Tulare County judge faces discipline over gift allegations involving clerk
Bee staff and news servicesDecember 29, 2014
A Tulare County judge is facing a hearing over allegations he accused his court clerk in an anonymous letter of an affair and gave her thousands of dollars worth of gifts in violation of judicial ethics.
The Commission on Judicial Performance said Monday it has instituted formal proceedings into the allegations against Tulare County Superior Court Judge Valeriano Saucedo.
The commission says evidence in the case will be presented at a hearing before the commission decides whether the charges have been proven. If it determines they have, punishment can range from privately disciplining the judge to removing him from office.
The commission’s 21-page notice of formal proceedings alleges that Saucedo, 63, paid thousands of dollars in cash to his clerk, paid for a trip to Disneyland for the family of the clerk’s sister, and offered to buy the clerk a BMW. The document cites a string of text messages in late 2013 between the judge and his clerk, who eventually told the judge she would ask to be transferred out of his courtroom. The clerk was married at the time of the text message exchanges.
A call to Saucedo’s attorney, Randall Miller, was not immediately returned.
Saucedo has been on the Tulare County bench since 2001.
Saucedo, a former mayor of Lindsay, has been active in the community. He was raised in a migrant farmworker family and graduated from Lindsay High School in 1969. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1973 and a law degree from Stanford University in 1976.
He was a statewide director for California Rural Legal Assistance before entering private law practice in Visalia in 1993.
In 1999, he received the Rose Ann Vuich Ethical Leadership Award. The award is given annually to someone who has demonstrated exemplary ethical behavior, integrity and the ability to build consensus and serve public interest.
The Commission on Judicial Performance said Monday it has instituted formal proceedings into the allegations against Tulare County Superior Court Judge Valeriano Saucedo.
The commission says evidence in the case will be presented at a hearing before the commission decides whether the charges have been proven. If it determines they have, punishment can range from privately disciplining the judge to removing him from office.
The commission’s 21-page notice of formal proceedings alleges that Saucedo, 63, paid thousands of dollars in cash to his clerk, paid for a trip to Disneyland for the family of the clerk’s sister, and offered to buy the clerk a BMW. The document cites a string of text messages in late 2013 between the judge and his clerk, who eventually told the judge she would ask to be transferred out of his courtroom. The clerk was married at the time of the text message exchanges.
A call to Saucedo’s attorney, Randall Miller, was not immediately returned.
Saucedo has been on the Tulare County bench since 2001.
Saucedo, a former mayor of Lindsay, has been active in the community. He was raised in a migrant farmworker family and graduated from Lindsay High School in 1969. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1973 and a law degree from Stanford University in 1976.
He was a statewide director for California Rural Legal Assistance before entering private law practice in Visalia in 1993.
In 1999, he received the Rose Ann Vuich Ethical Leadership Award. The award is given annually to someone who has demonstrated exemplary ethical behavior, integrity and the ability to build consensus and serve public interest.
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