District Court Judge Curtis DeLapp was renowned for his hair-trigger temper. Mispronounce his name, come to court a few seconds late, fail to rise as quickly as he’d like – no slight was too small to set him off.
The Washington County Courthouse Judicial Center where Judge Curtis DeLapp sat on the bench is seen in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, U.S. November 19, 2019. REUTERS/Nick Oxford
Local attorneys had grown convinced that DeLapp was violating the state’s judicial conduct code by abusing his authority. But they felt it would be futile to file a complaint with the Oklahoma agency that investigates judicial misconduct, because the state hadn’t filed charges against a judge for misconduct since 2004. The lawyers also say they worried that crossing DeLapp risked retaliation against both them and their clients.
Instead, DeLapp, 53, struck a deal. He resigned and agreed never again to seek office as a judge. The case against him was dismissed. His state pension and law license remained intact. And DeLapp received a written assurance that neither his departure nor the settlement constituted an admission to the “validity of any of the allegations.”
Although each U.S. state has a judicial oversight agency to screen and investigate misconduct complaints, their powers are often limited. In most states, the ultimate disciplinary authority over a judge rests with other judges. Confidential justice for judges is common in America. At least 38 states – Oklahoma among them – issue private sanctions when judges misbehave. The name of the judge remains secret, and most of these states keep from the public details of the transgression and the discipline. At a minimum, most states release summary statistics of how many judges are privately disciplined each year. Oklahoma doesn’t make that information public.
Privacy also robs the system of a deterrent effect: Concealing the punishment fails to discourage bad conduct by other judges, who may never learn of the consequences, Gillers and other ethicists say. In 1989, Washington voters abolished the practice of private sanctions. Since then, every case brought against a judge by the Washington judicial conduct commission is made public. Reiko Callner, the commission’s executive director, said judges should be treated the same as anyone who appears before them.
Still, a Reuters investigation found that private discipline has been used to mask significant violations of the law. For example, in 2018, state records show, a Texas judge failed to “maintain professional competence” and illegally jailed indigent defendants. And in 2017, a California judge engaged in sexual harassment and showed a “lack of candor” when accused of misconduct, records show. Neither their names nor their punishments have been made public.
A comparison between Oklahoma and a state of similar size highlights the discrepancies in how judges are treated. “To think that there’s no misconduct in your state, you’re either really naive, in denial or protecting people,” he said.Former Oklahoma Justice Steven Taylor disputes such characterizations. Taylor, who served on the state’s top court from 2004 through 2016, said he was proud that the state had so few cases of public discipline. To him, the small number of cases doesn’t demonstrate weak oversight. It shows “a judiciary in Oklahoma that is ethical, doing their work and highly disciplined.
That’s because in Washington County and thousands of other courtrooms nationally, there is no requirement to record or transcribe most proceedings. Employing a stenographer or recording the proceedings is considered too expensive and largely unnecessary for the assembly-line pace of misdemeanor cases that make up most of the court’s business.
But many of those lawyers say they weren’t simply concerned about themselves. They worried that, if DeLapp got wind of a complaint, he might take it out on defendants as well. “It’s not just your livelihood at stake. It’s also clients,” said defense attorney Marty Meason, who practiced before DeLapp and once ran unsuccessfully against him for district judge. “Nobody wanted to take on the system.”
Lee remembers the call his firm received from a Washington County lawyer. The message was clear: You have to help us stop this judge. The case as it related to Ludlow was over. But now, Lee had grown suspicious of DeLapp, in particular the judge’s claim that he had so quickly located the missing Contempt Court Minute he used to justify jailing Ludlow. When DeLapp produced the missing Contempt Court Minute, the document seemed odd, Lee recalled.
Reuters reviewed the video, which has never been made public. It shows DeLapp leaving the clerk’s office with files. A clerk then leaves her desk. She returns later with what appears to be a single-page document. The clerk examines the page, then stamps it in two places. In the petition, the chief justice accused DeLapp of “gross neglect of duty,” “oppression in office” and “complete disregard” for the law. The justice also criticized DeLapp for abusing his judicial power and declared him unfit for office.
And the chief justice cited evidence that DeLapp had inappropriately contacted the county attorney’s office about a deferred prosecution agreement for DeLapp’s son, who was charged with traffic violations.Not every state is forgiving of judges facing misconduct charges who opt to resign. California, Texas and a dozen other states have pursued disciplinary cases and impose sanctions even after judges leave the bench.
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