Judge will fight charges by discipline panel

CARSON CITY -- Clark County District Judge Gloria Sanchez said she intends to present mitigating circumstances to the state Judicial Discipline Commission which filed a complaint Monday that she took too long to decide three cases.

Sanchez, a Family Court judge, agreed there was probable cause to merit a public hearing. When the hearing is scheduled, she said she will present her defense.

The Discipline Commission, if it finds her guilty, could impose penalties ranging from a public reprimand to removal from office.

Sanchez said she worked every weekend to catch up with an almost insurmountable number of cases. She also personally paid a typist to do some of the work because her secretary could not keep up with the volume.

With the help of a new computer system and two new Family Court judges who took office six months ago, Sanchez said she is now up to date on filing decisions.

The judge concedes her ruling in the case Johnson vs. Johnson should have been made sooner. She took the issues under submission on June 23, 1995, and did not make a decision until Jan. 17, 1997.

In the other two cases, however, the judge said there were unique circumstances.

In the divorce case of Callahan vs. Callahan, she made verbal rulings in 1996 on March 4, March 20 and Oct. 30 but the written orders were not signed until March 12, 1997.

Sanchez said the court clerks are responsible for giving her the orders to sign. "They didn't make it to my desk. I had no idea they were outstanding." She said has no jurisdiction over the court clerks who work for the county clerk.

The court clerk at that time had a personal tragedy, Sanchez said, and she lost track of the cases.

The Discipline Commission said in the divorce case of "Leysath vs. Leysath," the judge orally announced her decision on Nov. 7, 1995, but the divorce decree was not signed until June 18, 1997.

"We bent over backwards on that case. She said the lawyers could not agree on a finding of fact after a 2 1/2 hearing in which the proposed decree was taken line by line," Sanchez said.

Usually attorneys draft the final decree but the judge said she and her law clerk personally wrote the 15-page final document.

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