More Judges Packing Pistols in Courtrooms

Judges who may have no firearms training now "packing" in the courtroom this is an invitation to disaster and a very bad idea.

This story was published December 7 2006 in the biz.yahoo.com. By Amanda Bronstad

Despite increased security at courthouses following shootings in Chicago and Atlanta about one year ago, many judges are bringing their own guns into their courtrooms for protection. Earlier this month, a Florida judge was ordered to accept mentoring after warning a defense attorney that he was "locked and loaded." In May, a judicial ethics committee of the New York State Unified Court System found that it was ethical for a judge to carry a pistol into his courtroom.

In Nevada, Oklahoma and Texas, incidences of violence in the past year have prompted new laws or solidified rules allowing judges to bring guns into courtrooms.

"Judges in our courthouse have been carrying guns almost all the time," said Cynthia Stevens Kent, a Texas judge in the 114th District Court, where a man in a family law case killed his ex-wife and son last year on the steps of a Tyler courthouse.

"We feel strongly about providing adequate security, but it comes down to personal responsibility. And you've got to take responsibility for your own safety," Kent said.

Security concerns were raised last year after a rape suspect grabbed a deputy's gun and killed an Atlanta judge and others. One month earlier, a litigant had killed the husband and mother of a Chicago federal judge who ruled against him.

COVERING THE DOORWAY

Some states allow judges to arm themselves.

In June, a man shot the Nevada judge overseeing his divorce case through the window of his courtroom. Chuck Weller, a judge in the Nevada 2nd Judicial District Court in Reno, who survived the incident, said that judges in Nevada are allowed to carry weapons into the courtroom if they obtain permission from the chief judge.

He declined to say whether he keeps a gun in his courtroom, but noted, "I'm not opposed to it at all. The culture in the community I live accepts firearms."

The shooting prompted U.S. Senator Harry Reid, D-Nev., to introduce legislation to enhance security at both state and federal courthouses.

In another recent incident, Oklahoma District Judge P. Thomas Thornbrugh said he grabbed his gun from his chambers after he heard a loud slam against the wall and shouts for help. He said he knew deputies were taking a prisoner to a nearby bathroom.

"I thought the deputies were being overcome by this prisoner, and their service weapons would be taken," said Thornbrugh, recalling the Atlanta incident. "There were no other deputies around, so I got a pistol out of my desk and covered the doorway until the other deputies arrived."

The scuffle prompted the Oklahoma House of Representatives to pass a bill in March that would allow district judges to have guns in the courthouse. Current law is unclear.

The bill died before reaching the state Senate, but state Rep. Dan Sullivan, R-Tulsa, who introduced the bill, said he plans to try again next year.

In Texas, which permits state judges to carry concealed handguns into courtrooms, a new law became effective that expands that right to include federal judges and district attorneys. The law followed the Tyler shooting.

"We believe each judge should be able to make sure he has a system of self-defense," said Kent, who wears a shoulder harness and carries a gun at all times. "One of our biggest areas of target is when we're in the court making decisions."

FIGHTING GUN BANS

In May, New York's Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics issued an opinion that found it ethical for a judge to carry a pistol while on the bench.

In Florida, where Bay County Judge Michael Hauversburk recently threatened a defense attorney with his handgun, state law permits concealed weapons. But a bill that died last year would have specifically allowed judges to bring concealed firearms into courtrooms. Similar bills were introduced and failed last year in North Carolina and Illinois.

On Jan. 1, Kansas plans to permit judges and whomever they designate to carry concealed firearms in the courtroom. Phillip Journey, the state senator who authored the bill and a practicing attorney, said he spent a decade seeking to overturn a blanket prohibition on firearms in the courthouse.

"If I had a judge's permission, I'd do it every day," he said of bringing a gun into the courtroom. "Guns are like lawyers: Better to have one and not need it than need one and not have it."

Prolific sealer of files accused of ethical lapses

This story was published December 12, 2006 in the Seattle Times. By Cheryl Phillips and Maureen O'Hagan

For years, King County Superior Court Commissioner Stephen Gaddis oversaw the guardianships of thousands of vulnerable people. He also hid more of these court cases from public scrutiny than any of his colleagues.

Gaddis sealed at least 48 guardianship cases in their entirety since 1990, according to a Seattle Times review of available sealing orders. Not one was properly sealed.

He also seemed to play favorites in court, go on tirades, and take glee in spotting paperwork flaws, according to complaints filed against him.

In some cases, wards paid the price.

The state Commission on Judicial Conduct and King County Superior Court both reprimanded Gaddis. Last year, he retired from the King County bench.

Appointed as court commissioner in 1981, Gaddis later found a niche hearing guardianship cases, and developed a reputation as an expert and reformer in that area of law. He instituted rules to protect wards, developed ethics guidelines and helped write legislation to monitor guardians.

But there was another side to Gaddis. Between 1991 and 2002, according to court records, he amassed 17 written complaints and numerous oral complaints. In 1997, the presiding judge told Gaddis in a memo that he'd received "at least a half dozen complaints over the past month or two ... from inside and outside court."

Gaddis, 61, downplays the issue. "Seventeen complaints in 25 years is a pat on the back," he said recently.

But former Presiding Judge Richard Eadie said: "In my opinion, that was a lot. Most of our judicial officers don't get complaints like that."

Several complaints accused Gaddis of mistreating parties in guardianship cases. One case involved parents of a child who was killed in an accident. Another son was injured. They asked Gaddis to approve a plan in which they paid college tuition for the surviving son with settlement money.

Gaddis told them they were "shirking their parental duties" by not paying for college out of their own pocket, their complaint said.

"What should have been a routine matter became a devastating experience," wrote the parents' lawyer.

Gaddis later said he had merely been explaining the law. He eventually approved their plan.

In June 2002, Guardianship Services of Seattle (GSS) and its related company, Partners In Care, presented Eadie with a 60-page complaint against Gaddis.

Among the allegations: Gaddis accepted sets of tickets for third-row seats at two Mariners games and a $287 dinner from guardian James Degel, 55, a lawyer whose cases Gaddis regularly ruled on.

In addition, GSS wrote that Gaddis was biased and had made untrue accusations about the company out of the blue in a crowded courtroom.

The complaint also detailed Gaddis' friendship with Partners in Care director Lynne Fulp, 59, whose cases he regularly ruled on. Gaddis invited her to his house to help her write a business plan for a guardianship company. He and his wife gave Fulp birthday presents and shared meals with her.

He also sent her an e-mail that said: "WOW, you have done more yet in your self improvement campaign! Lynne, I would be guilty of improprieties if I said how nice you looked, but as a friend I would be guilty of insensitivity if I said nothing."

When colleagues told Fulp that Gaddis favored her over other guardians in court, she said she grew uncomfortable.

"I have come to believe there is no place for Commissioner Gaddis' tactics in an industry on which vulnerable people rely," she told Eadie, reading from a statement.

Gaddis disputed many of the allegations, saying GSS cooked them up because he repeatedly ruled against the company. "They fought back," he said.

He also said Fulp had sought his friendship.

Gaddis acknowledged that accepting baseball tickets from Degel created the appearance of impropriety. At the time, he "didn't see it as a big thing."

As for the expensive dinner, which included Fulp, Gaddis said he and Degel took turns paying when they met over meals to discuss guardianship issues.

Buying dinner for Gaddis was poor judgment, Degel said, but not an attempt at influence. He said he routinely offered unused Mariners tickets to friends and acquaintances. Gaddis was the first taker.

In 2004, the Commission on Judicial Conduct reprimanded Gaddis for the appearance of impropriety in ruling on cases involving Fulp and Degel, instead of recusing himself. King County court reprimanded him the year before.

"I see now how it appeared, and will never do anything like this again," Gaddis apologized in a letter to the court. "I am truly and profoundly sorry." He said he has since paid for his part of the dinner.

As for all the files he sealed, Gaddis said he granted secrecy to protect medical and financial information.

After retiring last year, he began offering his services as a private mediator.

He applied to be a temporary commissioner for King County courts but was turned down. Pierce County, though, hired him to fill in as a temporary court commissioner and judge.

Wash. Supreme Court overturns murderer's death penalty

Here's a major decision from the supreme court that isn't going to be popular but highights the need for an experienced criminal defense attorney. You should always consider retaining an experienced Seattle criminal defense attorney to represent you. An expereienced criminal defense lawyer familiar with all King County and Seattle Courts can give your the sort of diligent and professional representation that you NEED!"

This story was published November 30, 2006 in the Seattle Times. By CURT WOODWARD.

The state Supreme Court overturned a convicted murderer's death penalty today, saying evidence from his rescinded rape convictions and a prosecutor's misconduct require a new sentence.

The 8-1 ruling came in the consolidated case of Allen Eugene Gregory, who appealed his convictions for rape in 2000 and his aggravated murder conviction from 2001.

The majority, led by Justice Bobbe Bridge, overturned the rape convictions, saying the trial judge should have considered evidence that may have helped Gregory's defense.

The justices then threw out Gregory's death sentence, saying evidence of the rapes influenced his sentencing for murder. The court also said it would have overturned the death sentence anyway, because the prosecutor committed misconduct by improperly suggesting life in prison was too lenient for Gregory.

Gregory's murder conviction was sent back to Pierce County Superior Court for resentencing. He was originally sentenced in May 2001 for the rape, robbery and killing of Geneine Ann Harshfield, a neighbor in Tacoma's Hilltop area.

Gregory had been a suspect in the death of Harshfield, 43, who was stabbed in her home after she returned home from her bartending job in July 1996. But the murder went unsolved for two years, until police drew Gregory's blood for evidence after his arrest in the separate rape case.

Tacoma police matched Gregory's DNA to semen stains from Harshfield's bed and her body.

Justices Richard Sanders and Mary Fairhurst agreed with the Supreme Court's result, but said they differed on the reasoning. Justice Jim Johnson dissented from the ruling, writing that the ruling "comes in total disregard of Washington's victims of crimes rights."

Attorneys Seek DNA Tests for Man Reputed to Be Behind Infamous Child Murders

Like the lawyers in this high profile Atlanta murder case, you want a Seattle criminal defense attorney or lawyer who will continue to work diligently on your case no matter how long it takes. As one of Seattle's leading criminal defense lawyers, I can promise you just that!

This story was published November 30, 2006 at biz.yahoo.com. By R. Robin McDonald.

Attorneys for convicted killer Wayne Williams, long reputed to be the man behind Atlanta's infamous child murders, are asking a Fulton County, Ga., judge for permission to perform DNA testing on 25-year-old evidence.

On Tuesday, Williams' defense lawyers John R. "Jack" Martin and Lynn H. Whatley filed a motion in Fulton County Superior Court seeking comparative DNA tests on samples of animal and human hair recovered from the bodies of 11 men and boys whose deaths were attributed to Williams.

Williams was convicted in 1982 of the murders of Jimmy Ray Payne, 21, and Nathaniel Cater, 28 -- two of 29 black men and children who were among what became known as "Atlanta's missing and murdered children" cases. (The list included one still-unsolved disappearance.) After Williams' convictions in the slayings of Payne and Cater, prosecutors closed the books on 22 other cases. For two years, from 1979 to 1981, the bodies of 29 victims -- all of them black and all but two of them men and boys -- were found dumped throughout metro Atlanta in vacant lots and buildings, on roadsides, in gullies, in wooded areas and in the South and Chattahoochee rivers. Fear gripped Atlanta during what many regard as one of the darkest periods in the city's history. With the discovery of each new body, authorities became increasingly desperate to identify the killer. Parents in black neighborhoods formed vigilante patrols, and many came to believe the Ku Klux Klan must be behind the killings since only blacks were slain. Mayor Maynard Jackson offered a $100,000 reward for information that might lead to an arrest. Finally, before dawn on May 22, 1981, police staking out a Chattahoochee River bridge near where one body had been found heard a splash. Seconds later, officers spotted Williams' station wagon driving slowly across the bridge. Williams was stopped, questioned, but released.

A month would pass before police finally arrested Williams, a 23-year-old self-styled talent recruiter and freelance photographer. Prosecutors would later argue that only after Williams' arrest did the string of serial slayings stop. Still, many were never satisfied that police arrested the right man. As recently as 2005, former DeKalb County police chief Louis Graham reopened an investigation into five of the deaths and declared his belief that Williams was not Atlanta's child killer. Williams always has maintained his innocence.

Attached to the motion filed Tuesday was a statement of verification signed by Williams, who, according to Martin, is certain that DNA tests will clear him of the crimes for which he has been imprisoned since his arrest in June 1981. "We hope to find that the DNA shows no matches," Martin said Tuesday. "Wayne's taking a risk. But he's all for it." "I'm really more excited about this than some of the appeals," said Whatley, who has been Williams' appellate lawyer for 25 years. "We're dealing with science now."

WEB OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL INFORMATION The human and dog hairs that Williams' defense hopes to test were part of a tightly woven web of circumstantial evidence that convicted Williams. Fabric fibers found on the victims' bodies that microscopically matched fibers found in Williams' car and home, as well as samples of human and animal hair recovered from the victims, were critical in securing Williams' conviction in what has become a landmark case in the annals of forensic science. Samples of bloodstains were recovered from the rear seat of Williams' station wagon that, according to state witnesses, matched the blood types and specific blood enzymes of two of Williams' suspected victims.

At the time Williams was tried, however, comparative DNA testing had never been used in a criminal case and the technology for testing of animal DNA did not exist. Forensic experts called by the prosecution testified that microscopic comparisons of animal hairs recovered from the bodies of Payne, Cater and nine other slaying victims were consistent with the characteristics of hairs obtained from Williams' mixed-breed German shepherd. Prosecutors argued that those comparisons strongly suggested that Williams' victims had been in close contact with him shortly before their deaths.

In addition, forensic experts testified that a microscopic comparison of two human scalp hairs recovered from 11-year-old slaying victim Patrick Baltazar were consistent with Williams' scalp hair.

"The evidence of dog hairs found either on the bodies or the clothing of both of the victims for whose murders [Williams] was convicted, as well as nine of the other alleged murders offered to prove [Williams'] identity as the person who perpetrated the murders of Mr. Payne and Mr. Cater, was powerful evidence of the defendant's guilt emphasized by the prosecution," Williams' motion acknowledged.

But, it continued, "Should DNA testing prove that the dog hairs did not come from [Williams'] dog, this circumstance would raise a reasonable probability that the defendant would have been acquitted if the results of DNA testing had been available at the time of the conviction."

"Indeed," the motion said, "if the testing shows that the animal hairs did not come from the defendant's dog but all came from the same, but some other dog or animal, then this would be powerful evidence that these terrible crimes were committed by a single perpetrator who is not Wayne Williams and who has never been brought to justice."

If DNA tests of the foreign scalp hair recovered from Baltazar's body fail to match DNA extracted from Williams' scalp hair, "this evidence would further undermine the state's case for guilt and would at least raise a reasonable probability that [Williams] would have been acquitted if the results of DNA testing had been available at the time of trial," Williams' motion said.

On Tuesday, Lyn Vaughn, a spokeswoman for Fulton County District Attorney Paul L. Howard, said Howard and his staff will review the motion "and make a determination following that review."

Russell D. Willard, a spokesman for Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, said the attorney general's office will work with the Fulton DA "to assure that an appropriate response is filed."

Williams first began calling for DNA tests in 1999. That year, Whatley told The Associated Press that he was considering whether to seek a court order to run DNA tests on the bloodstains found in Williams' car. Williams told the AP, "If you want to prove Wayne Williams did this conclusively, then let's get the DNA tests."

It wasn't until Tuesday, however, that Williams' defense team initiated the legal steps required to conduct the DNA tests.

OUTSIDE INVESTIGATION In 2005, after Graham announced he was reopening an investigation into five of the slayings that were administratively closed with Williams' 1982 conviction, the Daily Report embarked on a yearlong search for the forensic evidence in the case.

The newspaper spent months locating and then combing through trial testimony and lists of exhibits, filed numerous public records requests to confirm that evidence still existed and, eventually, determined where it was stored. The Daily Report recruited two of the top fiber experts in the country to examine magnified photographic images of fiber recovered in the investigation. Those experts concluded that, 25 years later, the fiber evidence against Williams remains compelling and credible. (Daily Report, June 30, 2006.) The newspaper also enlisted the help of the Georgia Innocence Project and, in April, formally asked Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Doris L. Downs to permit the Innocence Project to conduct comparative DNA tests of the blood and hair evidence admitted during Williams' trial. Downs rejected that request, explaining that Georgia's open records law did not permit the newspaper to remove evidence from the courthouse to have it tested at a forensic lab, even under the supervision of the Innocence Project. As chief judge, Downs handled the public records request because Williams' trial judge, Clarence Cooper, is now a U.S. District Court judge.

However, Downs allowed a supervised inspection of the evidence by the Daily Report. On May 22 -- accompanied by Williams' defense attorneys, lawyers representing the Fulton County district attorney and the state attorney general -- the newspaper, under court supervision, located and inspected numerous forensic slides on which the animal and human hair evidence had been preserved. Blood evidence collected in the investigation, including a blood-stained seat taken from Williams' car, couldn't be located. After that inspection, Martin and Whatley vowed to ask for DNA tests on Williams' behalf and sought the advice of the Innocence Project in finding a qualified laboratory. At the time, Williams had a motion for reconsideration of his habeas corpus appeal pending before U.S. District Judge Beverly B. Martin (who is no relation to Jack Martin). The federal judge already had rejected Williams' appeal in a 251-page order she handed down in February. Last month, she turned down Williams' motion for reconsideration of her earlier ruling. Williams' lawyers are appealing that decision to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

If the DNA tests produce no matches between Williams, his dog and evidence recovered from the victims that prosecutors directly linked to Williams at his trial, defense lawyers say they will file an extraordinary motion for a new trial based on the newly discovered evidence. "Much of the case [against Williams] was circumstantial," Jack Martin said Tuesday. "They built the case on fibers and hairs." However, if comparative DNA tests "prove he [Williams] is not guilty but innocent, then the circumstantial case starts to unravel."

State forensic experts testified that more than 100 animal hairs recovered from 11 victims were consistent with hair taken from Williams' dog. Williams' motion proposes that a representative sample of dog hairs taken from the victims, as well as samples of hairs from Williams' dog that were preserved, be tested by the forensic laboratory at the University of California at Davis, which pioneered the study of animal DNA. The forensic laboratory at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation currently does not have the capability to perform such tests, according to Williams' motion.

Williams' motion also asks the state to pay for the tests, which will cost from $150-$500 per animal hair, depending on the test. Williams' motion also seeks a court order to locate the missing blood evidence and bloodstained car seat that were shown to jurors. According to Williams' motion, his lawyers have "endeavored without success" to locate the blood evidence and speculated that it may still be in the custody of either the Fulton County district attorney or Atlanta police.

In response to a 2005 public records request by the Daily Report, the GBI acknowledged that its forensic laboratory disposed of dated biological evidence years ago and transferred the majority of evidence attached to the Atlanta child murders to the Atlanta Police Department. Atlanta police never responded to several public records requests made by the Daily Report to document the existence of forensic evidence in the Williams case.

Defense lawyers acknowledged a risk in asking for the DNA tests. "If the dog hairs found on the victims truly match [Williams'] dog or if the scalp hair found on victim Baltazar truly matches [Williams'] hair, doubts about [Williams'] guilt would obviously vanish. However, [Williams] is so confident in his innocence that he urgently asks that this testing be done."

"Why would the state oppose this?" Martin asked Tuesday. "It seems they would be as interested in finding out the truth as anyone else."

Said Whatley: "This cloud has been on the city too long."