600 POUND VEGAS JUDGE MUST STAND FOR REELECTION

For those of you not familiar with the long running saga of the gargantuan Vegas Judge everyone loves to hate, you can get up to speed with these ABA Journal posts here, here, here, and here, and (on a more humorous vein) the Above the Law posts archived here.

To sum up, a 500 pound rookie Vegas judge—who married an ex-prison felon she calls Evil Ed—soon found herself in trouble with disciplinary authorities for misconduct ranging from insulting staff with anti-Semitic epithets, to dining with sitting jurors, to sleeping on the bench, to forcing her bailiff to give her foot rubs and to microwave her food in her smelly private bathroom. (The former bailiff, Jonnie Jordan, even claims that Halverson asked him to shoot “Evil Ed".)

Last year the Chief Judge locked Halverson out of the courthouse citing security concerns relating to Halverson’s coterie of private “body guards” that Halverson claimed were necessary to protect her from other judges/court administrators, but the Nevada Supreme Court ordered Hardcastle to let the larger-than-life jurist back in.

Halverson—who is literally too fat to walk and zooms about in a motorized scooter—has been inexhaustible fodder for humorous posts on legal blogs ever since.

Her foibles have included a $40,000 judgment resulting in the garnishment of her judicial pay, a citation by the County for keeping such a dirty house it was deemed a health hazard, and an libel action against her by a former courtroom clerk after Halverson gave a televised press conference accusing the clerk of ticket fixing.

Much hilarity ensued.

Then, in 2008, the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline temporarily suspended Halverson (pending a trial on disciplinary charges) as a “danger to the public”. This time the Nevada Supreme Court refused to intervene, and the disciplinary hearing set for June, 2008, was continued to August 4 when Halverson’s high powered legal team quit after Halverson indicated she could not pay her estimated six figure legal bill stemming from her legal troubles.

Halverson—who has since grown to 600 pounds—then sued the Elections Commissioner in the Nevada Supreme Court asserting that she should not have to stand for reelection as currently scheduled in August, 2008—because the 2 year term of office for which she was elected is contrary to the Nevada Constitution (which provides for 6 year judicial terms).

In a double blow the leviathan jurist, in today’s developments, the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline has ordered Halverson to submit to a psychiatric evaluation or abandon her defense that her “issues” are “disability” related, and the Nevada Supreme Court has ruled that she must stand for reelection as scheduled after all.

Although Halverson’s judicial days appear to be numbered, this being Las Vegas anything can happen, and we are hoping it will.
:
UPDATE: Judge Halverson filed discrimination complaint against Nevada Supreme Court. In Foot Note 38 of the above linked opinion holding that Halverson must stand for reelection this August, the Court revealed that the day before oral argument in the case on June 13, 2008, Halverson filed a discrimination complaint against the Court with the EEOC. “We note that on June 6, 2008, Halverson signed a complaint that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received on June 12, 2008. Halverson failed to inform this court of the existence of this complaint during the June 13, 2008, oral argument, at which time this court took this writ petition under submission." Nice touch.