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This article tells of corruption and nepotism taking place in the Alameda County DA's office, including the unlawful withholding of public records, to keep the unethical actions hidden from the public
Some time back, I published a short article about corruption and unethical practices in the Alameda County District Attorney's office, which is headed by Tom Orloff. I wanted to give an overview of what is going on:
I developed my gripe with the DA after he threatened and prosecuted me, on entirely false grounds, to shut me up, after I discovered he had protected his friend, a big shot local lawyer, when the lawyer stole $80,000 from a client.
Protecting the crooked lawyer was bad enough -- Orloff actually showed more concern for the lawyer's welfare than for his clients, and did nothing to investigate the complaints against the lawyer, --(Martin Nakahara, who was President of the Alameda County Bar Association, and is older brother of Judge Vernon Nakahara, of Alameda County Superior Court) --
but then Orloff first threatened me, then had me prosecuted on spurious gournds, to keep me from telling the story.
I did not believe this was possible, after all, we are supposed to be living in America, and not just America, but the Bay Area This could not happen here, right?
I found out, the truth is, Alameda County has always been run by corrupt political machines. Once they were Republican, now Democrat, but there is not so much difference.
I also found out, despite our belief we are very urbane here in Berkeley and Oakland, and our expectation of good local government, the DA's office has always been run on a "good old boy" basis. For that matter, the local court system in general works that way.
My trouble with Tom Orloff led me to investigate, and I found out his success is due to avoiding controversy, and making the right friends. The way he makes the right friends is by hiring the sons and daughters of VIPS. Especially the sons and daughters of the judges who try his own criminal cases. It would be conflict of interest, except there are special exceptions which allow him to do things private lawyers can't.
Here is a list of the VIPs whose sons and daughters were hired:
Attorney General Bill Lockyer's daughter, Lisa, was hired as a deputy DA right out of law school, by Tom Orloff. Although Lockyer was not Attorney General at the time, he was high up in the California Senate, particularly on the Judiciary Committee. So he was plenty powerful. Lisa Lockyer is now working at NASA Moffett Field. (by the way, when I first put the nepotism issue out on the WEB, a Google Search for the phrase "Lisa Lockyer" came out with very few hits, and my web page referencing nepotism was at the top of the list. Since then, only a few months, if you Google her name now, you get my web page, but it's after several pages about her put out by NASA. Someone apparently not only decided to put out a bunch of "puff:" pages to praise her, they managed to "game" Google so that the other listings came up way ahead of mine.... I guess if you can put a man on the moon, it's not too hard to manipulate the Web.
Congressmen Fortney "Pete" Stark -- his son Jeff Stark is a DA hired by Tom Orloff.
Congressmen Leon Panetta -- his son Vincent is a DA, hired by Orloff.
As for the sons and daughters of local judges, Orloff has hired around six of them as lawyers, and probably more in the non-lawyer jobs, but he will not release a list of his employees. (this is completely contrary to the Public Records Act, the California equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act. The names of public employees are valid public records, and the law requires disclosure of such records, but violating the law is nothing new for Orloff)
Judge Alfred Delucchi's son Paul Delucchi is a Deputy, hired by Orloff, after his father became an Alameda criminal court judge
Judge Peggy Fulton Hora's son Paul is a deputy, hired by Orloff, after his mother became an Alameda County criminal court judge.
Judge Carlos Ynostroza's daughter Maya is a deputy DA, hired by Orloff after her father became a criminal court judge.
Judge Kenneth Kingsbury may have a daughter hired by Orloff after her father became a criminal court judge. No one will give me informaiton, but Erin Kingsbury was hired recently. There are only about a dozen lawyers with last name "Kingsbury" in the entire state. No one will tell me if Erin in Judge Kingsbury's daughter, or some other relation.
Judge Jeffrey Horner may have a daughter, Catherine Horner Dobal, working in the DA's office, hired by Orloff after her Dad became a judge, once again on the criminal court, where he could help Orloff with his cases. One hand washs the other.
Judge Stanley Golde, now deceased, had a son, Michael, hired after his father became a criminal court judge.
And the fomer DA, John Meehan, hired his own son as a DA. The son still works there.
There are probably many others I do not know the names.
Doing a quick and dirty check, I found out Alameda County, whose population apparenlty has about times more of this type of nepotism than ALL OTHER BAY AREA COUNTIES, AND SACRAMENTO, COMBINED,
Since we have less population than all those put together, a good preliminary guess is, ten times the rate of nepotism here than elsewhere.
It's also important to keep in mind, NONE OF THE DEPUTY DAs RELATED TO JUDGES ARE RELATED TO JUDGES IN FAMILY LAW, OR CIVIL LITIGATION. TOM ORLOFF ONLY HIRES PEOPLE WHOSE PARENTS CAN HELP HIM WITH HIS CASES. SIMPLE AS THAT.
Judicial ethics require a judge to tell all litigants, on the record, whenever they have a conflict of interest, and whenever they have a situation which a litigant might interpret as a conflict of interest.
If you were in court, charged with some serious crime, would you want to know that the judge's kid was hired by Orloff? I would, but the judge's involved do nothing to inform anybody.
More on this story as it develops, and I go to court to try to get Orloff to obey the law, and turn over the records he has.
I developed my gripe with the DA after he threatened and prosecuted me, on entirely false grounds, to shut me up, after I discovered he had protected his friend, a big shot local lawyer, when the lawyer stole $80,000 from a client.
Protecting the crooked lawyer was bad enough -- Orloff actually showed more concern for the lawyer's welfare than for his clients, and did nothing to investigate the complaints against the lawyer, --(Martin Nakahara, who was President of the Alameda County Bar Association, and is older brother of Judge Vernon Nakahara, of Alameda County Superior Court) --
but then Orloff first threatened me, then had me prosecuted on spurious gournds, to keep me from telling the story.
I did not believe this was possible, after all, we are supposed to be living in America, and not just America, but the Bay Area This could not happen here, right?
I found out, the truth is, Alameda County has always been run by corrupt political machines. Once they were Republican, now Democrat, but there is not so much difference.
I also found out, despite our belief we are very urbane here in Berkeley and Oakland, and our expectation of good local government, the DA's office has always been run on a "good old boy" basis. For that matter, the local court system in general works that way.
My trouble with Tom Orloff led me to investigate, and I found out his success is due to avoiding controversy, and making the right friends. The way he makes the right friends is by hiring the sons and daughters of VIPS. Especially the sons and daughters of the judges who try his own criminal cases. It would be conflict of interest, except there are special exceptions which allow him to do things private lawyers can't.
Here is a list of the VIPs whose sons and daughters were hired:
Attorney General Bill Lockyer's daughter, Lisa, was hired as a deputy DA right out of law school, by Tom Orloff. Although Lockyer was not Attorney General at the time, he was high up in the California Senate, particularly on the Judiciary Committee. So he was plenty powerful. Lisa Lockyer is now working at NASA Moffett Field. (by the way, when I first put the nepotism issue out on the WEB, a Google Search for the phrase "Lisa Lockyer" came out with very few hits, and my web page referencing nepotism was at the top of the list. Since then, only a few months, if you Google her name now, you get my web page, but it's after several pages about her put out by NASA. Someone apparently not only decided to put out a bunch of "puff:" pages to praise her, they managed to "game" Google so that the other listings came up way ahead of mine.... I guess if you can put a man on the moon, it's not too hard to manipulate the Web.
Congressmen Fortney "Pete" Stark -- his son Jeff Stark is a DA hired by Tom Orloff.
Congressmen Leon Panetta -- his son Vincent is a DA, hired by Orloff.
As for the sons and daughters of local judges, Orloff has hired around six of them as lawyers, and probably more in the non-lawyer jobs, but he will not release a list of his employees. (this is completely contrary to the Public Records Act, the California equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act. The names of public employees are valid public records, and the law requires disclosure of such records, but violating the law is nothing new for Orloff)
Judge Alfred Delucchi's son Paul Delucchi is a Deputy, hired by Orloff, after his father became an Alameda criminal court judge
Judge Peggy Fulton Hora's son Paul is a deputy, hired by Orloff, after his mother became an Alameda County criminal court judge.
Judge Carlos Ynostroza's daughter Maya is a deputy DA, hired by Orloff after her father became a criminal court judge.
Judge Kenneth Kingsbury may have a daughter hired by Orloff after her father became a criminal court judge. No one will give me informaiton, but Erin Kingsbury was hired recently. There are only about a dozen lawyers with last name "Kingsbury" in the entire state. No one will tell me if Erin in Judge Kingsbury's daughter, or some other relation.
Judge Jeffrey Horner may have a daughter, Catherine Horner Dobal, working in the DA's office, hired by Orloff after her Dad became a judge, once again on the criminal court, where he could help Orloff with his cases. One hand washs the other.
Judge Stanley Golde, now deceased, had a son, Michael, hired after his father became a criminal court judge.
And the fomer DA, John Meehan, hired his own son as a DA. The son still works there.
There are probably many others I do not know the names.
Doing a quick and dirty check, I found out Alameda County, whose population apparenlty has about times more of this type of nepotism than ALL OTHER BAY AREA COUNTIES, AND SACRAMENTO, COMBINED,
Since we have less population than all those put together, a good preliminary guess is, ten times the rate of nepotism here than elsewhere.
It's also important to keep in mind, NONE OF THE DEPUTY DAs RELATED TO JUDGES ARE RELATED TO JUDGES IN FAMILY LAW, OR CIVIL LITIGATION. TOM ORLOFF ONLY HIRES PEOPLE WHOSE PARENTS CAN HELP HIM WITH HIS CASES. SIMPLE AS THAT.
Judicial ethics require a judge to tell all litigants, on the record, whenever they have a conflict of interest, and whenever they have a situation which a litigant might interpret as a conflict of interest.
If you were in court, charged with some serious crime, would you want to know that the judge's kid was hired by Orloff? I would, but the judge's involved do nothing to inform anybody.
More on this story as it develops, and I go to court to try to get Orloff to obey the law, and turn over the records he has.
For more information:
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1. Christopher "Case" Bates, son of Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. Bates was hired when his father was the local Assemblyman. There were some accusatoins of conflict of interest when Bates was charged with a misdemeanor for stealing and trashing copies of the UC Berkeley student newspaper which endorsed his opponent in the Mayor's election.
2 Amilcar "Butch" Ford, grandson of former Alameda County Judge Judith Ford. Amilcar Ford made the news when he tried to shut down a website critical of him, run by the mother of a woman he was prosecuting. Local legal experts, (Maya Harris of the No Cal ACLU and Peter Keane, Dean of a local law school, went on record as saying there was no legal basis whatever for Ford's actions, and eventually, after seeing lots of bad publicity, and the likelihood of more, he dropped it.
I found the incident interesting. First of all, it clearly fit the pattern of my prosecution at the hands of Orloff's henchman, and secondly, because Ford did not immediately drop his efforts when they became publicized. Did Orloff authorize it in an advance, or just fail to immediately stop it when he found out about it? The media did a good job of covering it, except that no one asked Tom Orloff for any comments.
Now for the biggest Nepotism hire I have uncovered so far:
The Alameda County Family Justice Center announced ther hiring of a new Executive Director recently, (late November or early December 2006, and it turns out it's Nadia Lockyer.
For a brief bio on her, please click this link (PDF file, very slow on dialup connection)
http://www.alamedacountyda.com/nadialockyer.pdf
The bio goes on for two pages on Lockyer, then at the end says, she "is married and has a young son, Diego"
No mention of who she is married to. Bill Lockyer, who was the Attorney General at the time she was hired.
There is no question at all Nadia Lockyer got the job because of who she is married to, and the failure to mention the husband's name is certainly not accidental.
The brochure goes into some detail about the two step search for the new Exec Direc, and names most of the individuals in both committees. (the author of the brochure names herself as one of the committee members, but does not say who she is. I believe it to be Nancy O'Malley, but as of Jan 10, 2007 I have not confirmed it.
Despite the big show of searching using two different committees, insiders have informed me the entire process was dominated by Nancy 0'Malley, the Alameda County Chief Assistant DA, (number 2 in the office ).
Besides the word of insiders, I checked the committee members. Out of four members of the final committee, two were DA staffers subordinate to Nancy O'Malley. (Lisa Foster and Karen Meredith) Out of the four members of the initial committee, one was Harold Boscovich, DA staffer, and one was unidentified.
Even if the selction process was done on democratic grounds, which I am assured it was not, the DA staffers would be able to block any other applicant, with theiri two out of four votes, and eventually force the others to accept Lockyer.
Additionally, it's worth noting, Nancy O'Malley has responded to my Public Records Act requests for more information by telling me it's all confidential. (certainly not true, though a large portion of it may be exempt because it relates to personnel decisions) and that Lockyer is her direct subordinate.
Since the DA's office is entirely free, under the County Charter, Section 35, to hire whomever it wants, the question arises, why the big pretense of an objective search?
Two possibilities come to mind:
1. They wanted to put on a show for the public, so it did not look like Tom Orloff and Nancy O'Malley were making the decision.
2. They wanted to puit on a show so that the Federal agency which partly finances the FJC, the Office on Violence Against Women, would not know there was nepotism involved.
I contacted the head of the OVW, Marybeth Buchanan, and she told me she would check into it. Apparently she did not know the new head would be Lockyer's wife.
Bill Lockyer certainly violated state law to get his wife hired. California Government Code Section 87100 and 87300. That law forbids an elected official from using his influence to effect the finances of any member of his immediate family. Obviously, getting someone a job effects their finances.
Did he also vioated Federal laws related to the FJC grant money? It seems likely. Generally, politicos like Lockyer et al, make a point of introducing themselves to other politicos or heads of high profile agencies. In the normal course of things, Lockyer would have probably called Buchanan directly, not tried to hide that his wife was getting the job.
In response to a Public Records Act request, after a bit of evasion, Lockyer assured me he has NO records about his wfie getting the job.
Again, very likely another lie, but this is far from over. I am planning to sue Lockyer for violating state law. Any lawyers who are willing to take on such a powerful man are urged to contact me.
Steve White boatbrain [at] aol.com