The Idaho Observer has been in print

[samiaseo222]

The IJC receives the complaints and conducts an investigation. The IJC summarily dismisses almost all complaints but neither the complainant nor the public is allowed access to details of the investigation.

In 1999 Lawyer John Bradbury sued the IJC in District Court after it dismissed a complaint he had filed against Chief Justice Linda Copple Trout for obvious conflicts of interest he uncovered as the Lunders' family attorney in Lunders v. Snyder (1998). Justice Trout was a friend of the Snyders and refused to recuse herself from the case.

It should be noted that the IJC was represented by the phone number list Idaho Attorney General's office.

Bradbury found that he had no access to the details of an investigation that failed to find merit to his well-documented conflict claims. The District Court upheld the IJC so Bradbury appealed the decision to The Idaho State Supreme Court. Not surprisingly, since Chief Justice Trout is a member of the Supreme Court and the IJC is a creature of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court dismissed Bradbury's complaint in July, 2000. He appealed the decision with the U.S. Supreme Court which declined to hear his appeal.

At the Idaho Judicial Conference at Templins Resort in Post Falls last July 15, IJC Director Robert Hamlin happily reported to some 120 state judges that, of the 200 complaints, “95 percent” were summarily dismissed “without having to recommend disciplinary action.”

Earlier in his discussion, Hamlin explained that the IJC's job was difficult in that it had to be sensitve to the rights of judges and the needs of the public. If that were true, would Hamlin have been as happy to report that 95 percent of their claims had been summarily dismissed without disciplinary action to a convention of judicial complaint filers? Would the news have been equally well-received?