From the March 2002 Idaho Observer:

Can 1,100 complaints be wrong?

By The Idaho Observer

The entity currently commissioned to investigate complaints of judicial abuse is the Idaho Judicial Council (IJC). The IJC is a body comprised of two attorneys and three laypersons that answers to the Idaho State Supreme Court.

According to IJC figures, it receives an average of about 200 complaints of judicial abuse each year. Of those some 1,100 complaints since 1995, only three have resulted in disciplinary action.

The IJC receives the complaints and conducts an investigation. The IJC summarily dismisses almost all complaints but neither the complainant nor the public is allowed access to details of the investigation.

In 1999 Lawyer John Bradbury sued the IJC in District Court after it dismissed a complaint he had filed against Chief Justice Linda Copple Trout for obvious conflicts of interest he uncovered as the Lunders' family attorney in Lunders v. Snyder (1998). Justice Trout was a friend of the Snyders and refused to recuse herself from the case.

It should be noted that the IJC was represented by the Idaho Attorney General's office.

Bradbury found that he had no access to the details of an investigation that failed to find merit to his well-documented conflict claims. The District Court upheld the IJC so Bradbury appealed the decision to The Idaho State Supreme Court. Not surprisingly, since Chief Justice Trout is a member of the Supreme Court and the IJC is a creature of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court dismissed Bradbury's complaint in July, 2000. He appealed the decision with the U.S. Supreme Court which declined to hear his appeal.

At the Idaho Judicial Conference at Templins Resort in Post Falls last July 15, IJC Director Robert Hamlin happily reported to some 120 state judges that, of the 200 complaints, “95 percent” were summarily dismissed “without having to recommend disciplinary action.”

Earlier in his discussion, Hamlin explained that the IJC's job was difficult in that it had to be sensitve to the rights of judges and the needs of the public. If that were true, would Hamlin have been as happy to report that 95 percent of their claims had been summarily dismissed without disciplinary action to a convention of judicial complaint filers? Would the news have been equally well-received?

The Idaho Observer has been in print since January, 1997. Since that time we have published the stories of dozens of people who lost their property, their businesses, their children and/or their freedom as a result of provable judicial abuse. We have reported, based upon facts and evidence, that judges will: knowingly allow perjured testimony; allow false, tampered and manufactured evidence; deny the admission of exculpatory evidence; turn civil cases into criminal cases; deny/rush/misinterpret due process; practice law from the bench; misapply laws; misinterpret case law; badger witnesses and; badger defendants.

Are 1,100 Idaho complainants wrong? Are tens of thousands of complainants nationwide wrong?