Correspondence With the Commission on Judicial Conduct Concerning Discipline of Stephen M. Gaddis
Antipeonage Act Site Map Justice Files Home Page
Some Practical Advice for Support Contemnors in the State of Washington.
A Way to Walk a Mile in a Noncustodial Parent's Moccasins.
Another weapon in our defense is to file a complaint against an attorney with the Washington State Bar Association. I obtained this Grievance Form in Microsoft Word XP off of their website. You have to look, look, look, for it there, or you can merely click here! Rules of Professional Conduct are here. Rules for the Enforcement of Lawyer Conduct are here. Admission to Practice Rules are here. The Oath as Attorney is set forth here. Complaints against judges in the Washington state courts, (does not cover federal courts) can be filed with the Commission on Judicial Conduct with this form in pdf. The other forms with useful information are listed here. Information on filing a judicial conduct complaint are here. The Canons of Judicial Conduct are here. The Discipline Rules for Judges are here. RCW 2.04.080 sets forth the oath of office of justices of the Supreme Court of Washington. RCW 2.06.085 sets forth the oath of office of office of judges of the Court of Appeals for the State of Washington. RCW 2.08.080 sets forth the oath of office of judges of the superior courts. RCW 2.24.020 sets forth the oath of office of court commissioners. RCW 3.34.080 sets forth the oath of office of district court judges, judges pro tempore, and commissioners.
Allow me to let you in on a dirty little secret here. Consider this: Say you are a judge in Washington's court system. Or any other court system actually, but Washington is the one I am most familiar with. We all know about the incredible and universal gender bias in family law, and the absolute lack of respect for noncustodial parents as human beings. Observing this is like observing that the sky is blue. But it is just not credible that ALL of our judges are THAT BIGOTED. SOMETHING is placing the thumb on the scales of justice here, that is the only explanation that makes sense! And here is what it is: As a judge, you know that if you make a ruling that offends certain elements in our society you will be BORKED! In Washington, there are two primary means of borking a judge. 1) Putting up credible sounding candidates against your re-election when judges who NEED to be removed for their refusal to enforce Constitutional rights of politically incorrect litigants (meaning noncustodials and others) never face a challenger. Judge Jeanette Burrage suffered from that fate, and from her own foolishness in admonishing female attorneys for wearing pantsuits instead of dresses. 2) A campaign of judicial conduct complaints. Justice Richard Sanders has experienced this and is experiencing this right now. Power Structure just does not like his dissents, but what saves him is that he is popular with the voting public, the only thing that comes even close to frightening the Power Structure. Notice I use capital letters. Everyone in Washington smarter and more observant than a doorknob knows we have one, even if we cannot "prove" it. An organization with access to, say, numerous divorce files without having to spend hours at the courthouse looking them up, would be in a perfect position to organize a CAMPAIGN of Judicial Conduct Commission complaints against a judge who pissed them off. Litigants in these divorces unhappy with this particular judge will be happy to fill out and file these complaints when prompted. And because judicial conduct complaints are mostly SECRET, we do not know and cannot verify, if there is ACTUALLY A CAMPAIGN of such complaints against a particular judge. Because every judge is a human being, and therefore not perfect, there will be at least one incident described in these complaints, where the judge messed up bad enough to warrant discipline!
Same thing with lawyers, which might explain their fear of FORCEFULLY representing noncustodial parents and even to mention the Antipeonage Act in the same context as family law.
So what do we do? Answer is to realize that the thumb on the scales of justice is political, and is motivated by some unreasoning hatred of noncustodial parents, and/or the Seven Deadly Sins including avarice (fancy word for greed) and there is only one thing we NEED to do in ADDITION to everything else we do: Put OUR thumb on the other side of the scales of justice.
Judicial Conduct Commission complaints, folks. Bar complaints against support enforcer attorneys. EVERY time they give you cause to file such complaints! Clue: What works are lies, excuse me, "misstatements of fact" ;-), told by attorney to court that were uncorrected and repeated after you asserted that the truth is otherwise. Back it up with evidence. That gets the disciplinary counsel fired up!
Comment on the OBSCENE UN-AMERICAN Amunrud v. Dep't of Social & Health Services, (2004) 124 Wash. App. 884, 103 P. 3d. 257 decision by the Court of Appeals on December 27, 2004 by Judges William Wayne Baker, Faye Collier Kennedy, and Mary Kay Becker.
As an example, we have King County Superior Court Family Court Commissioner
Stephen Michael Gaddis, WSBA 1849, white male, Bellevue, Washington 98007 Been recently disciplined by the Commission on Judicial Conduct. The discipline report in pdf here.
He accepted baseball tickets and other gifts from an attorney who regularly appeared before him in probate cases. I can tell you that in response to my e-mail inquiry, they will not tell me who this attorney is who gave the baseball tickets. Sounds like something that can be found out by asking around.
When I first heard about this, I wrote:
From : Roger Knight rogerwknight@hotmail.com
Sent : Monday, December 13, 2004 1:45 PM
To : cjc@cjc.state.wa.us
Subject : Commissioner Gaddis
Who was the attorney from whom Stephen M. Gaddis accepted the baseball tickets?
Seemed like a perfectly reasonable question to me. I received this response:
From : CJC CJC@cjc.state.wa.us
Sent : Monday, December 13, 2004 3:25 PM
To : Roger Knight rogerwknight@hotmail.com
Subject : RE: Commissioner Gaddis
Mr. Knight:
Pursuant to our governing constitutional provision and rules of procedure, the public information presented in the stipulation is the only portion of the Commission's case that is available to the public from the Commission.
We appreciate your interest in the Commission.
COMMISSION ON JUDICIAL CONDUCT
What? Yeah, that was my reaction too. So I wrote this:
From : Roger Knight rogerwknight@hotmail.com
Sent : Monday, December 13, 2004 5:25 PM
To : cjc@cjc.state.wa.us
CC : f4jinternational@yahoogroups.co.uk
Subject : RE: Commissioner Gaddis
There are two reasons I ask.
1) The attorney who gave him the baseball tickets and other gifts violated the Rules of Professional Conduct and his Oath as Attorney. Therefore, discipline is warranted in his case, and in fact it would not be fair to discipline Commissioner Gaddis while not disciplining the attorney.
That is like charging ONE person with conspiracy!
2) As a matter of public policy we citizens have every right to know that the judicial officers before whom we appear are not taking or demanding bribes. It matters not WHAT capacity Commissioner Gaddis presently serves, the public would have been better served if we remove those judges and commissioners who do not understand the importance of not accepting gifts from attorneys who appear before them. As it is, Commissioner Gaddis is serving in the highly sensitive arena of family law where the judicial branch routinely destroys its own reputation by its rampant gender bias and willingness to violate clearly written constitutional provisions prohibiting imprisonment for debt, involuntary servitude, excessive bails, special privileges, and bills of attainder, and other constitutional provisions mandating due process and EQUAL protection of the laws.
We would feel much better that such judicial officers are not accepting baseball tickets or other gifts from attorneys who appear before them.
Come to think of it, what is the difference between a family court commissioner saying, "Come up with the child support money, or make at least five job contacts per week until success, come back here with proof of such contacts or employment success, or I'll have you thrown in jail." and "If someone were to provide me with Seahawks tickets or make payments on my Cadillac, perhaps I can be charitable with your client and admit that there is no way he can pay $85,000 in back child support, even if he were to find a part time minimum wage job as nobody will presently hire him in his former high paying profession."?
Either statement is as much the crime of extortion as was committed by Molotov Pauling.
And the federal crime of peonage, 18 U.S.C. §1581, which Mr. Pauling would have been guilty of had he told his girlfriend to get a job to raise the money she owed him.
I believe crimes committed by judicial officers are contrary to the Canons of Judicial Conduct.
As much as I can understand the reasons for secrecy in the investigation of judicial conduct complaints, the disadvantage is that WE THE PEOPLE who ELECT the judges are kept in the dark about these complaints, therefore required to make our voting decisions with less than all of the information. The other problem is that we, the public, cannot verify if there is a CAMPAIGN of judicial conduct complaints being conducted against a particular judge. Therefore, we cannot tell if the present effort with respect to say, Justice Sanders, is from legitimate complaints by genuinely concerned citizens, or from a less than legitimate effort to BORK Justice Sanders.
Thought I would share this communication with a planetary father's rights group because I do not believe in the secrecy of official proceedings.
Article I Section 10 of the Washington Constitution prohibits such secret tribunals.
WELL! I thought about it some more overnight and wrote this:
From : Roger Knight rogerwknight@hotmail.com
Sent : Tuesday, December 14, 2004 9:47 AM
To : cjc@cjc.state.wa.us
CC : f4jinternational@yahoogroups.co.uk
Subject : RE: Commissioner Gaddis
I took a look at Article IV Section 31 of the Washington Constitution, which provides for your existence and authority. Subsection (3) thereof reads:
Whenever the commission concludes, based on an initial proceeding, that there is probable cause to believe that a judge or justice has violated a rule of judicial conduct or that the judge or justice suffers from a disability which is permanent or likely to become permanent and which seriously interferes with the performance of judicial duties, the commission shall conduct a public hearing or hearings and shall make public all those records of the initial proceeding that provide the basis for its conclusion. If the commission concludes that there is not probable cause, it shall notify the judge or justice of its conclusion.
While Subsection (2) provides that the initial complaint and proceedings are confidential, this next provision clearly provides that such records are to be made public upon determination that probable cause exists that a judge has violated a rule of judicial conduct. This clearly happened in the case of Commissioner Gaddis.
Pursuant to Article IV Section 31 Subsection (3) of the Washington Constitution I respectfully request that you make public the name of the attorney who gave Commissioner Gaddis the baseball tickets and gifts for which he was disciplined.
REALLY! The Commission responded thus:
From : CJC CJC@cjc.state.wa.us
Sent : Tuesday, December 14, 2004 2:40 PM
To : Roger Knight rogerwknight@hotmail.com
Subject : RE: Commissioner Gaddis
Dear Mr. Knight:
The public availability of Commission records is governed by several constitutional, statutory and rule provisions. The Washington Constitution, in Article IV, Section 31, provides that "The commission shall establish rules of procedure for commission proceedings including due process and confidentiality of proceedings." RCW 2.64.111 provides that all "files of the commission, including complaints and the identity of complainants, compiled or obtained during the course of an investigation or initial proceeding involving the discipline or retirement of a judge or justice, are exempt from the public disclosure requirements of chapter 42.17 RCW during such investigation or initial proceeding." In addition, Rule 11 of the Commission's Rules of Procedure sets out the Commission's rule on confidentiality.
Under CJC RP 11, Commission investigatory and preliminary proceedings files and Commission deliberations are confidential and are thus not subject to public disclosure. Under CJC RP 11, Commission files generally become public only after there has been a finding of probable cause under CJC RP 17(d)(4)(C) and a statement of charges has been filed. If there is no finding of probable cause, the files remain confidential.
You are mistaken in concluding that there was a finding of probable cause in this matter. This matter was resolved under CJC RP 23 by stipulation without there having been a finding of probable cause under CJCRP 17(d)(4)(C). Since the information you seek remains subject to the confidentiality provisions, we cannot lawfully provide that information to you.
COMMISSION ON JUDICIAL CONDUCT
WHAT?!!!
I just could not help myself, I responded thus:
From : Roger Knight rogerwknight@hotmail.com
Sent : Tuesday, December 14, 2004 6:28 PM
To : cjc@cjc.state.wa.us
CC : f4jinternational@yahoogroups.co.uk
Subject : RE: Commissioner Gaddis
Thank you for your answers. I intend to post this on the Internet for public discussion. One good question for the public to ponder is that if there is no probable cause that Commissioner Gaddis violated a Canon of Judicial Conduct, why then did he stipulate to discipline knowing that the stipulation will be public?
Another issue is that the stipulation looks like probable cause of a rule violation. On page 2 we read Paragraph B2:
"On two occasions respondent accepted four Seattle Mariners Baseball tickets from an attorney who regularly appeared before respondent. Cumulatively, those tickets had a face value of $232.00. Respondent did not reimburse the attorney for the baseball tickets. The Respondent's position has been that the tickets were a form of compensation for working on a manual for which the attorney was responsible. At a dinner scheduled for work-related purposes, Respondent also allowed this attorney to purchase dinner for him and another person, the bill for which totaled $287.27. Respondent bought a meal for this attorney on at least one occasion. According to Respondent he perceived at the time these were professional contacts in the course of preparing Continuing Education materials or ordinary social interaction, even though the attorney regularly depended on Respondent's exercise of discretion in approving his petitions for fees and other requests in multiple cases."
These are just the stipulated facts in Paragraph B2! Commissioner Gaddis' signature is on this document that is now a public record, he AGREED that these facts are true! Shall we COUNT the Rules violations described therein?
Canon 1 Judges Shall Uphold the Integrity and Independence of the Judiciary.
Canon 2. Judges Shall Avoid Impropriety and the APPEARANCE of Impropriety in All of their Activities. Canon 2(B) reads in significant part: Judges should not allow family, social, or other relationships to influence their judicial conduct or judgment. Judges should not lend the prestige of judicial office to advance the private interests of the judge or others; nor should judges convey or permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence them.
Accepting baseball tickets and expensive restaurant meals as compensation for work on the attorney's manual looks as much like lending the prestige of the judicial office to advance the private interest of the un-named attorney as the Cathlamet looks like a Washington State Ferry.
Canon 3(D) Judges shall disqualify themselves in a proceeding in which their impartiality might reasonably be questioned.
No kidding! Or at least disclose to all parties to the proceeding of the personal relationship or cause of reasonable question of impartiality and to allow all parties of the opportunity to decline to have the matter heard by such judge!
Rather hard to do in an ex-parte proceeding before a court commissioner.
Canon 5 Judges shall regulate their Extrajudicial Activities to Minimize the Risk of Conflict With Their Judicial Duties. They can attend baseball games as long as they buy their own tickets. Canon 5(C) concerns financial activities. They can buy the baseball tickets and attend the games, but cannot serve as officers, directors, managers, or employees of the professional baseball team. Canon 5(C)(2) specifically requires that judges should not involve themselves in frequent business transactions with lawyers or persons likely to come before the court on which they serve. This is precisely what Commissioner Gaddis stipulated to in Paragraph B2: he engaged in frequent business transactions with an attorney who regularly appeared before him.
If a noncustodial parent or an attorney of a noncustodial parent subject to contempt proceedings before Commissioner Gaddis even attempted to purchase for him a baseball ticket, the police would arrest him for attempted bribery of a public official and any lawsuit against the officer would be dismissed on qualified immunity. Such facts would establish probable cause for the arrest.
I just do not believe that the framers of the current version of Article IV Section 31 of the Washington Constitution intended a different definition of the phrase "probable cause" than as used in the ordinary course of enforcing our criminal statutes.
I can only shrug my shoulders. You can only draw your conclusions from this.
And ACT on them.
Feel free to e-mail me at rogerwknight@hotmail.com with any information that you have to share.
If the back button does not take you there, click Home to go to the Index page of this Antipeonage Act Website, click Enemies for the main Enemies page, click Letters for the Letters page, click Allies for the Allies page, or click Justice Files to get to the Justice Files Home page. Or you can use the Antipeonage Act Site Map.