Judge Just Doesn't See Failure

by Jane Anne Morrison - May 28th, 2007 - Las Vegas Review Journal

The District Judge Elizabeth Halverson saga is starting to creep beyond the borders of Nevada and into the California news media, while locally the docudrama is the first thing many of us read each day. When they make a TV special of it, I'd like to suggest a name: Power and Paranoia.

Halverson spent nine years as a fairly lowly law clerk. (I always assumed the 425-pound woman, according to her driver's license, stayed as long as she could for the county's health insurance coverage.) After she was fired, she ran for one judgeship, lost, but in 2006 won on her second try.

Before long, stories started coming out of the Regional Justice Center about her contemptuous behavior toward her staff, particularly her bailiff, Johnny Jordan. Halverson, who had never had real power, was relishing it, throwing a pencil on the floor and ordering him to pick it up. Jordan was ordered to give her foot rubs and back massages. He has since filed a complaint against his former boss alleging discrimination based on sex and race. He is black and says she treated him like a "house boy."

Her court clerk, Katherine Streuber, said the judge's behavior was "vile, angry, degrading to anyone within her path." Streuber also objected to being called "the evil one" and "the anti-Christ" by the judge.

What is sad is that this type of behaviour is not so out of the ordinary that it gets you automatically expelled from judicial power. This judge will be able to hang on to power for a long time. There are many on the left who don't think there is anything wrong with her behavior.