THE FAMILY COURT PROJECT HAS COME TO A CLOSE.
Effective 6/1/08, Family Court Chronicles has become inactive (announcement), and
no new information will be added. The page below is retained for
archive purposes, but it could be out of date. Upon request,
the webmaster will
continue to correct significant errors and will consider
removing information that is destructively obsolete.
(Email: FamilyCourtGuy (at) gmail.com) Glenn Campbell's other websites
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4/26/07:
Photos from Escondido Renaissance Faire
(RoamingPhotos.com/gc)
Off-topic photos from one of our photo safaris. This past weekend we returned to a Renaissance Festival in San Diego, and ran into some old pirate and gypsy friends. - Linkable
Entry
Chief District Court Judge Kathy Hardcastle is stripping District Judge Elizabeth Halverson's docket of criminal cases.
Hardcastle said Tuesday she is transferring all of Halverson's criminal and civil cases to another judge and Halverson will receive a fresh stack of only civil cases. The change, which takes effect Monday, will give Halverson time to gain experience on the bench, Hardcastle said.
Halverson has been under fire for her lack of legal experience, particularly in criminal cases, since she took the bench in January. Also, only one member of Halverson's initial courtroom staff is still working with her.
Comments from the Webmaster
If we can translate all of the "no comments" and polite language of
this article: Halverson is a wacko who has driven away her staff and
is totally inept on the bench.
Excited delirium - "E.D." to those who believe - started appearing in medical journals in the 1980s, when it was initially dubbed "in-custody death syndrome." Over time, excited delirium has been cited by police in the deaths of suspects who have been hogtied, pepper-sprayed or shocked with a Taser. Violent struggle has always been a hallmark of deaths attributed to excited delirium. The sufferer typically fights police, emergency medical personnel or jail guards who, in turn, often resort to restraint tactics.
Whether the deaths are because of excited delirium, or the violent struggle, or some combination of both, is uncertain.
Nevada has once again landed at the bottom of the list, and, once again, not in a good way.
The Corporation for National and Community Service released a report last week that ranked the Silver State dead last in the nation for its rate of people who volunteer. It's the second year in a row that Nevada has come in 51st out of a pool of 51 in the report.
Drop-out volunteers are also a big problem in Nevada, said Robert Grimm, director of the service's research and policy development.
"It appears that many people in Nevada who volunteer do not keep volunteering," Grimm said.
After the cancer vaccine bill was put on the desk, Titus tried to force reconsideration of an unrelated measure favored by Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, calling for the appointment of district judges and Supreme Court justices. Titus said her effort was not because of politics. But she failed Tuesday to gain enough support to amend the measure, so it has gone to the Assembly.
Video surveillance of the family court hearing shown to the jury Tuesday depicts a testy Wells talking back to Moss, as she tried to rebuke him for failing to lock up his guns.
His 12-year-old son had committed suicide with one of the unsecured weapons.
"I'm getting screwed here, and I'm supposed to just take it?" Wells shouted as Moss' bailiff Norman Adams approached him.
Adams testified Tuesday he placed one hand on Wells' back and another on his wrist as he attempted to cuff Wells to restrain him.
Wells then turned around and threw haymakers at Adams and his assistant bailiff, knocking them both down.
Comments from the Webmaster
NOTE: The inverted butt shown in this photo belongs
to a bailiff named Brad and the man in the blue suit is
attorney Randle Roske, both of whom are known to Family
Court Chronicles as troublemakers.
They probably provoked the poor man.
CARSON CITY -- A bill mandating that insurance companies cover a cervical cancer vaccine and an entirely unrelated measure seeking the appointment of judges appeared to become entangled in a political dispute in the Senate on Monday.
The drama began when the Senate took up reconsideration of Senate Bill 409, a measure sought by Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, to require the coverage for the vaccine.
Titus then sought reconsideration of a measure by Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio that would adopt a "Missouri Plan" of appointing district judges and Supreme Court justices in Nevada....
Raggio's Senate resolution would adopt the "Missouri Plan" of appointing district judges and Supreme Court justices in Nevada. Currently in Nevada, judges and justices run in open elections.
Under the resolution, after their appointment through a selection process, judges and justices would appear on the ballot for retention or rejection by the voters.
A judge getting less than 60 percent of the vote would not be retained, and a new judicial appointment would then be made.
Nevada voters in 2010 would have to approve the appointment proposal before it could take effect.
Voting against the constitutional amendment were five Republicans.
If a vote for reconsideration is successful and if Titus can convince several of her Democratic colleagues to switch their votes to join with the five Republicans who are opposed, a second vote on Senate Resolution 2 could see it go down to defeat....
But Amodei said if the reconsideration of the Missouri plan resolution is a political gambit, Republicans who opposed the measure can continue to do so without fear the measure will be lost.
"Republicans who voted against SJR2 don't have to vote on SJR2 (today), they just have to vote against reconsideration," he said. "I can tell you what, I'm a guy who voted against SJR2 and I can tell you right now I'm not going to vote for reconsideration."
In a push to reduce homelessness downtown, the county Board of Supervisors has declared zero tolerance for families living on skid row and is concentrating efforts on finding homes for children, even if that means children are eventually removed from their parents.
The rationale for the initiative is simple: Skid row — with its rat-infested homeless camps, drug bazaars and prostitution — is no place for a child.
But the role of children's protection workers, who assess youngsters for signs of neglect and abuse, has drawn opposition from advocates for the homeless and skepticism from even some county supervisors.
The school's success has caused many to heap praise on Morgan, who was dean of the University of Wyoming's law school before taking the helm at ASU.
It has also silenced doubters, who had concerns about the relevancy of a law school in Nevada and whether the school would measure up.
"The biggest issue for me when I came here was to get the community united in the belief that the law school would be a good thing for Nevada," he said. "There was a real split in the community in 1997 about whether the state should spend money on a law school, and there even was a split in the legal community."
A 13-year old Las Vegas girl shares her painful past so that other foster kids won't give up hope. And now Heather Wilder's courage and commitment are being recognized on a national level.
The nation got their first glimpse of Heather when she lit up the pages of People Magazine's April issue. Looking at her smile now, its hard to imagine her traumatic childhood, but Heather remembers sleeping on the floor as a toddler, being hungry, and being beaten by her mother if she ever triggered the alarm on her bedroom door.
Now 13-years-old, Heather Wilder shares her painful past in a series of booklets. She shares thoughts like this: "I was glad when the policemen finally found me because the hurting stopped."
Evans has formed an educational and support group dealing with Parental Alienation Syndrome, defined as a form of child abuse that generally occurs in messy divorces and can destroy the bonds that a child has with one of his or her parents.
It can even result in false abuse accusations against the alienated parent, Evans said.
"The child is having to decide which parent to side with," he said. "A child should not have to do that."
But many mental health workers and advocates against domestic violence say that although custody battles can cause stress and behavioral problems in children, an actual "parental alienation syndrome" does not exist and legitimizing it could lead to abusive parents getting custody of their children.
It's yet another example of how Clark County Family Services front-line investigators are failing in their mission, said child welfare advocate Donna Coleman.
"The Department of Family Services is investigating these kids to death," Coleman said Friday. "It's just luck that this little girl's not dead."
Coleman's anger is rooted in her opinion that despite months of public study, debate and reports that detail the shortcomings and poor practices of Clark County's child welfare agency, change isn't happening fast enough to save children. Smith's daughter is all too reminiscent of Adacelli Snyder, Coleman said.
Something evil happened here; the question is what and by whom. The only thing certain is that a precious little pooch went missing from his home last August and remains unaccounted for to this day.
If there was ever a need for a pet detective or a pet psychic, this is it.
The Nevada Supreme Court has formed a commission to examine ways to improve indigent defense throughout the state, the court announced Thursday....
The proposals of the Clark County committee are scheduled to be discussed at a meeting of District Court criminal judges next Wednesday.
Assistant County Manager Liz Quillin, who works with the county's legal and judicial agencies, said her office was also looking at the problems raised in the newspaper's series.
A Canyon Springs High School student was disarmed and arrested Thursday morning after bringing a loaded handgun to class.
Clark County School District police spokesman Ken Young said that the 17-year-old female had the weapon concealed in a bookbag.
The latest drug outrage comes candy coated: flavored methamphetamine, reportedly popping up in chocolate, cola and fruit varieties.
In Carson City, police found a stash of the stuff in strawberry flavor, a punchy pink crystal supposedly called "Strawberry Quick" on the street.
Most cops are calling flavored meth a feat of criminal marketing, a drug dealer's brainstorm to lure younger users who are open to amphetamine if sugar-dusted.
Yet other law enforcement officials are quietly calling the whole thing a fake-out. Flavored meth, an urban myth.
[Teicher is]
one of five attorneys in the noncapital habeas unit, which works on unlawful imprisonment claims of convicted rapists, pedophiles, kidnappers, armed robbers and murderers who aren't on death row.
Unlike some other government attorneys, the lawyers in her unit are not well known, or known at all, outside of local legal circles. They aren't chronicled in the media, for example, showboating to juries while making impassioned opening statements.
Yet these legal workhorses are vital safeguards in a criminal justice system that often doesn't work right, some observers say, and needs watching.
The rate of premature birth has grown by more than 30 percent in the past 20 years in the United States.
From 1994 to 2004, the rate of infants born preterm in Nevada increased more than 12 percent, according to March of Dimes statistics. It is estimated that more than 200 babies die each year in Nevada because they were born too soon.
If parents can't afford the care or an insurance provider doesn't pay, hospitals often get stuck with the bill.
Shayden's mother, Ronisha Stubblefield, said her son's premature birth came as a surprise and was a result of a condition physicians could not explain. Shayden was released from Valley Hospital Medical Center on March 19, three months after he was born.
Stubblefield said she's anticipating medical bills for Shayden to reach $1 million. She bases that on the experience of a friend whose child was born prematurely and spent six months in a hospital, racking up more than $1 million in costs.
Comments from the Webmaster
This is a typical connundrum of technology. A generation ago,
these babies would simply have died, because there was no alternative.
Now they must be kept alive, regardless of the costs.
A million dollars spent on one preterm baby cannot be spent on
children who are already here. Furthermore, the baby kept alive
with this technology is at much greater risk of health and
mental illness problems
later in life, at even greater cost to the system.
The world is an integrated system with limited resources.
You can't spend huge
resources on one individual without it eventually damaging
other individuals elsewhere in the world.
For example, a million dollars spent by the government
on one baby is a million that can't be spent on, say, child welfare
systems to protect older children.
Within the regulated medical system,
our society cannot tolerate even one preventable baby
death. If the technology is available, then it must be used.
Technology, in this case, becomes a curse. The more
technology you have, the higher the costs become until,
potentially, the entire medical system is focussed on keeping
a few fragile infants alive.
On the whole, society might have been better off if the
technology had never existed.
The six proposed Family Court judges would boost their ranks to 19. They are part of a requested funding package for 10 new judges for the 8th Judicial District, including three new judges to handle civil matters and one criminal judge. The proposal also includes two additional judges for Washoe County's Family Court.
Judges and court administrators sold their case to lawmakers on the Assembly Judiciary Committee on March 21.
The numbers tell the tale: Clark County, with a population of 1.9 million, has 33 judges handling more than 91,000 case filings per year. That means the county has 1.7 judges per 100,000 population, and 2,782 filings per judge.
Every Western state - including Nevada taken as a whole - has more judges per capita than Clark County, and far fewer filings per judge. By comparison, in Washington there are 1,659 filings per judge; in Arizona, 1,225; in Idaho, a paltry 500....
In 2000 there were 41,297 family and juvenile case filings. That number climbed to 58,760 in 2006 - a 42 percent rise.
The American Bar Association recommends that 90 percent of Family Court cases be disposed of within three months and 98 percent within six months. Yet in Clark County, only 34 percent are resolved within three months and 55 percent within six months.
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4/25/07:
No more criminal cases for judge: Halverson will get only civil cases until she gains experience
(Las Vegas Review-Journal/kch)
This article on a criminal court judge concerns Family Court only incidentally: Halverson once ran against Judge Gerald Hardcastle -- and nearly won -- and the old bailiff for Halverson now works assignments at Family Court. 
concerning complaints about her home.
4/16/07:
[California]
Walking a thin line for skid row kids: Social workers try to get children to safety while keeping families intact.
(Los Angeles Times)
4/16/07:
UNLV dean going out on a high note: Morgan built new law school into first-rate program
(Las Vegas Review-Journal/lm)
Entities:
Boyd School of Law (subject),
Richard Morgan (subject) 
4/16/07:
Las Vegas Girl's Courage Recognized Nationally
(KLAS-TV/am)
4/15/07:
LV father works to raise awareness: Syndrome disputed by victims rights activists
(Las Vegas Review-Journal/lc)
Entities:
Shawn Evans (subject),
PASSAGE (mentioned) 
4/13/07:
Newsletter #23: The Case of the Missing Mutt
(Family Court Chronicles/gc)
A 4-page newsletter distributed at Family Court. 
