Council: ‘No’ vote on Judge Estelle

PALMER — The state council in charge of making recommendations to voters in judicial elections has recommend against retaining District Court Judge William Estelle.

“The Council recommends a “No” vote on Judge Estelle because he filed 16 untrue affidavits under oath, from September 2011 through February 2013, swearing that he had completed or issued decisions in all matters that had been pending before him for more than six months, when in fact he had not completed those decisions,” reads the recommendation from the Alaska Judicial Council released Tuesday.

State law says that judges can’t be paid on time if they have matters that have waited longer than six months for a decision.

“The Judicial Council concluded that by filing the 16 untrue affidavits, Judge Estelle failed to conduct himself in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and competence of the judiciary,” the council’s press release states.

The matter of the affidavits has already had a review before another state body, the Alaska Commission of Judicial Conduct, which voted in May to recommend the Alaska Supreme Court suspend Estelle for 45 days.

Susanne Dipietro, executive director for the Alaska Judicial Council, said that the council’s process is completely separate from the commission’s process.

“The judicial council might recommend against the retention of a judge for conduct that the conduct commission might say, ‘hey no violation,’” she said.

The council — made up of three lawyers appointed by the Alaska Bar Association and three members of the public appointed by the governor — was formed at statehood with two main missions: vetting applicants for judgeships and winnowing the applicant pool the governor picks from, and conducting research to improve the administration of justice in the state. In the 1970s the legislature added another duty: making recommendations for voters about how to vote in judicial retention elections.

Since then, Dipietro said, the council has only 12 times decided to recommend voters not retain a judge. Voters have a mixed record for taking the council’s recommendation.

“I’d say we have a decent track record. It doesn’t happen all the time,” Dipietro said.

In 2010 voters threw out Anchorage judge Richard Postma on the council’s recommendation. But in 2008 they declined to take the council’s advice, voting to keep Bethel judge Dennis Cummings.

“During his next term in office he was brought up on public charges by the conduct commission,” DiPietro said.

News reports from the time indicate the recommendation from the judicial conduct commission was that the Supreme Court remove Cummings permanently. In 2013, the court took the commission’s recommendation, but by then Cummings had retired.

“A judge’s retirement does not extinguish the Commission’s and this court’s jurisdiction to complete disciplinary proceedings, and there are important policy reasons to do so,” the court wrote in its opinion removing Cummings.

DiPietro said that the process for making the recommendations is exhaustive, involving information gathered from attorneys, court staff, social workers, probations officers, even jurors, as well as taking a look at statistics like the number of times a judge has a ruling overturned or the number of times the judge has removed himself from a case. The council looks into confidential personnel records and even checks the judge’s credit ratings. All of that is given to the council members on a thumb drive.

“We used to give them paper volumes and literally a stack would be a foot tall,” DiPietro said.

She said that a lot of that information is available online at the council’s website. Estelle, for example, had a better reputation among jurors — a 4.9 out of 5 — than among attorneys, who ranked him a 3.6.

Estelle is a longtime Valley resident, living in Palmer since 1954, who graduated Palmer High School in 1972, according to his online court system biography. He graduated with a business degree from the University of Alaska Anchorage in 1973 and earned his law degree from Duke University in 1983. He’s lived in Anchorage and Bethel, returning to Palmer in 1987 and remaining here since.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.