Suspension recommended for Palmer judge

PALMER — Citing concerns over how he filled out affidavits to be paid for his work, a state commission has recommended suspending a local judge for 45 days.

District Court Judge William Estelle has filed documents admitting he filled the forms out incorrectly but saying he did not violate ethics rules.

The Alaska Commission on Judicial Conduct disagreed. The commission can’t discipline judges, only recommend that the Alaska Supreme Court do so. Recommending a public action against a judge is something that the commission does rarely — something like once every other year — and a suspension is one of the more serious actions it can recommend.

“The range that the Supreme Court can impose is a public reprimand or censure, a suspension, or a removal,” said Marla Greenstein, the commission’s executive director.

But, according to the recommendation from the commission, the baseline recommendation for a suspension is six months, so 45 days is a less-serious suspension.

So what did Estelle do? It has to do with pay affidavits. In order to receive some of their pay, district court judges have to sign affidavits swearing that they have no matters ready for them to decide that have had to wait longer than six months.

In Estelle’s case, he signed 16 such affidavits when he had cases pending. Three of those cases are listed in the commission’s recommendation: Wasilla Airport Condominium Association v. Twohy, Doroshchuk v. AAA Alaska Insurance Company and Miles v. Kaatz.

The Miles v. Kaatz case, in particular, had to wait over a year — it was ready for Estelle’s ruling March 10, 2011, and didn’t see a ruling until March 12, 2012.

For his part, Estelle said he just didn’t know that the affidavits he was signing related to whether he had cases open that long.

“At some unidentified point in time, he stopped reading the pay affidavits. He testified that he came to believe the pay affidavits were interconnected with (reports of leave he’d taken), and he thought his signature on the affidavits was an affirmance of the substantive data on the leave reports,” reads the recommendation from the council.

In an answer to the commission’s initial complaint, posted on the commission’s website, Estelle argues that what he did was, essentially, an honest mistake. He didn’t act unethically, nor did he act selfishly. He was remorseful about signing the affidavits.

“Judge Estelle has improved his office practices and procedures to prevent similar problems from occurring again,” his attorney wrote on his behalf.

For its part, the commission actually believed Estelle when he said he signed the affidavits without knowing what they said. Still, that showed recklessness, and judges are held to a very high standard.

“A member of the public who is aware of Judge Estelle’s violations is likely to question how any judge can hold lawyers, litigants and witnesses to the high standard of responsibility imposed when a sworn statement is made,” the commission wrote.

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