CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Two Kanawha County magistrates have been recommended to be publicly admonished by the state’s Judicial Investigation Commission.
Brent Hall and Tim Halloran each were recommended for admonishment in separate cases.
They’re the latest Kanawha magistrates to wind up in trouble.
Magistrate Julie Yeager resigned in July following allegations that she embezzled money from the West Virginia Magistrates Association. The Raleigh County Prosecutor’s Office was assigned to handle a criminal investigation after the Kanawha County Prosecutor’s Office was recused.
In August, Magistrate Jack Pauley was recommended for formal judicial misconduct charges for a range of misdeeds including approving a domestic violence petition with no knowledge of the facts of the case, leaving his post an hour early without informing anyone when a police officer needed to file an arrest warrant and taking over a case from another magistrate and letting a suspect go free. A hearing in his case is set for late this month.
What Hall and Halloran are accused of doing is less serious but they still drew scrutiny from their peers with the Judicial Investigation Commission.
Halloran, who has served continuously since 2000, was investigated for a couple of different actions.
MORE: Read the admonishment of Halloran.
One was his lack of response a few months ago to the request for a jury trial by a defendant, Mark Hallburn, who had been accused of telephone harassment. Halloran instead had a bench trial, found Hallburn guilty and sentenced him to a $500 fine and six months in jail.
Hallburn filed a complaint against Halloran this past summer. The complaint went to the Judicial Investigation Commission, which began to investigate. A letter sent by the commission via certified mail asked Halloran to respond within 10 days.
Halloran didn’t reply despite requirements by the Code of Judicial Conduct to do so. A second request then went out, and Halloran then responded to all of the allegations except for why he failed to provide a jury trial. He also apologized for not replying earlier.
In another situation, Halloran sent a letter this past July 23 to Chief Kanawha Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey, recommending his assistant, Melanie Rucker, to the magisterial seat that had just been vacated by Yeager.
The letter included the statement, “Ms. Rucker was a candidate in the 2016 election, coming in second to Julie Yeager. Did Ms. Yeager use stolen money to help her win? Further investigation is needed to answer this question.”
A week later, contents of Halloran’s letter were published in the West Virginia Record newspaper. Halloran later acknowledged to investigators that he had supplied the letter.
In a written reply to an ethics complaint, Halloran said he hadn’t initially regarded the contents of the letter as improper. “However, upon reflection and review of the law, the Respondent regrets sending the July 23, 2017 letter.”
“The tenor of the document and the decision to provide it to the newspaper caused the Commission members to
conclude that Respondent took this action in a blatant attempt to strong arm the Chief Judge into appointing Ms. Rucker as Magistrate,” wrote the Judicial Investigation Commission.
Halloran, according to the written response, did not consider the Yeager matter to be before his court and would have recused himself if it had been.
The Judicial Investigation Commission determined that formal discipline was not appropriate in Halloran’s case, but it did find that the violations were serious enough to merit a public admonishment. Halloran has 14 days after receipt of the public admonishment to file a written objection.
Hall, who has served as a magistrate since 2013, was investigated over a social media post about a pending case in his courtroom.
MORE: Read the admonishment of Hall.
He was serving over the case of Tracie Williams, who this past Sept. 5 was charged with felonies and accused of forging her dying mother’s will to receive more than $1 million.
Hall arraigned Williams, and WSAZ-TV was there. At some point that evening, according to investigators, Hall posted a still photo on his Facebook page showing him conducting the initial appearance for Williams. The caption underneath the photo read “Police: Woman exploits over one million dollars from dying mom” with the news logo to the right.
The Facebook post elicited several responses from people, including: “disgusting,” “hang ’em high, Brent” and “I didn’t think anything could be lower than rescinding DACA. I was wrong.”
Through a Sept. 11 letter, Judicial Disciplinary Counsel asked Hall to respond to allegations in an ethics complaint.
A few days later, Hall replied: “I deny the allegations brought before me. I have not made any comment about any pending/impending matter. I have posted a still photo shot of myself without any comment, opinion or statement. I ask that this complaint be dismissed.”
The Judicial Investigation Commission determined that Hall violated the Code of Judicial Conduct. But in this case the commission also determined that no formal discipline was necessary but that the violations were serious enough to warrant a public admonishment.
“By placing that still photo on his Facebook page, respondent expressed to his Facebook friends the woman’s perceived guilt in a louder voice and in a more certain tone than if he had actually written the words himself,” according to the admonishment of Hall.
“The post was also designed to elicit responses from his friends because that’s what Facebook is meant to be — an alternative public means of communication. The fact that the friends’ comments were largely negative is no surprise, and respondents’ failure to remove them constituted a tacit endorsement of the same.”