Disorder in a court

LITTLE ROCK — FIRST CAME the case of the vanishing bank-deposit envelope. It contained $3,200 and disappeared from the safe in His Honor Brad Karren's district court in Rogers.

Then, just as mysteriously, it reappeared the next day in a desk drawer in the office. Hmmm.

Judge Karren immediately ordered an investigation. Detectives were summoned. Polygraph tests were administered to the office staff. The results were analyzed and no criminal charges were filed. But the judge did suspend Ashley Ladouceur, the court clerk in charge of preparing his docket.

The case of the shifting court funds was essentially treated as only an administrative matter and for all practical purposes closed.

But it wouldn't stay closed. On the day of the clerk's suspension, according to a news story in the Benton County Daily Record, the judge learned that, back in June, Miss Ladouceur seems to have altered the court file of one Michael Kalberloh. The name sounded familiar to the judge. Wasn't it the name of his clerk's boyfriend?

His Honor recognized that name for other reasons, too. For Mr. Kalberloh had seen his share of time in court. According to the records, he faced warrants, contempt-of-court charges, and a charge of driving on a suspended driver's license.

The judge's patience was at an end. He proceeded to fire Miss Ladouceur. Because, as His Honor put it in his letter terminating her services to the court: "It has been determined by court information-technology personnel that you entered the court computer system . . . without authorization and possibly in violation of Arkansas Law A.C.A. 5-54-102, by deleting information regarding defendant Michael Kalberloh . . . believed to be your live-in boyfriend."

But despite all this smoke, there has yet to be a criminal charge filed in this tempest in a courthouse.

You'd think that when a judge starts talking about a possible violation of the law, it would attract the attention of a prosecutor. But further His Honor sayeth not.

Maybe the judge would be happy to have the whole, embarrassing chain of events in his courtroom go far, far away. Which he might view as the next best thing to its never having happened at all.