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State Panel Admonishes O.C. Judge

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Times Staff Writer

The state has disciplined an Orange County judge for the fourth time, the latest after she threw a man in jail and denied him bail without giving him a chance to respond to the charges.

In a public admonishment released Wednesday, the state Commission on Judicial Performance scolded Superior Court Judge Pamela L. Iles for her handling of a domestic violence case in 2002, when she revoked a man’s probation. “No reasonable or reasonably competent judge would assume or conclude that he or she could summarily incarcerate an unrepresented defendant, in the manner Judge Iles did here,” the commission wrote.

Iles has twice received advisory letters from the commission for improperly handling cases. In 2004, she received a more severe private admonishment for displaying partiality in a criminal case and for pressuring the district attorney to investigate a lawyer for perjury.

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It is rare for a judge to be disciplined as many times as Iles has been, said Deborah L. Rhode, law professor and director of the Stanford University Center on Ethics.

“Seems to me that there’s a pattern and practice that indicates a real abusive judicial officer,” she said. “The fact that the judge continued to engage in the same kinds of conduct suggests that the sanctions haven’t been sufficient enough to gain her attention.”

A 10-year judicial commission study found that only 3.6% of judges who were reprimanded had three or more prior disciplinary actions against them.

Rhode said public admonishment may embolden lawyers who have put up with a judge’s abusive conduct to step forward.

Iles, 61, referred questions to her attorney, Edith R. Matthai.

Matthai said the admonishment represented a case of good intentions gone wrong: “She never intended to violate anybody’s constitutional rights. This is a woman who has devoted countless hours trying to make the world better and to stem the tide of domestic violence. She has done so much work in this field to try to help people.”

Matthai said she did not represent Iles during her previous disciplinary actions and could not comment on them.

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Only in extreme cases does the commission remove judges from the bench.

Iles was appointed to the bench in 1983 by Gov. Jerry Brown after she worked in the Orange County public defenders’ and district attorney’s offices. On the bench, the Dana Point resident became an advocate for victims of domestic violence and in 1998 established the county’s first domestic-violence court.

The most recent case that the commission scrutinized came out of domestic violence court. Iles had placed the defendant, identified as “Mr. Wagner,” on probation for domestic violence.

When he would not cooperate with court staff nor donate $1,000 to a women’s shelter, as his probation required, Iles ordered her bailiff to arrest Wagner.

No bail was set, and Wagner remained in jail for 29 days until his next hearing.

The judicial council found that Iles’ ordering Wagner into custody without an opportunity to respond to the charges “clearly and convincingly reflects a disregard for his fundamental rights.”

Matthai said Iles was trying to help Wagner comply with terms of his probation “so he would get into a treatment program so the repeated cycle of violence in that home would stop.”

Attorney Harland “Harley” L. Burge Jr., 74, whose complaint spurred the commission’s private admonishment of Iles, was pleased to hear that the judicial council had publicly sanctioned her.

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“It’s about time,” he said. “There was no doubt in my mind that the way she operated in her courtroom, sooner or later she was going to overstep her bounds so severely that another one of these would come up.”

Burge said he was the victim of a vengeful Iles, who became upset after he criticized her in an appeals brief.

Two days after an appeals court overturned the misdemeanor sexual-battery conviction and criticized Iles, she wrote the district attorney’s office to accuse Burge of perjury. Iles repeatedly called that office about its investigation.

Prosecutors filed perjury charges against Burge in January 2003. The charges were dropped three months later when the state attorney general took over the case.

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