Judge is removed from office for living outside district and lying about doing so
A judicial discipline board had sought a six- to 12-month suspension. But the Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday removed a state judge from office, effective immediately, for living outside his district and lying, in a sworn statement in a re-election filing, about doing so.
Anoka County District Judge Alan Pendleton’s removal is only the fourth time in state history that the supreme court has imposed this sanction, reports the Minnesota Star Tribune. Pendleton had been suspended, with pay, after a September 8 hearing.
His lawyer, Doug Kelley, said at the hearing that Pendleton, who sold his in-district Anoka townhome in November 2013 for financial reasons, had intended to live only temporarily out-of-district in Minnetonka, with his wife, after the sale. The couple had married in 2007, but lived separately until the 2013 townhome sale, the newspaper reports.
Financial complications and a personal emergency involving the judge’s son delayed his plan to find another home in Anoka, Kelley said.
According to the Minnesota Supreme Court’s opinion (PDF), a judicial discipline board concluded that Pendleton both lived outside the judicial district in which he worked and lacked the intent to reside there for a period of over four months in 2014. However, he eventually rented an apartment there later in the year.
A former Hennepin County judge was suspended without pay for six months and censured in 2011 for a similar offense, notes an earlier Star Tribune article about Pendleton’s case.
That earlier judicial discipline case should have served as a “clear warning” to Pendleton, the supreme court said, about the seriousness with which such conduct is viewed, but he “consciously disregarded” it, as well as his constitutional obligations to live in his judicial district.
Given “the cumulative impact his misconduct has on the public’s faith in the integrity of the judicial system, we conclude that the sanction of removal from office is the only sanction adequate to ensure that the people of Minnesota can have continued faith in the integrity of their justice system,” the supreme court wrote.
A dissenting justice said he would have imposed a six-month suspension on Pendleton.
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