LITTLE ROCK — In separate orders, Faulkner County Circuit Judge Rhonda Wood has vacated sanctions against an attorney representing county Administrator Jeff Johnston in a felony theft-of-property case and ordered the circuit clerk to assign the case to a new judge.
Johnston is accused of paying for a 2008 asphalt project on his private driveway with county money. He has pleaded innocent.
Wood, who will move to the Arkansas Court of Appeals on Tuesday, said in a Dec. 19 order filed on Dec. 21 that she still believed attorney Joe Don Winningham “acted in bad faith,” when he questioned her authority to issue an arrest warrant in the case.
But she found that “counsel has sufficiently been deterred from future conduct,” eliminating the need to follow through on the sanctions.
“The media focus on this issue has shifted the focus away from the allegation of a crime and that the citizens of Faulkner County are possibly victims of theft,” Wood wrote of the procedural wranglings. “I believe that whenever the focus shifts from the litigants to the court; justice is not being served.”
The order requesting a random assignment for the case was written and filed Thursday.
On Oct. 10, Wood had fined Winningham $5,000 and gave him 21 days to withdraw the motion that prompted her action in order to void the sanctions.
Wood ruled that Winningham had violated “Arkansas Rule 11” by filing a motion saying she was not authorized to sign an arrest warrant for Johnston. She called the motion “frivolous and without a scintilla of merit.”
Attorney Jeff Rosenzweig, who represents Winningham, countered in another court document that Rule 11 is part of the Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure and does not apply to criminal cases.
Rosenzweig and Winningham filed plans to appeal the sanctions at the Arkansas Supreme Court and asked the high court to assign the case to a new judge, arguing that it shouldn’t have been assigned to Wood in the first place.
“I am disappointed because I was looking forward to that going to the appellate court,” Winningham said Friday of Wood’s assertions in her order to vacate the sanctions. “She vacated the sanctions, but she still said I acted in bad faith, and I don’t believe that.”
In November, the Arkansas Supreme Court denied Johnston’s request that his criminal case be randomly assigned to a judge other than Wood.
Rosenzweig and Winningham have contended the judicial district’s administrative plan provides that all new filings in criminal cases not involving minors are to be randomly divided between Judge Charles Clawson Jr. and Judge David Reynolds.
The case was never taken to Reynolds, and no random assignment ever took place, they said.
In an order, Wood said another circuit judge had referred the matter to her division because the 20th Judicial District’s other judges must rely on the county administrator for budget matters.
Most of Wood’s cases have involved youths.
Wood said in her Thursday order that she still believed her court had jurisdiction in the case, but that she couldn’t realistically hear the case before she leaves for her new role.
Rosenzweig said Friday that the defense attorneys remained troubled by Wood’s assertions in the orders, and they “are inclined to attempt a review by a higher court,” though an appeal may be considered moot now that the sanctions have been lifted.
“We want to put to rest the idea that a criminal-defense lawyer can be faced with Rule 11 sanctions,” he said.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/29/2012