In the past year, two Orange County Superior Court judges found themselves on the opposite side of the bench, one facing criminal charges for murder while the other pleaded guilty to fraud.
But they’re not the only members of Orange County’s judiciary facing questions about their ethics in recent years.
A Voice of OC review found six other judges who were either named in civil lawsuits or were publicly critiqued for misconduct by state regulators since 2014, with others facing questions around their ethics or investigations from the federal Department of Justice.
Who Judges the Judges?
While judges usually make the final call on who faces punishment, there is one group that oversees them – the state’s Commission on Judicial Performance, which has the power to publicly admonish and even remove judges from office.
It’s an action rarely taken.
From 2014 to 2024, the commission only removed four judges from office according to their reports, and around 97% of the complaints they received ended without any consequences for the accused judges.
To review the commission’s public database, click here.
Commission members come from all over the state, including appointees from the governor, the state senate’s rules committee, and two superior court judges from county courts along with a member of the state appellate court appointed by the California Supreme Court.
The agency also has around 16 staff attorneys who review cases and can potentially charge judges with wrongdoing.
Currently, there are 141 judges serving across the county according to the courts’ website.
Commission members have chastised Orange County judges seven times since 2014 according to their public database.
That’s only happened three times in San Diego County in that same timeframe.
Both Riverside and San Bernardino each have only seen that happen once in the last decade.
When a judge gets admonished, they have the option to either accept the charge or they can fight it, at which point the state Supreme Court appoints three special masters and holds a bench trial to determine if the judge acted inappropriately.
After the bench trial, there’s a final hearing in front of the commission, which makes the final decision on what punishment the judge should face.
Who Are the Judges Facing Criminal Charges?
The commission has only suspended one judge in Orange County – Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson, who was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 35 years in prison last September after he shot and killed his wife.
While Ferguson has not yet been formally stripped of his judgeship, the commission suspended him without pay pending the outcome of any possible appeals. After appeals are finished, the commission can move to formally revoke his judgeship.
Ferguson was also admonished by the commission in 2017 for several actions on his Facebook page, including friending multiple criminal defense attorneys who appeared in his court and claiming a candidate for a judgeship had previously had sex with defense attorneys on cases where she was a prosecutor.
“Judge Ferguson acknowledged that he was wrong to write the post, recognized that it fell outside the bounds of professionalism and the decorum expected of a bench officer, and apologized for his conduct,” commissioners wrote in their admonishment.
Israel Claustro also resigned his judgeship on Jan. 7 of this year after pleading guilty to defrauding one of the state’s worker’s compensation programs through a company that wasn’t connected to his work as a judge or previously as a prosecutor.
[Read: OC Superior Court Judge Pleads Guilty to Fraud and Resigns]
Claustro had not received any previous penalties from the commission at the time of his guilty plea, and has not yet been sentenced, but prosecutors are recommending he be sentenced to house arrest.
Commission Calls Out Misbehaving Judges
While it’s rare for the commission to remove sitting judges, they regularly issue admonishments for judges on the bench.
In 2014, commission members censured Judge Scott Steiner for having sex with two different women in chambers, both of whom were former law students of his.
Steiner “expressed great remorse and contrition,” according to the commission’s report, and won reelection in 2016 and in 2022 ran unopposed.
Judge Julian Bailey was admonished by the commission on Halloween 2024 for being “engaged in a pattern of discourteous, undignified, and impatient behavior with female and/or inexperienced attorneys, in 10 separate matters,” according to the commission’s report.
Most of Bailey’s comments centered on complaints about women attorneys’ body language, with the report documenting multiple instances in which he complained to attorneys in court about their posture.
“If you sigh and you roll your eyes at the court when the person who is protected asks for that date, you’re not playing well with me,” Bailey said to one attorney according to the report. “You know, we can communicate in ways other than with words and nonverbal communication can be very telling. And I’m just sharing with you my response to your sigh and rolling of the eyes. Okay?”
Former Judge Timothy Stafford, who retired in 2018, was admonished for “undignified remarks,” on a ruling that was later overturned on appeal when appellate judges “found that Judge Stafford had abused his discretion,” according to the report.
The case centered on a woman seeking a restraining order against her coworker for unwanted advances, which Stafford denied, comparing the two to “junior high school students,” and commenting about oral sex, which other judges found inappropriate.
Stafford accepted the admonishment without calling for a review.
Former Judge Derek Hunt also accepted an admonishment from the commission for publicly complaining about a plaintiff in one case that was looking to file anonymously and for arguing with an appellate judge who overturned one of his rulings on a different case.
“I cannot believe that there’s a public policy in the state of California that permits adults to bring lawsuits under fictitious names just because of their transient, personal feelings having been hurt or damaged,” Hunt said according to the report. “Tell your client to step up to the bar and give his name and litigate like a grown-up.”
Judges Face Civil Court for Past Actions in OC DA’s Office
Beyond the commission, two Orange County Superior Court Judges have been drawn into lawsuits from their treatment of women back when they were prosecutors.
One of those is Judge Shawn Nelson, who was District Attorney Todd Spitzer’s right hand man after he left his position as a county supervisor.
Nelson was sued alongside Spitzer and the county by former prosecutor Tracy Miller, who claimed she was harassed by Nelson and Spitzer for helping other women report sexual harassment in the DA’s office.
[Read: OC Supervisors Don’t Answer Calls For Action Against DA For Harassment of Female Prosecutors]
A jury found Nelson harassed Miller, but noted he did not “engage in the conduct with malice, oppression, or fraud.” Miller ultimately won $2 million for her suit.
OC Superior Court Judge Richard Zimmer is also named in a civil suit brought by an anonymous prosecutor, claiming retaliation after she reported being sexually harassed by two different managers at the DA’s office while Zimmer was a supervisor there.
“Plaintiff was subjected to disparate treatment, public humiliation, and unequal enforcement of workplace rules. She also observed a broader pattern within OCDA of disparate discipline and promotional opportunities that specifically affected attorneys of minority ethnicities,” her lawyers wrote. “These inequities were noted and remarked upon by peers, judges, and other members of the legal community.”
After filing complaints, she claims Zimmer filed a series of complaints about her work to “weaponize these stale allegations into a sham disciplinary investigation.”
The case also claimed that Nelson “threatened to terminate Plaintiff if she did not withdraw her judicial application,” and that she feared retaliation moving forward.
That case has not yet gone to trial and she has not received a settlement.
Ethical Challenges Linger for Some Judges Despite Absence of Charges
County Supervisor Andrew Do pleaded guilty to bribery in 2024 in a packed room at the Ronald Reagan courthouse, admitting he’d worked with both his daughters to illegally divert over $10 million to contracts who gave him bribe money he used to pay his property taxes.
[Read: Former OC Supervisor Andrew Do Pleads Guilty to Bribery Scheme]
But there was one person absent from the courtroom that day – his wife, then-Orange County Assistant Presiding Judge Cheri Pham, the second most powerful judge in the county who works just across the street and heard 17 different cases that day.
Pham was never charged with anything, but the rest of her family has been named by federal prosecutors in their investigation.
Pham was on track to take over as presiding judge of the OC Superior Court, but took herself out of the running after her husband’s arrest.
[Read: County Supervisor’s Wife Declines To Seek Top Judge Seat Amidst Family Controversy]
She remains a judge on the family law panel, according to the court’s website.
Judge Ebrahim Baytieh has also faced a series of questions over his conduct in the District Attorney’s office, with DA Todd Spitzer going from calling him his “ethical North Star,” to firing him for failing to turn over evidence in a case.
[Read: Santana: Did OC District Attorney Todd Spitzer Fire a Top Prosecutor to Protect Himself?]
Baytieh was also directly named in a lawsuit against the county from former Public Defender Scott Sanders, alleging Baytieh failed to properly oversee the confidential informants program.
That same program was embroiled in an investigation from the federal Department of Justice for years, with investigators concluding the program “systematically violated criminal Sixth Amendment right to counsel and Fourteenth Amendment right to due process of law,” for numerous prisoners in Orange County jails.
Shortly after he was fired, Baytieh won an election for judge and was put in charge of the state’s controversial CARE Court program, which has continued to face questions statewide over whether it works.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.