Judge-shopping allegations trouble officials

06/16/2007

By Tammy Fonce-Olivas / El Paso Times

County Attorney José Rodríguez is trying to re-establish public trust in the El Paso County Courthouse in the wake of judge-shopping allegations made in a court document detailing conspiracy charges to which John Travis Ketner, the county's former chief of staff, pleaded guilty last week.

The 18-page court document alleges the El Paso District Clerk's Office computer system, which assigns civil and criminal cases to judges, was "exploited" to allow certain cases to be heard by a judge who was "friendly" to one of Ketner's uncharged co-conspirators.

The document further states that this co-conspirator assisted other lawyers in "securing a judge and court that would be friendly to their cause of action and, in exchange, received money or a future promise of other favors of value from these 'client' lawyers."

"I ask everyone to be patient," Rodríguez said. "I am confident our system of justice will take care of those who have acted unlawfully and betrayed the public trust. We will not rest until we have done everything we can Ketner, the former county chief of staff, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery. He faces up to five years in prison on the bribery conspiracy count and up to 20 years in prison on each of the three other charges.

Federal authorities have declined to say whether Ketner was booked into jail, whether he is in federal custody and when he will be sentenced.

Nor have federal officials said whether they offered him protection in exchange for testimony against others.

As part of his pleas, Ketner implicated some elected officials, lawyers and businesses in the crimes. The document containing Ketner's charges claims he and his uncharged co-conspirators sought bribes from vendors, received secret campaign donations and broke into a computer system in an attempt to rig cases.

Although unnamed, the uncharged co-conspirators are designated in ways that make most of their identities easy to determine. They include County Judge Anthony Cobos, County Commissioners Luis Sariñana and Miguel Téran, former Commissioner Betti Flores, El Paso District Clerk Gilbert Sanchez, his assistant and former employee Fernando Parra, and prominent lawyers Luther Jones, David Escobar and Martie Jobe.

The charges against Ketner resulted from a growing FBI investigation into public corruption that began with agents investigating the National Center for Employment of the Disabled, now called ReadyOne, and businesses associated with the nonprofit. The FBI investigation into NCED came after a federal agency determined the nonprofit violated labor requirements.

Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, has delivered a request to the members of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct asking for an immediate investigation of serious allegations of possible judicial misconduct in El Paso.

"Justice starts at the courthouse," Shapleigh said. "We must act now to restore confidence and trust in our courts."

The federal document states that in the spring of 2005, Ketner was told by two unnamed co-conspirators that the computer system, which makes random assignment of lawsuits and other legal matters to judges and courts, was exploited in 2003 and could be manipulated to have cases assigned to specific courts.

The discussion allegedly occurred while trying to figure out which judge should preside over Commissioner Flores' criminal trial.

Ketner had been asked to represent one of the co-conspirators because another co-conspirator needed Flores' vote on County Commissioners Court because the lawyer had "an approximately $700,000 settlement in a lawsuit against the County of El Paso," the document states.

Flores was indicted in June 2005 on charges of failing to report $12,674 in campaign contributions. The information document alleges this is the case in which judge-shopping occurred.

Flores' case was first assigned to Precinct 3 Justice of the Peace Lupe Aponte. She recused herself from the case, saying she and Flores were friends. The case was then transferred to Precinct 5 Justice of the Peace Fred Chavez, who declined it, saying his court did not have jurisdiction over the matter.

In July, the case was assigned to the 41st District Court with Judge Mary Anne Bramblett after using the district clerk's computer system, which randomly assigned cases to courts.

On Aug. 25, 2005, Ketner told the El Paso Times that Bramblett had recused herself from the case and it would subsequently be heard by Senior District Judge Sam Paxson. The same day, Paxson told the Times that Bramblett asked him to handle the case because he was familiar with it and because she had a heavy workload since she had recently returned from vacation.

Though Paxson then said he wanted to schedule a trial as soon as possible, the case was transferred again before a trial date was set. Senior Judge Willie DuBose, a retired state district judge in Midland, was assigned to the case in September.

Paxson said Friday that he didn't recall why the case was transferred to DuBose. Then he said no judge in El Paso could have presided over the case because Flores was an elected official. He said judicial rules call for getting a judge from outside the region to hear cases against elected officials.

Bramblett couldn't be reached for comment.

DuBose presided over Flores' trial in April 2006. An El Paso jury acquitted Flores of the charges.

District Clerk Gilbert Sanchez, who took office in 2003, adamantly denies the allegations of computer tampering.

"That's incorrect; that's totally incorrect. We have a computer system that randomly selects it (a court)," Sanchez said. "And the other thing is, if the system goes down, ultimately this office is still the office that designates which court it goes in. The funny thing is we have it kind of like a bingo system. We pick a number out of a box, and that's how it's done.

Sanchez said assigning cases randomly to courts is an important role of his office because "it shows no favoritism and no financial gain." He said that once a case is assigned to a court, the judge has the option to accept the case or recuse himself or herself from it.

Though Sanchez said cases filed with his office are assigned randomly to courts using a computer program, he acknowledges that it is possible to interfere with the automatic selection of a court assignment.

He referred questions about the computer program to David Anthony Kantola, the district clerk's office project coordinator. Kantola agrees that the computer system can be manipulated.

"It can be changed, but there will be a record of who changed it and when they changed it," Kantola said.

Kantola then produced a computerized court assignment history of the Flores case showing that the case's court assignment was not altered.

Sanchez said his office did not rig the computer system in Flores' favor.

"This office, as you can see, has set guidelines, set procedures and set rules," he said. "And if you don't have an understanding of it, of course it's going to be perceived that it can be rigged, fixed, assigned or aligned to work for certain individuals; but we don't do that here. Why would I put my career and my family at stake?"

Sanchez then said he felt betrayed by Ketner, who frequently visited his office.

"I feel very hurt. It's putting my family and myself through tremendous pain. I don't deserve this, and neither does my staff. My office doesn't deserve this," Sanchez said. "We run a very professional office here. We need to let everybody know that we don't do this. The community has to have faith in the judicial system, and what he has done is broken down that faith, and that is quite bothersome."

Judge Patrick Garcia of the 384th District Court, who also oversees the county's Council of Judges, said he was "surprised" when he heard of the allegations.

"That's the first time I've ever heard of something like that," said Garcia, who has been on the bench for about 10 years.

"In El Paso, we have a judiciary that I feel has very strong integrity. I don't think that any judge in this community would ever jade their decision on anything other than the law and the evidence that comes before them," Garcia said. "We make decisions on what we hear in the courts. A lot of times it may not be what one party or the other party thinks is the right thing, but we have to make a decision based upon what we have in front of us. And I have no reason to doubt the integrity of any judge in this courthouse ever skewing a decision to favor a party specifically."

Garcia said the Council of Judges has "supervisory powers over the district clerk's office" and said the alleged court assignment corruption may come up at its next meeting. The council meets once a month.

"This is something that has just developed. We've never had a reason to question the assignment of cases up until what is being raised now. I don't know where poor Mr. Ketner is coming from on these allegations. I don't believe that we've had anything other than randomness up until now."

Garcia said judge-shopping "is not something that we in the Council of Judges approve of."

"You are concerned any time something like that is stated, but I have no reason at this point to believe that the district clerk is engaging in allowing people to forum-shop," he said.

"And certainly, if that was happening, we would all be concerned about it because randomness is an important part of assigning cases," Garcia said.