Until Birotte Splits Us Up!

The Obama-appointed U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, Andre Birotte, Jr. loves headlines, especially headlines boasting about the awful work he and his crew are doing in Southern California.

In June, Birotte's office applauded the continued persecution of Pierce O'Donnell, a prominent Los Angeles Democrat targeted by the Rove Republican Racket, over some irregular campaign contributions made to John Edwards' failed presidential bid in 2004.

Earlier this year, Birotte looked like a complete buffoon when he tried to escalate the profile of a sushi restaurant that served endanged whale and boost his ever-growing ego. He was harpooned.

Now comes the most ridiculous news story yet! The Associated Press reports this afternoon:

A Mexican-born actress and her musician husband lied about their marriage to immigration officials so she could stay in the U.S., a federal prosecutor told prospective jurors Tuesday. In his opening statement, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney James Left showed a picture of Fernanda Romero  [pictured] and Kent Ross on their wedding day but said the appearance was deceptive. "There was a real ceremony but nothing else about it is real," Left said. "It was a sham marriage."

Romero, a singer, actress and model who has attained moderate fame in her homeland, and Ross, a musician and manager of a pizza delivery business, have each pleaded not guilty to charges of marriage fraud and making false statements. If convicted, they could each face a maximum prison sentence of five years. The couple sat next to each other wearing black suits and wedding rings on their left forefingers.

 And politicians are worried about Arizona? Shame on Andre! Shame on him!

U.S. Attorney "Very Pleased" with Political Persecution

Andre Birotte, Jr., the Obama appointed U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, has an ego bigger than the Golden State.  Last winter he ended up with fish sauce all over his face when he tried to pump up his national profile in a case involving a Sushi restaurant that served endangered whale. His ego-driven sideshow was quickly harpooned when the restaurant immediately closed down as a self-imposed punishment.

Now Birotte is supporting the Rove Republican Racket's continued persecution of Democratic operative and famed trial lawyer Pierce O'Donnell (pictured). O'Donnell was accused of funneling money to John Edwards' 2004 presidential campaign by having friends and family donate to the campaign. O'Donnell later reimbursed them.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the charges were tossed out last year by U.S. District Judge S. James Otero, who ruled that the conduct described by prosecutors in their indictment did not violate the federal law under which O'Donnell was charged. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel disagreed in June. As a result of the ruling, the charges were reinstated and the case was ordered back to Otero's court.

When the federal appeals court reinstated the charges,  Birotte's office claimed to be "very pleased" with the ruling.

How "pleased" should Americans be that an Obama-appointed  prosecutor is supporting the Rove Racket's purely political prosecution of O'Donnell?

To support the notion that O'Donnell was being singled out by the Rove Republicans, his lawyers presented prosecutors with 21 illegal campaign contribution cases they said were handled administratively by the Federal Elections Commission, even though most involved larger amounts of money and more egregious conduct than what was alleged in O'Donnell's case, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Without a doubt, Birotte should receive another black-eye and his ego fed to the political shredder.

Return of the Tomato King

We're happy to be back and we start where we left off: the Rove Republican Racket's unfair prosecution of the so-called "Tomato King" of California, Frederick Scott Salyer.

As we reported last month, the federal government is in a steaming bowl of hot tomato sauce for obtaining evidence via illegal means, including the theft of internal corporate documents and tomato paste by a turned-FBI informant who was on Salyer's payroll.

The prosecutorial misconduct has not gone unnoticed and now Salyer's friends and family are rallying behind his ridiculous political prosecution.

Tonight, the Sacramento Bee reports:

Lawyers for indicted tomato king Frederick Scott Salyer are renewing their efforts to spring him from the Sacramento County Jail on bail, this time by having his friends and family put up their homes as an assurance that he will not flee the country if he is released. In a motion filed in federal court in Sacramento, Salyer attorney Malcolm Segal states that Salyer's "family and longtime friends have rallied to his support and trust him not to flee."

Together, they have offered to put up $2 million in cash and property as collateral to ensure that Salyer will remain in this country and stand trial on bribery, racketeering and other charges. Federal prosecutors have repeatedly opposed Salyer's release on bail, arguing that he has access to millions of dollars and is a flight risk, especially because he faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison if convicted.

Stolen Tomato Paste and Docs Shake Feds

With eight years of dirty tricks and loose laws under their belts, agents of the Rove Republican Racket in the FBI have mastered the art of deception.

Now comes the case out of the Central Valley of California that has shaken the reputation of the FBI and federal prosecutors.

In an undercover operation started in 2006, the feds targeted the so-called "Tomato King," Frederick Scott Salyer. Salyer is the heir to one of the largest agribusinesses in California.

The feds filed 20 charges of mail and wire fraud last February. But yesterday, his defense team struck back hard.

The Salinas Californian reports:

The defense motion is potentially the most damaging counterattack in one of the biggest prosecutions ever against the nation's food industry. Legal experts say case law is clear that the government cannot encourage an informant to steal documents it can legally get for it-self, nor can it acquiesce in such conduct by knowingly accepting the documents. "By the time Manuel's efforts were complete, he had conducted more than 40 illegal searches over a period of 18 months with the complicity and participation of [FBI Special] Agent [Paul] Artley, viewed many thousands of documents and had surreptitiously taken and delivered to the FBI well over a thousand private documents, computer printouts, e-mails, tomato paste samples and other proprietary information," Segal wrote. Manuel became an informant in August 2006 after federal agents searched his home and, in return for his help, the government allowed him to defer a guilty plea to an unrelated crime, work off his prison time and continue receiving his $200,000 salary from Sal-yer, said Segal. The defense accuses Artley of directing or encouraging Manuel to take evidence against Salyer without a search warrant.

No One Would Stop Them

For over 16 months now, our blog has posted stories about the Rove Republican Racket, the web of political operatives headed by Karl Rove that turned the U.S. Department of Justice into a political arm of the Republican Party.

Using the dishonest "Honest Services" crime to lock away Democrats and other political opponents, the Rove-Bush-Cheney Administration's DOJ hacks consistently engaged in prosecutorial misconduct or other unsavory practices to bring fear and intimidation into the political process.Some of those practices backfired.

Now the mainstream media are picking it up.

Titled "Judicial System Takes a Hit," Michael Hiltzik, a Los Angeles Times business columnist, (pictured) wrote a piece over the weekend about the prosecutorial misconduct in the Broadcom back-dating case, which was staged in the heart of Republican country: Orange County, California.

The  judge in the case chastised the prosecutors for a "shameful campaign" to intimidate witnesses and obtain unjustified convictions. 

Hiltzik's column has a revealing quote from a legal expert on why the renegade Republican prosecutors have consistently broken the rules to jail opponents:

"In the post- 9/11 years, a lot of prosecutors got emboldened to go as far as they could and play as dirty as they could, figuring that no one would stop them," Bennett Gershman of Pace University law school, the author of a legal text on prosecutorial misconduct, told me. "Judges seem to have become emboldened by what they see the prosecutors doing."

 Amen, Brother Gershman!

Silicon Valley's New DA Under Fire

The Queen of the Rove Republican Racket in the Silicon Valley, Dolores Carr, narrowly lost her re-election bid in June. As readers recall, she spurred a boycott of a sitting judge after the judge had lambasted prosecutorial misconduct in Carr's office.

Now the incoming prosecutor is under fire by Carr's friends for his own prosecutorial misconduct.

The San Jose Mercury News writes:

The prosecutor who narrowly won the race for Santa Clara County district attorney has been flagged for misconduct by an appellate court for the second time in his career — though in both cases the panel found the errors "harmless" and upheld the underlying criminal convictions.

The 6th District Court of Appeal this week found that Deputy District Attorney Jeff Rosen violated a judge's order in a 2008 trial by disclosing to a jury that a man on trial for rape had a criminal background. Nine years ago, an appellate court found Rosen erred in a different case — also by divulging evidence that could bias the jury against the defendant, despite orders from a judge not to do so.

Rosen's political opponents Thursday seized on Wednesday's decision by the appellate court as proof that the prosecutor who will replace first-term District Attorney Dolores Carr in January is unethical — and a hypocrite to boot for attacking Carr's ethics during the contentious campaign.

Targeting Protestors in Santa Cruz

With the Patriot Act in hand, U.S. Attorneys from the Rove Republican Racket love to call political opponents terrorists or corrupt.

In Santa Cruz, California a few animal rights activists were targeted by over-zealous federal prosecutors, but the case was dismissed on Monday.

Although prosecutors want to target these activists again, we suspect the four protestors aren't high-paying Republicans.


The San Jose Mercury News reports:

A federal judge on Monday dismissed the indictment against four animal rights activists accused of a violent protest at the home of a UC Santa Cruz researcher more than a year and a half ago, but attorneys involved in the case estimated the legal battle is far from over. U.S. District Court Judge Ronald White, who heard arguments on the motions to dismiss the case a month ago, sided with the activists in a 14-page ruling issued Monday. "...(T)he indictment fails to allege the facts of the crimes charged with sufficient specificity," the judge's ruling stated.

Joseph Buddenberg, Maryam Khajavi, Nathan Pope and Adriana Stumpo were arrested in February 2009 and charged with interfering with animal enterprise - a violation of a federal law - and conspiracy. Attorneys for the four filed motions this spring that challenged the indictment, stating in court documents that the allegations were too vague and failed to outline the criminal behavior the group is accused of taking part in. "The reason the indictment was so sketchy is because the government didn't want to put it out there in public that these people are accused of being terrorists for picketing," said Robert Bloom, attorney for Buddenberg. " ... It's not a crime to picket. Nobody has committed a crime in this case."

"Serious Fault" with U.S. Prosecutors

As you most likely know, Roman Polanski, the famed film director (pictured) who has been under house arrest in Switzerland, was not extradited to the U.S. today.

Although Los Angeles County prosecutors and U.S. State Department spokesmen are attempting to say  the Swiss let a sex offender off the hook, the truth is the Swiss let Polanski go because U.S. prosecutors failed to turn over documents.

The decision was not based on the merits of the case. It was based on prosecutorial negligence.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

In its decision Monday, the Swiss Justice Department said it could not exclude the possibility that the extradition request was "undermined by a serious fault" because the U.S. had failed to turn over certain documents. Specifically, the Swiss wanted to determine whether the 42 days Polanski had already spent in a Los Angeles jail would have been considered sufficient time served for having sex with a minor. Also, Swiss authorities said that until 2009, the U.S. had not filed any extradition request against Polanski "for years," even though it knew he had bought a house in Switzerland in 2006 and was a regular visitor there. That gave the director a reasonable expectation that he was not under threat of arrest and deportation from there. "Roman Polanski would not have decided to go to the film festival in Zürich in September 2009 if he had not trusted that the journey would not entail any legal disadvantages for him," the Swiss justice department said.

Goodbye Dolores!

Breaking News from the San Jose Mercury News:

In a stunning outcome determined only after the counting of late ballots Friday, veteran prosecutor Jeff Rosen (pictured) has succeeded in unseating his boss, District Attorney Dolores Carr — the first time in at least eight decades that a challenger has wrested the office from an incumbent. But Carr will continue to lead the office until early next year, raising the question of how she will deal with a largely mutinous staff of prosecutors in the next seven months, given that most supported Rosen.

The historic upset came after Rosen, 42, spent months relentlessly attacking Carr's ethics and judgment while offering himself as a reform-minded and ethical alternative. Carr, 56, tried to keep the focus on Rosen's lack of management experience, but voters apparently took more stock in Rosen's vow to be "a DA for the people" who would restore public trust in an office plagued by Carr's controversial missteps and questionable decision-making. "People really value high ethics and integrity in a DA," Rosen said. "The experience that really mattered was my experience as a tough, fair prosecutor."

Carr conceded Friday afternoon, about 90 minutes after elections officials released updated election returns. With 444,220 votes counted, Rosen won 224,399, or 50.5 percent; Carr had 49.4 percent. There are still an estimated 7,600 ballots left to count in the race, but Rosen is leading by 2,854 votes, a gap even Carr recognized she was unlikely to overcome.

Incumbent Rove Racket DA Losing in Silicon Valley

Dolores Carr, (pictured) the witch of Silicon Valley, the Queen of the Rove Republican Racket, the soon-to-be-former District Attorney of Santa Clara County, California is losing a heated race to retain her job as the top prosecutor.

Carr alienated many when she hit the nuclear button in January and boycotted a judge who lambasted prosecutorial misconduct by one of Carr's Assistant District Attorneys.

The San Jose Mercury News writes this morning:

In a startling development, Santa Clara County's most competitive race is still being bitterly fought today, with no clear winner emerging for district attorney. Veteran prosecutor Jeff Rosen is holding a razor-thin lead over District Attorney Dolores Carr, 50.61 percent to 49.39, with all precincts reporting. However, there are still several thousand mail-in ballots still not counted. If Rosen wins, it would be the first time in at least 83 years that a challenger has wrested the office from an incumbent district attorney. Even if he only comes close, it would be extraordinary. Sitting district attorneys are usually invincible in Santa Clara County, but Rosen has built his campaign on Carr's missteps and controversial decisions.

Carr, a former judge, has been criticized for intervening on behalf of a campaign contributor's client; for failing to see the potential conflict in her husband's financial involvement with a murder victim's family, and for boycotting a judge who found that a prosecutor committed misconduct. Carr's decision not to charge anyone for the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old girl at a De Anza College baseball players' house party three years ago also was controversial. The issue resurfaced recently when documents in the girl's civil case against some of the players showed that Carr's office did not test all of the evidence in the criminal case.

Choreographed Political Show in Orange County

In March, we reported about David R. Hunt (pictured), the City Attorney from Newport Beach, California, suspected at the time of beating his wife.

Now comes word that the agent of the Rove Republican Racket, in the heart of Republicanville, is off the hook.


In a choreographed effort that only Republicans could pull off, the Orange County prosecutors declined to prosecute citing "lack of evidence" while the local  Newport Beach City Council "unanimously" reinstated Mr. Hunt.

So much for his wife's bump on her head!

The Daily Pilot reports:

Two months after placing him on paid administrative leave following his arrest on suspicion of felony spousal abuse, the Newport Beach City Council voted 6 to 0 Wednesday to allow City Atty. David Hunt to immediately return to his job.  In addition, the Orange County district attorney's office announced the same day that it has decided not to file charges against him. I'm obviously pleased by the decision, but I'm also thankful and grateful for the objective analysis of the council and thorough investigation by the D.A.," Hunt said by phone Wednesday afternoon. "My family and I agree with the decision that this crime was not committed and none of us wanted to see a conviction."

Raising the White Flag in California

We hope all our readers had a great Memorial Day Weekend. We were at Dewey Beach, the nation's summer capital, when this news broke on Saturday.

The Rove Republican Racket raised a white flag on a story we've been following since last year.

The Associated Press reports:

Federal prosecutors said Friday they won't appeal the dismissal of criminal charges against the founders of high-tech chipmaker Broadcom, ending an embarrassing chapter for the government during which a judge blasted prosecutors for "shameful" misconduct and a lack of evidence. The government decided not to appeal the cases against Henry T. Nicholas III and Henry Samueli, U.S. attorney's spokesman Thom Mrozek said. Prosecutors also withdrew their appeal of U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney's dismissal of former Broadcom human resources director Nancy Tullos' guilty plea to obstruction of justice. The announcement wipes away the last vestiges of a massive and high-profile criminal and civil prosecution of Broadcom's top leadership on allegations of stock option backdating that fell apart under judicial scrutiny.

California's Conflicting Carr

The case against the Rove Republican Racket District Attorney of Santa Clara County, California, Dolores Carr (pictured)is gaining momentum. As readers may recall, Carr pushed the nuclear button in legal circles and spearheaded the boycott of a sitting judge after the judge tossed out a case for gross prosecutorial misconduct.

Carr now faces a well-financed competitor who currently serves as a Deputy Prosecutor in her office.

The race has heated up and conflicts and controversy are knocking Carr down.

The San Jose Mercury News reports:

Almost from the start of her administration, Carr has been controversial. Earlier this year, she alienated many in the legal community when she ordered her staff to stop bringing criminal cases before Superior Court Judge Andrea Bryan. Two weeks prior, the judge had angered prosecutors by dismissing a sex molestation case after finding that a prosecutor committed misconduct, including giving false testimony. Some legal experts said the extremely rare blanket boycott could have a chilling effect on judicial oversight of overzealous prosecution.

Carr has apologized repeatedly for her misjudgment regarding her husband's involvement in a high-profile murder case. Carr's husband, former San Jose police Lt. John Carr, was paid $14,000 by an attorney for the slain victim's family, who had filed a separate lawsuit against the bank where he was shot. With that payment, the district attorney in effect was receiving income from an advocate for the victim's family, even as she would ultimately decide whether to seek the death penalty in the criminal case. The case eventually was turned over to the state attorney general to prosecute because of the potential conflict of interest. The money was returned and Carr said her husband would confine his work as a consultant to outside the county. But legal experts said she should have known from the outset that was the only ethical choice.

GOP Shaken Up after Sexual Bondage Expenditure

A story that has been in the news has been the fallout by top Republican donors against the lavish spending of the Republican National Committee.

The Rove Republican Racket perfected the ability to engage in wasteful spending. So much for "fiscal responsibility" during the Rove-Bush-Cheney years.

The final straw broke in March when reports came out about a top RNC consultant who bought drinks and appetizers at a lesbian-theme bondage club had submitted the expenditures to the RNC. So much for the Republicans' "traditional family values" so hyped during the Rove-Bush-Cheney years.

The Los Angeles Times reported this on Sunday:

The Republican National Committee's ouster Friday of two top finance officials marks an attempt to rebound from a string of reports on lavish spending, including a $1,946.25 expenditure at a lesbian-theme bondage club in Los Angeles.  RNC Chief of Staff Michael Leavitt announced the reorganization of the finance department late Friday in an e-mail to committee members. RNC Chairman Michael Steele asked for resignations from finance director Rob Bickhart and his deputy, Debbie LeHardy, "to improve on our strong fundraising numbers" and to "help us to provide the necessary resources to defeat Democrats across the country," the e-mail said.

 Looks like Steele is "cracking the whip" and playing "dominatrix" over the situation!

Former FBI Agent Goes Down

Because of the Rove Republican Racket's domination of the U.S. Department of Justice, many U.S. Attorneys targeted political opponents. Sadly, many political opponents were tossed in jail because of making false or inaccurate statements to investigators. Many investigators were agents of the FBI.

Can we really trust these federal agents?

We have reported about the dishonest DEA agent from Boston to the dishonest FBI agent in Orange County, California.

This week comes the case of the worst former FBI agent ever.

From the Los Angeles Times:

A former FBI agent convicted of planning an invasion-style robbery of what he thought was a drug stash house containing a half-million dollars in cash was sentenced to 30 years in prison Monday by a federal judge in Santa Ana. Ex-agent Vo Duong Tran, 42, and his accomplice, Yu Sung Park, 36, were arrested in possession of bulletproof vests, a machine gun, other weapons, silencers and hundreds of rounds of ammunition that they intended to use to rob the supposed drug house in Fountain Valley, a jury found. In reality, the "stash house" did not exist. It was created as part of a law enforcement sting operation. During the probe, Tran and Park were secretly recorded planning the details of the would-be caper with an undercover federal agent and an informant. Tran and Park told the agent and informant to use one of the drug dealers inside the house as a "human shield" to clear the location and to shoot anyone who did not follow instructions.

Whale, It's Over

The once to be, ego driven, high publicity prosecution by  U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte, Jr. against the Sushi restaurant that served sei whale in Southern California has finally ended.

With a large ego in play, Birotte was hoping to obtain national prominence and celebrity status with the case, but his ego was harpooned when the Hump Restaurant quickly admitted its guilt publicly and closed its doors last month.

As we said in March, all that was left in this silly media show was a press release. Today was the day. Local Los Angeles ABC affiliate reports:

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are asking a judge to dismiss criminal charges against a restaurant accused of serving whale meat to its customers. The U.S. Attorney's office is asking that charges be dismissed against Typhoon Restaurant Inc., the parent company of The Hump, and one of the now-closed eatery's former chefs, Kiyoshiro Yamamoto.

Senior Federal Attorney Convicted of Bribery

In recent weeks, we have written about lying judges, disbarred prosecutors, disgraced FBI agents and other scoundrels of the Rove Republican Racket.

But yesterday, a jury in Southern California convicted one of the most despicable dregs of humanity, a Senior Attorney with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for taking bribes and preying on immigrants.


The San Bernardino Sun reports:

A federal jury today convicted a ... senior attorney with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of taking bribes from immigrants seeking documentation to remain in the U.S. Constantine Peter Kallas, 39, who joined the federal agency in June 1998 as its assistant chief counsel, faces a maximum of 256 years in federal prison when he is sentenced on Aug. 9. Kallas has been in a federal jail since August 2008. He was arrested in June that year during a federal sting operation at San Manuel Indian Bingo & Casino near Highland, where he took a $20,000 bribe from an immigrant in exchange for helping the immigrant obtain residency and get a deportation order quashed, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Raymond O. Aghaian. In November 2009, Kallas's 41-year-old wife and co-conspirator, Maria Kallas, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, defrauding the U.S. and bribery. She is scheduled for sentencing in June and faces at least 25 years in federal prison, Aghaian said.

Political Manipulation at the Highest Level of Government

The Miami Herald had an interesting story Tuesday about how government operatives smeared, spied-on, and then manipulated government Inspector General reports about a fellow government agent for political purposes.

What is bothersome is that this occurred at the highest level of government involving the U.S. Department of State, the CIA and the DEA.

Later, Karl Rove and his henchmen became great manipulators of the U.S. Department of Justice. They successfully targeted, prosecuted and incarcerated Democrats and others who didn't toe the political line.

Who says it cannot be done? Who says Big Brother can't mess with you? Who dismisses the fact that the Rove Republican Racket operated viciously from California to Maine?

Read this, drink your coffee, and think twice, three times about it.

An unhappy federal judge on Tuesday approved a $3 million settlement with a former narcotics officer who said the CIA spied on him overseas. The approved settlement caps a 16-year fight for former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Richard A. Horn and California attorney Brian Leighton. It also leaves the judge grumbling over how the government handled the long-secret case. It does not appear that any government officials have been held accountable for this loss to the taxpayer," U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth wrote. "This is troubling." Driving his point home, Lamberth further noted that "there is disturbing evidence in a sealed motion that misconduct occurred in the Inspector General offices at both the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency." After noting that the case "has already consumed too much time and too many resources for everyone concerned," however, Lamberth agreed to drop potential disciplinary proceedings against CIA officials. He'll formally do so once he has been assured that the allegations have been referred to congressional intelligence committees and the inspector general offices.

Read the full story here.

Wife Beating Republican Prosecutor?

Orange County, California is the bastion of Republican politics in the Golden State. Newport Beach is a key city in the county where the wealthy and the beautiful live.

Now scandal has hit the Newport Beach City Attorney, a loyal member of the Rove Republican Racket. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Newport Beach City Atty. David R. Hunt will go on voluntary administrative leave a little more than one week after he was arrested on suspicion of felony spousal abuse. Hunt, 52, was arguing with his son at his Santa Ana home on March 14 when his wife intervened and Hunt struck her, causing her to hit a table and then the floor, police said. The 49-year-old woman had a cut on her arm and a large bump on the back of her head, police said. She was taken to a hospital for treatment. In a recording of the 911 call, one of Hunt’s sons can be heard telling a dispatcher “my dad just went crazy, he pushed my mom down and started going after my brother.”

Single-Minded Ferocity

The political boycott of Rove Republican Racket member Dolores Carr, the elected District Attorney of Santa Clara, California (pictured), against Judge Andrea Y. Bryan is capturing national media.

We reported in January how Carr had provoked a political nuclear strike: a formal boycott of Judge Bryan as political retaliation. Judge Bryan accused one of Carr's deputy prosecutors of lying and engaging in "outrageous" prosecutorial misconduct when she dismissed a major criminal case.

Following on our lead, The New York Times is writing about the situation and the severe implications it could have on the independence of the judiciary.

Every Wednesday, prosecutors in Santa Clara County take part in a weekly ritual: as the new judges’ calendar goes online, they begin signing affidavit after affidavit to block cases from going before Judge Andrea Bryan. Since January, more than 100 cases originally assigned to Judge Bryan have been transferred to other judges in the San Jose courthouse at the request of the district attorney’s office.

While there had been earlier friction between Judge Bryan and Ms. Carr, the catalyst for the boycott came in January when Judge Bryan freed a convicted child molester. She ruled that a deputy district attorney on the case had lied about evidence and committed other “outrageous” acts of misconduct. 

In practice, a request for a judge to recuse herself is rare; it is almost never approached with the kind of single-minded ferocity seen in San Jose. There the effort has complicated the daily routine of administering justice and raised concerns that the prosecutor is exercising undue influence to sway judicial decisions. 

“If this is taken to its logical conclusion, you are talking about criminal defendants’ appearing before the judge chosen by the D.A,” said James Sample, a professor at the Hofstra Law School and the co-author of a 2008 report on recusal reform from New York University's School of Law. “It’s turning the scalpel of recusal into a chain saw to undermine judicial independence.”