![]() 13 complaint against the two judges, but its inquiry went nowhere fast, according to a letter that offers a rare glimpse of how the secretive JQC does its job. ![]() "In both instances, both the defense and the prosecution approached the court and jointly requested the placement of temporary entries on the docket to protect defendants cooperating with law enforcement," said court spokeswoman Eunice Sigler, who is not related to the judge. They explained the secrecy was supposed to be temporary and wasn't intended "to arbitrarily conceal case activity." Through a court spokeswoman, Trawick and Sigler acknowledged last month that they approved altering the court dockets. In the case handled by Sigler, an informant pleaded guilty to attempted murder and kidnapping, but the plea was not docketed.Īnd for nearly a year, misleading entries were added to the docket that made it appear that a trial was pending. In fact, the informant pleaded guilty to laundering drug money. In the case handled by Trawick, 10 phony docket entries purported to show that criminal charges were dropped against a defendant who was cooperating with prosecutors and police. In Florida, it is a crime for anyone, even a judge, to falsify court records. 21 letter written by JQC Executive Director Brooke Kennerly. The complaint alleged "judicial misconduct based on the falsification of records," according to a Feb. The JQC opened an inquiry into the actions of Miami-Dade Circuit judges Daryl Trawick and Victoria Sigler after receiving a complaint from a Broward circuit judge in February. The Judicial Qualifications Commission's inquiry also missed evidence of false records in another case after the clerk's office deleted it from the public docket.Ī spokeswoman for the JQC, an independent agency that investigates complaints of judicial misconduct, declined to comment. An investigation into the planting of false court records by two Miami-Dade judges found no wrongdoing, even though the phony information remains on the public docket in one case.
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