Judicial panel says Riverside judge guilty of misconduct

By: Associated Press - | Tuesday, April 17, 2007 10:46 PM PDT ∞

RIVERSIDE -- A judicial panel ruled that Superior Court Judge Robert Spitzer is guilty of misconduct for improperly intervening in a murder case.

The report by the three jurists now goes to the state Commission on Judicial Performance, whose members will decide whether to punish Spitzer. Penalties range from no action to removal from the bench.

The panel of special masters said Monday that Spitzer, 58, repeatedly failed to perform his judicial duties and was guilty of "willful misconduct" for improperly intervening in the murder case against Vondetrick Carr.

Carr was tried for murder after he crashed in Lake Elsinore while driving drunk, killing 13-year-old passenger Kyle Reiber. During Carr's first trial in 2004, Spitzer repeatedly asked Riverside County prosecutors why they were pursuing a murder charge rather than manslaughter.

The jury deadlocked, and Spitzer had a private conversation with the boy's mother, a potential witness in the retrial, telling her Carr had not meant to kill her son and that the accident should result in manslaughter charges.

Kyle's mother and the district attorney considered Spitzer's comments improper and an attempt to enlist her help in persuading the prosecutor to charge Carr with manslaughter instead of murder.

The district attorney successfully blocked Spitzer from hearing Carr's second trial, in which he was convicted of murder.

The Riverside County district attorney's office then asked that Spitzer be disqualified from hearing felony cases.

"Judge Spitzer abandoned his role as a neutral arbiter and became embroiled in the case," the three-judge panel's report said.

In two other cases, the panel found that Spitzer also sought ex parte conversations, or conversations held outside the courtroom, without seeking permission from the attorneys.

The state Commission on Judicial Performance has charged Spitzer with eight counts of misconduct. The commission claims Spitzer backdated files, failed to make timely decisions, filed false salary affidavits, made improper contact with witnesses in three criminal cases before him and showed bias against the prosecution in a murder case.

In their report, the judicial panel praised Spitzer for voluntarily entering therapy "to deal with the bad organizational habits that were jeopardizing some aspects of his job performance."

Spitzer attorney Reginald A. Vitek conceded the judge was a "horrible, horrible" manager.

"His courtroom is a mess, and that contributed to the fact ... that he delayed orders," Vitek said.

The attorney said Spitzer did not believe he was violating judicial guidelines when he contacted people involved with cases before him.

"He never believed he was running afoul of the canons of judicial conduct," Vitek said.