Reversing an earlier ruling, California’s State Bar Court has called for a former Yolo County prosecutor to face discipline for making false allegations against his opponent during his ill-fated 2012 judicial campaign.
In an opinion filed Thursday, a three-judge review panel ordered the public reproval of Clint Parish, 43, for inaccurate campaign-mailer claims that Yolo Superior Court Judge Dan Maguire had engaged in bribery, corporate fraud and other misdeeds prior to his appointment to the bench.
The allegations, the panel found, violated the California Rules of Professional Conduct, which says candidates for judicial office mustn’t “knowingly, or with reckless disregard for the truth, misrepresent the identity, qualifications, present position or any other fact concerning the candidate or his or her opponent.”
“(We) find Parish’s reckless statement implicating a judge with bribery requires public discipline to maintain the integrity of the legal profession and to preserve public confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary,” Review Judge Richard Honn wrote. “Therefore, we order Parish publicly reproved with the condition that he successfully complete the State Bar’s Ethics School.”
Judges Catherine Purcell and Judith Epstein concurred.
The public reproval — a reprimand that is a matter of public record but carries no suspension — becomes effective Feb. 26, though Parish may appeal the order before the California Supreme Court. He declined to comment when reached by email Tuesday.
Should he decline to pursue an appeal, Parish has one year to submit proof of the Ethics School completion and passage of an exam administered at the end of the session, according to the State Bar Court’s 15-page order.
The decision comes 16 months after a State Bar Court hearing judge, Pat McElroy, ruled that Parish should be admonished rather than disciplined for his misconduct, saying it that, while Parish had a responsibility to vet the allegations, “the court does not believe that respondent knew or believed they were false when he made them.”
McElroy also concluded the mailers caused no significant harm to either the public or Maguire, who won re-election with more than 77 percent of the countywide vote.
Both Parish and the State Bar’s Office of the Chief Trial Counsel appealed McElroy’s ruling, which was based upon evidence and testimony presented during a three-day trial in July 2013.
Parish claimed political naivete during the proceedings, blaming his campaign consultant, Aaron Park, for the content of the mailers — one of which alleged that Maguire was involved in a “sordid case of corporate fraud that involved payment of bribes in Russia” while working for a Denver law firm.
Another piece linked Maguire, a former deputy legal secretary to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to a controversial partial prison commutation benefiting the son of a Schwarzenegger political ally.
Neither allegation turned out to be true. Although Parish fired Park and acknowledged the inaccuracies, the damage was done, costing Parish nearly all his major endorsements in the race, including that of his boss, District Attorney Jeff Reisig, and Yolo County Sheriff Ed Prieto.
Parish later resigned from the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office and now has a criminal defense practice in Tuolumne County. He had no prior disciplinary record.
“We are cognizant that Parish has already paid a heavy professional price for the campaign mailer, and that his misconduct was neither malicious nor intentional,” Honn wrote in Thursday’s ruling. “We appreciate the significant steps he took to mitigate the effects of his false statement and find his misconduct unlikely to reoccur.
“Even so, Parish’s reckless decision to implicate Judge Maguire in bribery and corporate fraud warrants public discipline,” the order says.
Maguire declined to comment, citing the pending appeal period.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene