Dissatisfaction about rulings in child-custody cases has escalated into full-blown recall efforts against three Marin Superior Court judges. Petitions filed with the Marin Registrar of Voters this week say recall efforts have been launched against Marin Superior Court Judges Michael Dufficy, Lynn Duryee and Terrence Boren.
The petitions, which elections officials said are the first step in a process that could take a year, have triggered what is believed to be the first formal recall effort ever against Marin judges. The petitions against Dufficy and Duryee cite criticism of them in a citizen-commissioned report on the Marin family court system. The report accused the judges of routinely ruling against the interests of children, and in favor of cronies and parties with the upper hand financially.
Though Duryee normally doesn't handle family-law matters, she was involved in a child-custody dispute involving San Rafael auto dealer John Irish and his former wife, Deborah, a case that is a centerpiece of the report issued in February by New York investigator Karen Winner. The petition seeking Boren's recall cites the judge's involvement in a child-custody case that has resulted in criminal charges against a Novato woman, Carol Mardeusz, who is charged with attempting to deprive a former boyfriend of custody of a daughter the two had together. The case has been locked in the local courts for nearly a year, while Mardeusz has challenged the local court's jurisdiction and asserted the case should go to the federal courts. "We're a very determined group of people,'' said Peter Romanowsky of Sausalito, an organizer of the petition drive who has led twice-monthly protests outside the Marin Civic Center accusing local judges of corruption. "We've been robbed of our children.''
Court Commissioner Sylvia Shapiro, who along with Dufficy handles most family court matters, is not a part of the recall drive because she is an appointed - rather than elected - jurist. The response to the recall drive was muted in local courts. Neither Dufficy nor Duryee could be reached for comment. Boren said he is already preparing a response to the allegations made on the petition bearing his name. "To the extent that the petition alleges any deprivation of her rights or improprieties, those allegations are absolutely untrue,'' Boren said of assertions made about his handling of the Mardeusz case.
All three judges cited in the petitions filed this week - which give local officials notice of a pending recall drive - were elected to their current six-year terms after running unopposed. Officials in the county Registrar of Voters office, meanwhile, said any recall election involving the three judges won't reach the voters for at least a year.
Regulations require critics to gather about 12,000 signatures on each recall petition. Signatures would have to be verified in each case, and then qualified replacements would have to file as possible replacements for any judge recalled at the polls, said Madelyn De Justo, Marin's assistant registrar. Each of the judges named in the recall petitions is required by law to furnish the elections office with responses next week, De Justo said.
Once responses are filed, recall organizers will be required to submit petitions and have them approved by the elections office. Once the petitions are approved, organizers have 160 days to gather signatures. Romanowsky said Winner's report, issued at a press conference in Corte Madera in a room packed with angry litigants, galvanized the grass-roots movement that has resulted in the twice-monthly protests and the recall drive.
Among the issues cited in Winner's report were: * A case involving a 13-year-old girl who became so afraid of her father that she fled his home and traveled on her own to Los Angeles. A juvenile court in Los Angeles later found credible evidence to support the girl's claims of abuse, though Commissioner Shapiro discounted the reports. * Child support payments were sometimes routed first to attorneys and experts appointed by the court, who deducted their fees, leaving the children with less than expected. While the report may have energized critics of the family-law system, it was criticized soundly yesterday by John Montgomery, Marin's court administrator.
"Winner has no ethical standards, no skill as an investigator and she has an ax to grind,'' he said. He noted that Winner - author of a book called "Divorced from Justice'' - based her report on documents sent to her in New York, and did not read the entire files of the cases cited in her investigation. "They paid her $10,000 to write the kind of report they wanted,'' he said. "She did not conduct a real investigation because she didn't conduct interviews, look thoroughly through the files or take an objective look at both sides.''
Winner could not be reached for comment yesterday. Martin Silverman of San Rafael, a former civil grand juror who was one of a dozen people who paid for Winner's report, said he believes Winner conducted a fair and thorough investigation. "She spent at least five days here in Marin County and, to my knowledge, she spent a considerable amount of time looking through the case files,'' he said. He said he was unaware of the recall effort until a friend notified him of the petition drive yesterday. Silverman said he and other critics have considered a recall drive but deemed its success "virtually impossible'' due to a general lack of public knowledge about rulings taking place in Marin's family courts.
Silverman said he would sign a recall petition for Dufficy, but had no reason to believe either Duryee or Boren should be recalled. Contact reporter Guy Ashley via e-mail at [email protected] Brought to you by The Marin Independent Journal http://www.marinij.com