Judge who accuses city attorney's office of lying takes her concerns to the state bar
Seattle is the site of a messy fight between a municipal court judge and government lawyers accused of lying about the jurist’s record to keep her off their cases.
The skirmish has been taken to the Washington State Bar Association, where Seattle Municipal Judge Pooja Vaddadi filed a disciplinary complaint against Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison and Natalie Walton-Anderson, Davison’s former criminal chief, accusing them of lying to damage her career.
Washington State Court Rules allow prosecutors and defense lawyers to disqualify one judge from each case by signing an affidavit of prejudice.
Walton-Anderson wrote in a 2024 memo that the office would file affidavits of prejudice to remove Vaddadi from overseeing all criminal cases going forward. The city attorney’s office has a civil division, an administrative division and a criminal division that handles misdemeanor offenses.
According to news accounts, the affidavits decision led to Vaddadi’s eventual reassignment to civil issues and traffic infractions.
The memo included accusations that Vaddadi routinely overruled prior findings of probable cause issued by other judges and frequently made erroneous evidentiary rulings. Additionally, the memo stated that Vaddadi demonstrated “a complete lack of understanding, or perhaps even intentional disregard, of the evidence rules, even on basic issues.” Also, the city attorney’s office in a press release wrote that there were “serious concerns” about Vaddadi’s “conduct and rulings.”
Vaddadi is a former public defender whose campaign platform included restorative justice. Davison’s campaign focused on law and order. When Vaddadi first took the bench in 2023, she was assigned to preside over misdemeanor cases, such as driving under the influence and domestic violence charges. But Vaddadi says that the city attorney’s office “immediately” rejected her and had “preconceived notions” of her and her abilities.
In her complaint, Vaddadi writes that the memo and press release announcing the blanket affidavits “were calculated to excite public spectacle and inflame public opinion.” She requests that the that bar investigate Davison and Walton-Anderson’s conduct and consider suspending or disbarring them.
“There is no evidence that my judicial practice deviated from judicial norms,” Vaddadi wrote in her complaint.
The Washington State Bar Association said in an email that there was “no public discipline information” about Vaddadi’s complaint. Vaddadi says the agency has yet to address her complaint.
Meanwhile, in a statement released by the city attorney’s office, Davison and Walton-Anderson said they “strongly disagree with the allegations” and “will fully cooperate with any requests for information that the bar may have.” The statement also said Davison’s “primary goal is to protect public safety through the work of her office and that has been her guiding principle in all matters.”
Vaddadi told the ABA Journal she had no other choice but to file a disciplinary complaint.
“They have smeared my reputation and lied about me to the public,” she says. “There is a canon of ethics that says you can’t lie about a judge to the public.”
In October 2024, the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington sued the city attorney’s office on behalf of the Washington Community Alliance and three Seattle voters for misuse of prosecutorial discretion against Vaddadi and disenfranchising voters. The case was dismissed in February. That same month, the city attorney’s office said that it was ending its policy of blanket affidavits against Vaddadi for all their criminal cases.
Lisa Foster, a Seattle Municipal Court spokesperson, said that “Judge Vaddadi has resumed hearing criminal matters in her courtroom,” although the city continues to exclude her from hearing domestic violence and DUI cases.
Steven Lubet, a professor emeritus at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, has written extensively on legal and judicial ethics. He says it is unsual for a judge to file a disciplinary case against a lawyer because “the overwhelming majority of lawyers behave appropriately and honorably” and “disciplinary processes move slowly and beyond the judge’s control.”
“In the rare cases of misconduct, many judges prefer to handle the issues themselves, either through admonishment or some other sanction,” Lubet says.
But Ed McKenna, former presiding judge in the Seattle Municipal Court, says the relationships between judges, the city attorney and the defense bar are frayed and sometimes hostile. McKenna retired in 2020 with two years left in his term after turmoil over his tenure and accusations of misconduct. According to him, judicial elections have grown increasingly nasty over the years.
“It’s a total mess there, and it has been for several years,” McKenna says. Blanket affidavits and bar complaints are not common, but both have contributed over recent years to an overall contentious environment in Seattle’s criminal justice court system, he says.
Brooks Holland, who teaches criminal law and legal ethics at Gonzaga University School of Law, says that the decision to announce the blanket affidavits “through a press release and an office memo that questioned the judge’s competence or even integrity to preside over any criminal case” was a “strong move.”
“No defendant could have this elected judge, no victim, no one in this community,” says Holland, a former public defender in the Bronx and Manhattan.
He adds that one potential issue is that all prosecutors in the office were apparently directed to file affidavits in every case before Vaddadi, stripping individual prosecutors of using their professional judgment in each case they handle.
This could put the prosecutors in difficult ethical positions, he says, “especially if prosecutors had reason to believe this blanket affidavit was retaliatory or bad faith, as the judge alleges.”
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