Judges can leave the bench, keep judging

By Jeff German

Friday, Jan. 23, 2009 | 2 a.m.

One of the perks of winning a seat on the District Court bench in Nevada is that you never really have to give up your judicial robes, even if you decide to leave in the middle of your term.

Case in point: The Nevada Supreme Court recently approved one-year commissions for four retired Las Vegas jurists to serve as part-time senior judges, including Gerald Hardcastle, who left the Family Court bench last summer, more than two years before the January 2011 end of his term.

Gov. Jim Gibbons timed last August’s appointment of Hardcastle’s successor, Robert Teuton, so that it would be too late to get his name on the November ballot to face the voters. Teuton doesn’t have to run for the seat until 2010.

Another newly appointed senior judge is Lee Gates, who has taken some heat for allegedly slacking off after he decided not to make what was expected to be an uphill reelection run last year. The Nevada Judicial Discipline Commission last July found that Gates had violated the state’s judicial code of conduct when he contributed $5,000 of his unspent campaign money in 2004 to the campaigns of Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Karen Bennett-Haron and Supreme Court Justice Michael Douglas. Gates was ordered to issue a public apology and attend a judicial ethics course.

The other nonelected senior judges are Sally Loehrer and Stewart Bell, whose term-ending retirement last year allowed his daughter, Linda Bell, to get elected to his seat.

All four senior judges have plenty of experience and are well-qualified to fill in for their full-time colleagues when needed. They get paid the same rate as the full-time judges which, as of this month, ranges from $88 to $97 an hour.

But how much scrutiny does the Supreme Court give to retired judges seeking senior status? Does it review how often those judge’s rulings were overturned, or whether they made too many mistakes while on the bench?

Supreme Court spokesman Bill Gang said there isn’t much scrutiny, other than a look at whether an applicant has faced any public disciplinary proceedings. Gang didn’t know whether Gates’ breach of the judicial code had any effect on his application for senior status.

As for the merits of making a senior judge out of someone who retired in mid-term, that’s not a consideration for the high court, Gang said. Two other local senior judges, John McGroarty and Joseph T. Bonaventure, left full-time positions before their terms were up, he said.

Judges who are defeated for reelection aren’t eligible for senior status, and neither are judges who are tossed off the bench for disciplinary reasons, Gang said.

But those, apparently, aren’t the people who apply for senior status. Gang said he can’t recall any applicant being denied.

In all, there are 21 nonelected senior judges in the state, including former Supreme Court Justices Bob Rose, Miriam Shearing and Deborah Agosti, who serve as senior justices. The positions come up for renewal every year.

•••

The drama just won’t go away in the government’s “Operation Sin City Ink” case.

In court papers filed late Wednesday, defense lawyers unleashed a new attack on the undercover sting run out of a local tattoo shop by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Attorney Lisa Rasmussen explained why she wants a magistrate to force the government to grant immunity to a woman who has stepped forward to testify she smoked marijuana with lead undercover ATF Agent Peter McCarthy outside the tattoo shop.

The woman, Jennifer Chao, is the girlfriend of David “Dough Boy” Murphy, a defendant charged with distributing methamphetamine in a related criminal case.

The testimony is important to the defense because it contradicts McCarthy’s testimony that he did not smoke marijuana during the undercover investigation.

Defense lawyers want federal drug and weapons charges dismissed against a half-dozen defendants because of alleged government misconduct. The attorneys have argued that the government’s own undercover videotapes show McCarthy smoking marijuana inside the tattoo parlor on other occasions. But the government contends the substances were fake marijuana.

Federal prosecutors also have called the defense attacks a smoke screen to deflect attention from the charges facing the defendants, some of whom allegedly offered to kill people during secretly recorded conversations one undercover agent described on the witness stand as “extremely chilling.”

At a hearing earlier this month on the defense claims, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathleen Bliss opposed giving immunity to Chao and argued that even if McCarthy had smoked marijuana, it wouldn’t be enough evidence to warrant dismissing the indictment.

The hearing is set to resume in federal court on Monday.