SUPREME COURT JUSTICE RHONDA WOOD: Her trial testimony is focus of ethics complaint.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Bill Bowden reported this morning that the agency that reviews judicial ethics in Arkansas has received a complaint about Supreme Court Justice Rhonda Wood as a result of her testimony in the bribery trial of former Sen. Gilbert Baker.
Baker’s case ended in a mistrial and he will be retried. He’s accused of a bribery scheme in funneling campaign cash to then-judicial candidate Mike Maggio. Maggio has pleaded guilty and served a federal sentence for reducing a $5.2 million jury verdict against a nursing home owned by Michael Morton in return for Morton’s campaign contributions. Morton, who has not been charged, and Baker have said these were merely legal campaign contributions, not bribes.
Baker was also a conduit of Morton’s money and from others to Wood, a friend in Conway. Morton was her single biggest financial supporter and he sent checks to her campaign before judicial campaigns could legally raise money (180 days before an election). She claimed to be unaware of this or that Baker had changed the dates on the checks to make them appear legal. She was also a close friend of Maggio when both were circuit judges in Conway and provided counsel to him during the critical period when the nursing home case was pending and Baker was raising money for Maggio and Wood’s race for Arkansas Supreme Court. Baker solicited money from Morton while he faced a $5.2 million judgment for patient abuse that ultimately would be reviewed by the court Wood was running for. Morton quickly supplied $48,000. Wood said she didn’t know about this, but did say she knew he was on a list to be solicited. Other nursing home interests chipped in, too. Wood tried to pass off the nursing home money, half of the total she raised, as “medical community” contributions.
Wood couldn’t recall all the specifics about her phone interaction with Maggio during Baker trial testimony. Text messages between the two had been scrubbed at her urging, Maggio said, so they could not be reconstructed. She insists she spoke with him only about the ethics matter that cost him his job — injudicious posting on an Internet site — and not campaign finance. Some of her testimony seems at odds with known facts. The complaint, which you can read in full here, alleges.
Wood was required to answer truthfully during her testimony in the Baker trial. Yet, she stated that she did not have any conversation with Baker regarding the Morton checks prior to the 180-day window, despite the fact that: (a) Baker texted her the very evening that he received the checks; (b) Baker texted Maggio on that same date, informing him that money was on the way; (c) Baker contacted Chris Stewart, who was part of setting up and managing the PACs that were funded by the Morton checks; (d) Wood had not communicated with Baker for roughly two weeks prior to the July 9 text exchange after the checks were received; and (e) Wood admittedly was talking to Baker about her fundraising and Maggio’s fundraising around the time the Morton checks were delivered. Claiming that she had no conversation, however brief, with Baker regarding the receipt of the Morton checks strains credulity to its breaking point.
Though Wood will undoubtedly argue that many of the facts alleged in the complaint concern matters beyond the time limitation for judicial complaints, untruthful testimony in a federal trial last year would seem to contribute to an unfavorable view of a member of the judiciary. That IS actionable under the ethical canons and not time-barred.
Among others, the complaint says that Wood should have reported Maggio to judicial and bar disciplinary agencies when evidence surfaced that he’d lowered the home nursing verdict following campaign contributions. It says Wood allowed her personal relationship with Maggio to influence her conduct, such as by telling Maggio to delete text messages. It also complains of violations of campaign finance law, including the use of state personnel and equipment to file campaign reports and allowing Baker to raise money prematurely.
Wood told Bowden through campaign spokesman Robert Coon that the complaint was “frivolous” and a “political hit job.” Coon said Wood was disturbed by reports of Maggio’s comments on the Internet chat board (including revealing the confidential adoption of a child in Arkansas by Charlize Theron) and that’s why she asked him to delete messages and severed communications with him. The response didn’t mention her role in the destruction of evidence that might have contributed to the investigation of Maggio’s conduct.
The complaint was filed by the Arkansas Public Law Center, a nonprofit that has been active for years in public interest legal matters. It has supported actions, among others, that challenged an illegal legislative expense scheme; overturned the state ban on same-sex marriages; overturned a voter ID law; overturned a law extending an unconstitutional tax break to billboard owners, and successfully challenged money sent unconstitutionally to legislators’ local pork-barrel projects in the General Improvement Fund scandal. Ernest Dumas, a Law Center board member and Times contributor, told the Democrat-Gazette’s Bowden that the complaint was spurred by lawyers’ alarm at Wood’s testimony in the Baker trial.
As I have disclosed before, I am a member of the board of the Public Law Center. I did not participate in the drafting of the complaint filed with the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission, but I support a review of Wood’s actions.
I’ve written about this before.
As I wrote then, the trial laid bare behavior by various actors that was either unethical, dishonest or illegal. It was a black mark on the highest court in Arkansas to have a Supreme Court justice in the embarrassing middle of it. Her ethical appearance already had been soiled. She decided to resume hearing Michael Morton cases after refusing for a time, though recused again when it became known she’d be a witness in the Gilbert Baker trial.
Wood is running for re-election this year. She has no announced opposition. If there’s to be accountability for the ill appearance she and others have given the judiciary and the Arkansas political system, it can only be from the state’s judicial discipline agency or the state Ethics Commission.
I mention the Ethics Commission because testimony in the Baker trial also included sworn accounts of illegal “straw” campaign contributions to Mike Maggio’s Court of Appeals campaign — contributions made in the name of lobbyists who’d received the money elsewhere. This is a matter worthy of state Ethics Commission consideration. It also could take up the question of money-raising by Baker for Wood in advance of the legal money-raising season.
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