The Seattle City Attorney’s Office doesn’t want any future criminal case to be heard by first-term Municipal Court Judge Pooja Vaddadi, going so far as to order its attorney to file affidavits of prejudice in each case.
The office detailed mounting concerns about Vaddadi’s conduct and rulings from the bench that have prevented the city from receiving fair hearings and trials, according to a memo sent to assistant city attorney last week.
Although Vaddadi can continue overseeing current criminal cases assigned to her where an affidavit of prejudice is not an option, she will not be able to handle arraignments, pretrial hearings or trials for new cases filed with an affidavit, says a statement issued by the Seattle Municipal Court.
“She is currently in a calendar rotation that has her assigned to all these hearing types and these calendars will now have to be assigned to other judges and pro tem resources,” the statement says.
Information provided by the court shows attorneys had filed 125 affidavits of prejudice against Vaddadi in the first two months of 2024 — and 113 of them were filed two days after the memo was sent to assistant city attorney. Other judges had between one and five affidavits of prejudice filed against them in January and February, the data shows.
Vaddadi did not respond to an interview request made Tuesday through the court’s spokesperson. The King County Department of Public Defense declined to comment on the situation.
Vaddadi’s expected removal from the calendar rotation comes as the court is transitioning to a new case management system, which is also impacting the court’s calendar capacity for the next couple of weeks.
It is unclear what tasks she could be assigned once her current criminal caseload is resolved.
Vaddadi, a former public defender, was elected to the bench after defeating incumbent Municipal Court Judge Adam Eisenberg in the November 2022 election. She began serving her four-year term the following January.
The decision to file affidavits of prejudice to stop criminal cases from being assigned to Vaddadi is extraordinary because, under court rules, an attorney — either a prosecutor or defense attorney — can only move to have a judge disqualified once per case. Although attorneys file affidavits of prejudice all the time, it’s highly unusual for a de facto blanket order to bar a particular judge from hearing all criminal cases.
With only a seven-member court, removing a judge from hearing all criminal cases moving forward will impact the workloads of the other members of the bench.
Natalie Walton-Anderson, the city attorney’s former criminal division chief, announced the decision in a two-page memo before it was made public in a Friday news release. Friday was also Walton-Anderson’s last day working for City Attorney Ann Davison.
Walton-Anderson announced her retirement earlier this year and she was working “to get tasks done” before leaving, said Tim Robinson, a spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office. The timing of her departure and the issuance of the news release were coincidental, he said.
The City Attorney’s Office is responsible for filing misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor criminal cases for crimes allegedly committed in Seattle. Felony cases are filed in King County Superior Court.
“[A]s prosecutors we should all show great restraint when expressing concerns about the decisions made by our elected judges,” Walton-Anderson wrote in the memo. “However, judges also have the responsibility to set aside their personal feelings and follow the law and their rulings must demonstrate equal fairness” to defendants and the people affected by their alleged crimes.
The memo sent to assistant city attorney outlines four key areas of concern: probable cause findings, problematic rulings in domestic violence and driving under the influence cases, erroneous evidentiary rulings and the monitoring of domestic violence and DUI offenders.
Vaddadi has routinely overruled other judges’ findings of probable cause and “repeatedly failed” to find probable cause in cases where it clearly exists, the memo says.
Probable cause means there are reasonable grounds to suspect a person committed a crime and is a far lesser legal standard than beyond a reasonable doubt needed to convict someone of a crime. Probable cause is required for an arrest or search warrant to be valid.
In one example included in the memo, Vaddadi failed to find probable cause for fourth-degree assault in a case where a victim was threatened by a suspect armed with a realistic-looking but fake handgun, based on her belief that there was no alleged touching or contact between them.
“Her misunderstanding is in direct conflict with the legal definition of assault and long-standing case law and widely accepted jury instructions,” Walton-Anderson wrote.
As for problematic rulings, the memo says Vaddadi has refused “in many instances” to issue written no contact orders in domestic violence cases, even when there is a history of domestic violence. She also released a person from prison even though the person had been arrested twice in one week for DUI and had a recent prior DUI conviction, according to the memo.
The memo claims Vaddadi “frequently makes erroneous evidentiary rulings for unjustified reasons” without articulating a legal analysis and regularly raises arguments on defendants’ behalf without prompting or legal argument from their defense attorney.
City attorneys who have appeared before Vaddadi believe her decisions demonstrate “a complete lack of understanding or perhaps even intentional disregard” for court rules of evidence, according to the memo.
Lastly, the memo alleges Vaddadi does not show appropriate deference to court orders involving DUI and domestic violence defendants that are intended to ensure their participation in treatment. In one case, Vaddadi was found a defendant in compliance with treatment and dismissed the case, even though it was clear the man never got on the transport van to a residential treatment facility that he’d been ordered to go to, the memo says.
“Not requiring offenders to follow through on their treatment obligations does not mitigate the likelihood of future criminal behavior or protect the public,” Walton-Anderson wrote.