Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Thursday, July 7, 2016

 

Page 1

 

CJP Slates Argument in Case Against Judge Clarke

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

Arguments have been set before the Commission on Judicial Performance in the case against Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Edmund W. Clarke Jr.

The CJP said it would hear the matter on Aug. 24 in San Francisco.

The commission’s confidential deliberations usually take place soon after the arguments.

Clarke is accused of having demeaned potential jurors who were seeking to be excused from sitting in a four-defendant, gang-related murder case. He forcefully denied the allegations at a special masters’ hearing in March, and the masters’ report was largely dismissive of the commission’s claims that he engaged in “willful misconduct in office [or] conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice that brings the judicial office into disrepute.”

The judge himself told the masters that while he “walked into” needless complications by making extraneous comments that he thought were humorous, he did not use a mocking tone or raise his voice, or otherwise act in a manner that would have made a reasonable person uncomfortable.

An attorney for Clarke, Kathleen Ewins, told the panel that Clarke had chosen to ask for a formal evidentiary hearing, rather than accept the public admonishment proposed by the commission, because the wording of the CJP’s proposed order was “inaccurate” and “unduly harsh.” The commission’s proposed disposition of the matter could not be accepted by a judge “who believes in the American system of justice as much as Judge Clarke does.”

 

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