received five years’ probation. Less than two years later, authorities charged him with violating probation because of missed check-ins with his probation officer and skipped restitution payments. An arrest warrant was issued, but he had apparently left the state for Colorado, where he found himself afoul of the law once again.

In November 1990, authorities in Jefferson County, Colo., near Denver, arrested Edward Halverson and another man on charges of breaking into a house and stealing property, according to Colorado prison records.

But before that case was resolved, Edward Halverson returned to Las Vegas, where police arrested him in October 1991 on a fugitive warrant from the Texas drug case. The fugitive charge was dismissed, but he was arrested again four months later on the warrant and extradited to Texas, according to police records.

The outcome of the Texas case was unclear, but prison records suggest he served time for that case in Colorado in conjunction with his burglary conviction in that state.

A Jefferson County, Colo., judge had sentenced Edward Halverson in December 1992 to 10 years in prison for the burglary conviction. He served nearly four years before being paroled in September 1996 and moving to Nevada, where he continued his parole until it ended in May 2000.

As part of the burglary case, the co-defendants were ordered to pay more than $31,000 in restitution. Edward Halverson paid about $3,500, but the payments stopped in 2000, the same year his parole ended. A balance of nearly $28,000 remains on the books, according to court records.

Edward Halverson was on parole when he married Elizabeth LaMacchia, a District Court law clerk, in 1998. They wed in San Francisco, where LaMacchia had lived before moving to Las Vegas in 1995.

Edward Halverson has apparently steered clear of new legal troubles. His wife, however, owes more than $42,000 to her former San Francisco landlords to cover their legal fees after a drawn-out court battle over rent increases at her apartment. She hasn’t paid any of the court-ordered judgment since she lost her case more than two years ago.

Elizabeth Halverson has been at the heart of recent controversy at the Regional Justice Center. She was temporarily banned from the courthouse this month after hiring private security guards to protect her, and most of her staff has quit amid complaints of name-calling and other improper treatment.

Some employees alleged the judge insulted her husband in front of them and once had him sworn in so that she could grill him, under oath, about whether he had cleaned the house for her mother’s visit.

She also blamed her husband when county officials cited the couple for their junk-filled front yard. Elizabeth Halverson, who uses a motorized wheelchair and oxygen tanks, told the Review-Journal that she couldn’t move the trash and that her husband refused to help.

At the Halversons’ southeast valley home Friday afternoon, the debris that once cluttered the front yard had disappeared. Two large white tents stood in the driveway. One was empty. The other concealed miscellaneous equipment and a broken motorized wheelchair.

Empty oxygen tanks lined the front porch, where a steel security door and video camera welcomed visitors. A dog yapped behind the door, but no one answered the doorbell.

Stempel said Elizabeth Halverson’s narrow election victory in November might have turned out differently if voters had known about her husband’s past. She won by 1,908 votes.

State leaders have been debating whether to remove judges from political races and use appointments instead.

"You have to take some of the baggage with an elected judiciary," Stempel said.