Tag: Pooja Vaddadi

City Council, Courts

ACLU Drops Lawsuit After City Attorney Evans Drops Blanket Affidavit Against Judge; Council Gets New Central Staff Director

 

City Attorney Erika Evans

1. City Attorney Erika Evans and the ACLU of Washington jointly announced this week that the ACLU is dropping their lawsuit against the city over a policy instituted by Evans’ Republican predecessor, Ann Davison, that disqualified an independently elected judge from hearing criminal cases for almost two years.

In 2024, Davison disqualified Seattle Municipal Court Judge Pooja Vaddadi, an independently elected judge, from hearing any criminal cases for the rest of Davison’s term through a procedure known as a blanket affidavit of prejudice. Davison justified her decision by claiming Vaddadi was biased and incompetent, vaguely citing unspecified past cases in which they alleged Vaddadi had demonstrated “a complete lack of understanding, or perhaps even intentional disregard, of the evidence rules, even on basic issues.”

As one of her first official acts in office, Evans issued an order to her criminal division banning all blanket affidavits of prejudice and requiring attorneys to request such affidavits individually, on a case-by-case basis, returning to standard practice for every modern city attorney prior to Davison.

The move by Davison and her deputy, Natalie Walton-Anderson was widely viewed as political—Vaddadi is progressive—and further investigations by Vaddadi’s legal team and independent advocates made it clear that Davison’s office misrepresented the cases they cited in the memo denouncing Vaddadi.

In a statement on Thursday, Evans said, “As an experienced prosecutor, I believe in litigating cases—not attempting to ban judges we do not like. Under my leadership, the only time a Seattle prosecutor will seek to disqualify a judge from a case is in the rare instance where there’s a clear, strong, reason that the individual prosecutor believes the case will not receive a fair hearing.”

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2. City Council President Joy Hollingsworth just announced that Lish Whitson, a member of the Seattle City Council’s Central Staff for the past 13 years (and a 20-year City Hall veteran) will take over as head of Central Staff in March, when Ben Noble retires from the city. Central staffers are the council’s policy shop; unlike legislative aides, they provide policy advice and write legislation for the entire council.

The council president is nominally in charge of central staff, and picks their boss; former council president Sara Nelson fired central staff director Esther Handy and replaced her with Noble. Under Nelson, who took an atypically active role overseeing central staff, a large number of veteran council staffers left for other positions, creating a brain drain (particularly among women) at the council’s primary source of institutional knowledge.

Noble led Central Staff for about 14 years before heading up the City Budget Office and Office of Revenue Forecasts and returning as Central Staff director in 2024. A PhD economist who (unlike certain other city staffers) never made a point of his credentials, Noble was a budget expert and diplomat, one reason he was able to last in high-level city positions as council members and mayors came and went.

Whitson, similarly, is part of the deep state (complimentary) that keeps the city running. He oversaw the adoption of Phase 1 of former mayor Harrell’s “One Seattle” comprehensive plan update, and has worked on all four of the city’s comp plan updates since the original plan was adopted in 1994. His new deputy director, Calvin Chow, led the council’s budget process last year. Former central staff deputy director Aly Penucci left after more than 11 years at the city to become deputy Whatcom County executive in 2024; she returned as Mayor Katie Wilson’s budget director this year.

Courts

Municipal Court Judge Shadid Blasts City Attorney for Refusing to Send Cases to Judge Vaddadi

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle Municipal Court Judge Damon Shadid excoriated the criminal division chief for City Attorney Ann Davison’s office, Fred Wist, in open court two weeks ago (recording below)for the city attorney’s ongoing refusal to allow Judge Pooja Vaddadi to hear DUI and domestic violence cases. If the city attorney’s office continued to deny Vaddadi’s right to hear such cases, Shadid said, they could be in violation of ethical standards, even if they have the legal right to do so.

In 2024, Davison filed a “blanket affidavit of prejudice” against Vaddadi,  disqualifying her from hearing criminal cases brought by the city attorney’s office. This reduced Vaddadi, who had just been elected, to reviewing traffic tickets—effectively overturning the 2023 election, when voters selected Vaddadi as one of seven municipal court judges. Since then, and despite a Davison has continued to refuse to do so, Shadid said, prompting his unusual statement.

“The blanket affidavit policy of the city attorney’s office in this case completely blows out of the water any other blanket affidavit policy of any other attorney in the history of the state of Washington,” Shadid said, addressing now-criminal chief Fred Wist in open court on July 9. “Thousands of complaints have been filed in this case.”

In a memo explaining that extraordinary decision, then-criminal chief Natalie Walton-Anderson, who is now Mayor Bruce Harrell’s chief public safety advisor, claimed Vaddadi often reversed other judges’ findings of probable cause or failed to find probable cause “in situations where, clearly, probable cause exists” and released people accused of DUI and domestic violence without considering their criminal history or the severity of the offense.

For months, Davison’s office refused to identify the cases she relied on to deny Vaddadi’s right to hear criminal cases. Earlier this year, after getting the actual case numbers and reviewing each example Walton-Anderson and Davison used to justify barring her from hearing misdemeanor cases, Vaddadi filed a formal bar complaint, accusing them of basing their decision on “egregious fabrication[s]” about the cases.

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“Despite this showing,” Shadid said, “the Seattle City Attorney has continued its policy of filing [affidavits of prejudice, which have to be filed individually] against judge Vaddadi on all DUI and DV cases.

“The city or any party does not need to provide any reason whatsoever for the filing of an affidavit and to presume, as it seems, that we are making decisions based on a prior memo seems… presumptuous,” Wist said.

Shadid responded that the city attorney’s office has given them no other reason for preemptively disqualifying Vaddadi from all DUI and DV cases, and said that if attorneys working for Davison continue to file affidavits of prejudice based on Walton-Anderson’s memo and claims about Vaddadi’s bias and incompetence, “I absolutely believe that opens up a city attorney to the same bar complaint that has been filed against Natalie Walton Anderson and Ann Davison,” Shadid said.

During a lengthy back and forth, Wist said he had every right to withhold information about which cases Davison used to justify disqualifying Vaddadi from both the court and the public. “I would not go that far,” Shadid responded.

“If you knew that the facts behind that memo were false, and if you then refuse to give to the public after multiple multiple public disclosure requests, if you knew that and continue the policy, it is not your right to continue a policy of misinformation about a judge without backing it up while continuing that policy,” he continued. “That is not your right. You want to appeal that, go right ahead. But that is not your right.”

Davison—a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for city council and Lieutenant Governor, a partisan position, before winning the city attorney’s race in the backlash election of 2021—is running for reelection this year, with three challengers running to her left. After a very slow fundraising start, she reported $146,250 in new contributions on July 11, bringing her campaign’s total to $225,000 just before the primary.

The other candidates are Rory O’Sullivan (who’s raised $202,000), Erika Evans ($217,000), and Nathan Rouse ($165,000). It’s conceivable that two of the three Democrats running against Davison could oust her in the primary; Evans has the most endorsements, and is almost certain to make it through, while anti-Trump sentiment could push one of the other two past Davison based on her conservative record and allegiance to the party of MAGA.