Defense bar group blasts judge who had public defender cuffed in court
A group of criminal defense lawyers has filed a legal ethics complaint against a Nevada judge who ordered a public defender handcuffed in court last month because she tried to interrupt him and make an argument during a sentencing hearing for her client.
Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Conrad Hafen demonstrated “a complete disregard for the law” both by having Zohra Bakhtary cuffed and by continuing the hearing, with her client unrepresented as she sat silently in the restraints, wrote the Nevada Attorneys for Criminal Justice in a complaint last week to the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. The Clark County Defenders Union has also released a statement criticizing the judge’s actions, the Review-Journal reported in an earlier story.
The Nevada Attorneys for Criminal Justice also took issue in the ethics complaint with Hafen’s handling of two other cases in which the defendant was not represented by an attorney, reports the Review-Journal.
In both of these cases, the pro se defendant was jailed for contempt, the newspaper reports.
A man who was forced to defend his own trespassing case after the judge denied his request for additional time to seek an attorney initially got 10 days when he briefly tried to argue about Hafen’s ruling that he could not ask a witness about the 14th Amendment. That sentence was later reduced, the newspaper says, although it does not specify the new term.
A woman without legal representation got two weeks without bail for what was characterized as a courtroom “outburst,” the Review-Journal reports without giving details about the incident.
In the incident involving Bakhtary, the assistant Clark County public defender did nothing wrong, the bar group said. But even if she had, there would have been a better way to handle the situation.
“NACJ is not taking the position that an attorney can never be sanctioned for disrespectful conduct in a courtroom,” the group wrote in its complaint. “Here, the transcript reveals that the lawyer was simply doing her job. Even if there were more evidence of inappropriate behavior, no judge should, as a first resort, employ the demeaning method used here.”
As Bakhtary sat cuffed in his courtroom, Hafen at first asked whether a clerk for the public defender’s office, who was present in the courtroom, could handle the rest of her cases. However, the clerk wasn’t licensed, the complaint says. Hafen sentenced Bakhtary’s client to six months.
Then Hafen had Bakhtary released. Although she asked for a break at that point, the judge denied it and told her to continue with her caseload, the newspaper reports.
The judge did not respond Tuesday to phone messages from the Review-Journal.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Judge says handcuffing public defender taught her a lesson about ‘proper decorum’ in court”
ABAJournal.com: “Public defender handcuffed in court at judge’s order says she was just doing her job”
