A State Bar Court judge has 90 days to rule whether a former Yolo County prosecutor should be disciplined for making false allegations against a sitting judge during the 2012 judicial election.
Thursday marked the final day of Clint Parish’s three-day court trial in San Francisco, where the 41-year-old attorney stood accused of willfully violating rules of professional conduct in his failed bid to unseat Yolo Superior Court Judge Dan Maguire.
State Bar officials say Parish erred by releasing a pair of campaign mailers that linked Maguire, a former deputy legal secretary to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to the controversial partial commutation of a prison term for the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, as well as to a “sordid case of corporate fraud” while working for a Denver law firm in the 1990s.
Both allegations turned out to be false.
In his defense, Parish described himself as a political “neophyte” who relied upon the advice of his campaign consultants as the ads were being prepared. He noted that he fired one of the consultants and suspended his campaign activities once he learned that the allegations against Maguire were untrue.
Still, the negative ads cost Parish numerous endorsements — including that of his own boss at the time, District Attorney Jeff Reisig — and Maguire easily defeated him with more than 77 percent of the countywide vote in the June 5, 2012, election. Parish resigned from his deputy district attorney’s job the following November.
If State Bar Court Judge Patrice McElroy upholds the charges, Parish, who has no prior record of disciplinary action, faces punishment ranging from a reprimand to disbarment, State Bar spokeswoman Laura Ernde said. The decision must be approved by the California Supreme Court.
The disciplinary charges stem from a complaint filed against Parish following the election, but the complainant’s identity has remained confidential.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene
