Six Days, Seven Nights

The Indiana Supreme Court has suspended a circuit court judge for six days without pay.

We find that Respondent, the Honorable Dean A. Young, Judge of the Blackford Circuit Court, engaged in judicial misconduct relating to a temporary restraining order that he heard and issued without adequate notice to the responding party or witnesses, and while he had a specific interest in the subject matter. The Special Masters recommended, and the parties agree, that the appropriate discipline is to suspend Judge Young for six days without pay.

The story

This case arose in 2015 from a disagreeable relationship between Derinda Shady, who was the elected Blackford County Clerk, and the County’s two judges: Circuit Court Judge Young and Superior Court Judge John Barry. The tension culminated in the two Judges holding a restraining-order hearing at which Shady was not present, then issuing a restraining order barring her from the courthouse until the order was vacated six days later.

Shady sought help for funding cuts to her office and the judges declined

Those decisions angered Shady—she told Judge Young, “You can collect your own court costs, too,” and she told Judge Barry that he’d “better bring a cop” if he came to retrieve the files. She apologized a few days later and let the files be transferred without incident. But she also continued referring to the Judges by obscene names in front of office staff and the public. (The Judges knew secondhand of her insolence but took no action.)

After the City Council did not assist

The Council rejected Shady’s staffing appeal, and Shady was rude to Council members afterward—but she made no specific threat not to do her job or to destroy court records. Judge Barry received reports about Shady’s rude behavior and told Judge Young about them, but Judge Young did not see Shady’s behavior firsthand.

The next day

The next morning, August 20, Judge Young arrived at the courthouse at about 7:30 and began making phone calls, including to one of the Council members, asking about Shady’s behavior the previous evening. He then met with Judge Barry and suggested that they “would have a hearing and ‘lock [Shady] out of her office’” if her behavior did not change.

By 8:00 that morning, Judge Young went to the Clerk’s Office to demand that Shady come upstairs to meet with him and Judge Barry. Shady was on the phone at the time, but after her call, she phoned Judge Young and told him “if he had something to say that he could come down to her office.” Judge Young replied, “Get up here! Now!” Shady came upstairs and brought her daughter, Deputy Clerk Patricia Milholland. But Judge Young was unwilling to have Milholland present. At a stalemate, Shady and Milholland went back downstairs after a few minutes, and no meeting happened that day.

Shady went to a hospital that day after a “panic attack”

Beginning at 8:25 a.m., Judges Young and Barry sua sponte began a hearing to enjoin Shady from the Courthouse. There was no written application, affidavit, or verified complaint. Shady had no written notice of the date and time of the hearing or its subject, nor did the Deputy Clerks who were present have prior written notice of the allegations against them before Judge Young questioned them.

At the hearing, with no personal knowledge of the reasons for Shady’s absence, Judge Young stated that she had “stormed out” and “fled the courthouse grounds.” He also stated that the Sheriff was “unable to secure her attendance,” even though there had been no further efforts in that regard—and even though Shady’s daughter Milholland was present. Judge Young also made comments evincing bias against Shady—including that she was “totally poisoning this workplace” and that if she’d made her “bring a cop” comment to him instead of Judge Barry, “she would be here in hunter orange this morning, in chains, where she would stay and enjoy her Thanksgiving dinner, probably her Christmas dinner as well.”

Judge Young then declared an “emergency” that “the Clerk is unfit to assume her duties,” and that she would be “locked out of the entire courthouse square.” He further announced that Shady “will be arrested” if she appeared at the courthouse before the next hearing, which he set for August 26, six days later—even though there had been no evidence or allegations that Shady had threatened to sabotage the Court’s files…

By 1:30 the same afternoon, Judges Young and Barry issued a temporary restraining order (“the TRO”) of Judge Young’s drafting, barring Shady from the courthouse grounds until a hearing set for August 26 at 11:00 a.m. The TRO stated in part that “evidence indicates that [Shady] will refuse to obey the lawful commands of the Courts regarding Court business” and “refuse or sabotage” the Superior Court’s business. Even though Judge Young was the requestor of the TRO, he presided over the hearing and did not disqualify or request appointment of a special judge.

On the morning of August 25, Shady’s attorney called Judges Young and Barry on the phone, seeking a continuance of the next day’s hearing and pointing out “that the case was in an odd posture because the judges were both parties and presiding over the case.” At that point, the Judges sought advice from counsel for the Commission, who recommended that the judges “deescalate the situation and work towards a settlement.” By that afternoon, the TRO was dissolved.

The court on de novo review agreed with the Special Masters findings on misconduct and sanction.

The Chicago Tribune reported on the proceedings below.  The charges were reported by The Indiana Lawyer. (Mike Frisch)