Marin Co. Judicial Recall -
"Storming The Bastille"

By Guy Ashley

Now she's concerned the report by New York investigator Karen Winner - which Taylor and about a dozen other citizens commissioned by contributing up to $10,000 from their own pockets - has spawned a monster.

What was intended as a well-considered look at perceived family court injustices - primarily child custody matters - has exploded into a recall movement that has enveloped Marin's chief prosecutor and three judges.

Taylor isn't the only one worried that the effort to raise awareness about local family court decisions is being obscured by a runaway movement led by a Sausalito minister and perennial political candidate and a mother from Novato who sued every judge in Sonoma County before bringing her wrath down on jurists in Marin.

"It's like a shooting gallery," said Martin Silverman of San Rafael, a former county grand juror who helped finance Winner's report. "They're going after everybody."

Taylor, Silverman and others who paid for the report and its call for family court reforms have watched with wonder, and some trepidation, as protesters held noisy Wednesday afternoon demonstrations and took out petitions seeking to recall District Attorney Paula Kamena and Superior Court judges Michael Dufficy, Lynn Duryee and Terrence Boren.

"Once Karen Winner's report was aired, all these people who harbored all these frustrations for so long thought, 'the cat's out of the bag,' " said Taylor, who has lived in San Rafael for 40 years. "Now they're going for blood."

Taylor and Silverman said they don't support the recall efforts and are frustrated by a public perception that they're behind the signature drive.

"We want to divorce ourselves from those people," Taylor said.

At the center of the recall drive is Peter Romanowsky, a father of three who says he "walked away" from a child custody dispute with his ex-wife and hasn't seen his children in more than three years.

Romanowsky is a marine salvage specialist who has made unsuccessful bids for election to the state Senate and the boards of the Sausalito School District and Marin Healthcare District. He leads regular protests outside the Marin Civic Center that he says are getting the word out that things need fixing in the county courts.

"One police officer told me that I was going to lose all my credibility, going after so many judges," he wrote in one of the voluminous e-mails he has been sending recall watchers. "Some people think we have bitten off more than we can chew, but it's just not so.

"We are storming the Bastille."...

Recall organizers face the formidable task of convincing about 13,000 registered Marin voters to sign their petitions calling for recall elections. A spokeswoman with the Marin Registrar of Voters said the petitions have yet to be certified because of wording that needs to be added or omitted from draft petitions submitted by recall leaders.

One political consultant who steered two successful recall campaigns in Marin said the courthouse recall movement stands a chance - if the signature gatherers are willing to put ample time and money into their efforts.

Mark O'Hara, who guided successful recalls involving the Marin Healthcare District and Sausalito school board, said he believes the courthouse critics include some well-financed individuals, at least one of whom already spent several hundred thousand dollars in fighting a child custody battle.

"If someone like that is willing to spend that kind of money on a recall, a lot of damage could be done," he said.

Although he is not involved in the recall, O'Hara said an effective campaign would direct its money toward gathering signatures and running a "thorough and persistent media campaign" to keep controversy in the minds of voters.

O'Hara said the recall campaign's greatest hope of success appeared to be with Dufficy, an embattled jurist who was a primary target in Winner's report and about whom rumblings of dissension have been heard at the courthouse for at least three years.

In 1997, the county Civil Grand Jury was asked to investigate rulings by Dufficy and Court Commissioner Sylvia Shapiro in family law cases.

Silverman, then chairman of the grand jury's law and justice committee, said the panel voted 19-0 to launch an investigation, only to be told by County Counsel Patrick Faulkner that the panel did not have jurisdiction to investigate.

Silverman said he remained concerned about Marin's family court after he left the grand jury, and later joined forces with other citizens who found the court's operations scandalous. The group determined that only wider public knowledge would spur change and began discussing how to shed light on happenings in family court.

Ironically, Silverman said, the group rejected the notion of a recall because it believed gathering the required signatures would be next to impossible if the public was not adequately informed. Instead, the group went to Winner, author of the 1996 book, "Divorced from Justice," in hopes she could help bring more public attention to the family court controversy.

Silverman has since run into his own problems with Kamena's office, which earlier this month revealed it was investigating whether he breached his oath to keep grand jury matters confidential by revealing publicly that the complaints that prompted the report originated with the grand jury.

Winner's report says Dufficy lined the pockets of friends by appointing them to child-custody cases as lawyers and psychological experts. He denies the charge, noting that court-appointed attorneys and psychological experts often are paid at rates so low that many in these professions don't want the work.

Winner says she spent three months putting together the report. She cited nine cases in her report that had been presented to her at the outset by people who approached her about doing the investigation and felt they had been wronged by the court.

The report also accuses Dufficy of keeping "secret financial ties" to local law firms, primarily by hearing cases involving Marin attorneys from offices where his wife worked as a legal secretary.

Dufficy said he obtained a verbal opinion from the state Judicial Council that allowed him to hear such cases and that he has informed litigants of his wife's status anyway.

Dufficy said he is being wrongly vilified. In an interview, he said his biggest transgression might have been his decision to stay at the helm of the county's family law bench for seven years.

"Unlike the other courts in this building, there is no jury. The judge makes all the decisions in family court," he said. "Over seven years, you build up a critical mass of people who are angry at you because they disagree with your rulings."

Dufficy, who said he now believes judges should serve in family court no more than two or three years, has announced his intention to leave the family law bench immediately. The stress caused by the flood of criticism, he said, has led to health problems he needs to correct.

Marin's legal establishment appears to be standing squarely behind Dufficy and the others.

"It's astounding they're taking this route," said Royda Crosland, a Mill Valley attorney who is president of the Marin County Bar Association. "If these people want to voice criticism in a constructive way, in a way that will be heard by the judges, they have taken the wrong approach. They've put everybody on the defensive and just closed the door to the possibility of a constructive dialogue."

Crosland said the local Bar Association has not taken a formal position on the recall drive, but she predicted the group would oppose the recall when it votes on a position at its monthly meeting in June.

Contact Guy Ashley via e-mail at gashley@marinij.com

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