Trials stop as prosecutor, judge feud

The wheels of justice grind to a halt in Lonoke County as Prosecuting Attorney Lona McCastlain says Judge Lance Hanshaw is prejudiced against her office.

By John Hofheimer
Leader staff writer

===The Lonoke County Circuit Courtroom stands empty this week. Trials and hearings planned for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday have been put off into the indefinite future while the prosecutor's office and the judge work through apparent legal and personal problems with each other. Prosecutor Lona McCastlain, in a motion filed at the start of business Monday, asked Circuit Judge Lance L. Hanshaw, her former boss and friend, to

recuse–disqualify–himself from hearing trials prosecuted by her office, charging that he is too prejudiced against her and her office to judge in a fair and impartial way.
=== Court has been cancelled at least through Thursday, according to the prosecutor's office. Hanshaw chose Monday not to hear any active cases. It is unclear whether he has decided not to hear any criminal or civil cases, as Mc-Castlain asked, or whether he was just re-scheduling cases until he decides whether or not he will recuse himself. Neither McCastlain nor Hanshaw, or anyone who might know, was willing to discuss the matter much, saying it would be inappropriate.
=== One case slated to have been tried this week was the second-degree sexual assault case against James D. Williams of Ward. The pretrial was set to begin Tuesday with jury trial dates set for Wednesday, Thursday and next Tuesday. Williams, 61, of 1680 Peyton in Ward, was arrested Nov. 13, 2003, in Ward in connection with a Nov. 8, 2003, incident against a minor.
=== McCastlain said she hopes the motion to recuse will be settled in time to hold Williams' jury trial next Tuesday. McCastlain wants Hanshaw to recuse himself from all criminal and civil matters where the state is represented by the prosecuting attorney's office. "The court has an inability to be fair and impartial due to his personal vendetta against the prosecuting attorney's office," McCastlain said in her complaint. In further support of her motion, McCastlain stated that Hanshaw told jurors in one case that McCastlain "wants (my) job and will not get it." She said Hanshaw's bias and unjudicial conduct was "especially evident when the Judge called three male prosecutors 'pussies' in the presence of defense counsel."
=== She called that lewd and unprofessional. McCastlain's recusal motion said the judge ridicules and interrupts prosecutors and sometimes prevents the state from making a record, that he has called the prosecutor's office "overzealous" both on and off the record.
=== "Such blatant displays of bias and contempt toward the prosecuting attorney's office are a violation of the judicial canons and prevent the State of Arkansas from receiving a fair trial," McCastlain concludes. "The state respectfully requests that Judge Lance L. Hanshaw recuse from all criminal and civil matters where the State is represented by the Prosecuting Attorney's Office of the Twenty-third Judicial District." "I deny the allegations, I deny the inferences," said Hanshaw. "Other than that I cannot make any comment whatsoever. But don't just take one side of the story." McCastlain also refused to comment on the matter, saying it would be inappropriate. A motion for a judge to recuse is acted upon by that judge, according to Donna Gay, staff attorney for the state Supreme Court Administrative Office of Court. But a judge's failure to recuse could be the basis for a future appeal, she said.
=== "The rules for disqualification are set out in the code of judicial conduct," Gay said. "There is a whole process in place whereby the Arkansas Supreme Court can assign a sitting judge or retired judge to go in."
=== Many important questions remain unanswered, such as:

- If Hancock recuses from all future matters, then what?

- If he doesn't recuse, will McCastlain seek to have him disciplined or removed?

- Will there be issues of right to a speedy trial for some defendants?

- Will there be an effect on the already overcrowded and overburdened Lonoke County Jail?
=== "It won't help the backlog, the sheer numbers alone," said County Judge Charlie Troutman. Currently, the jail, approved for 55 inmates, is full, and the county is paying other jurisdictions to hold another 26 inmates. Lt. Jim Kulesa said the Lonoke County Sheriff's Department would continue its work despite the motion to recuse.
=== "You can't ignore crimes," he said.
=== The only case cited by name in support of McCastlain's two-page motion for recusal was that of Larry Wayne Stephens, convicted two weeks ago in Lonoke County on charges kidnapping, rape, terroristic threatening and domestic abuse.
=== The jury, after an hour in sentence deliberation, recommended consecutive sentences of 40 years for rape, 30 years for kidnapping, 15 years for terroristic threatening, and one year for domestic battery–86 years in all. Hanshaw decided sentences should run concurrently–at the same time–and reduced the length of the term to 40.
=== Hanshaw said he reduced the time because he did not think the jurors comprehended the difference between consecutive and concurrent sentences. "They were crystal clear on how much time he was going to spend in there," McCastlain said at the time.
=== "The jurors did an awesome job on this case. They took it very seriously. "I thought the jury's verdict was very fair," she said. "I'm very disappointed the judge felt he had to reduce the sentence on a 10-time convicted felon."
=== After McCastlain's motion, her deputies and the judge still worked their way through other matters on the docket, such as first appearances and setting trial dates.
=== When a defendant didn't show up for court and the prosecution wanted a warrant issued for failure to appear, Hanshaw replied, "You filed an order to recuse. How can I take action? I'm just trying to comply," he said.
=== "I guess you'll have to file a pickup order," he told the prosecutors. He did file a no-contact order against a man alleged to have had sexual contact with a person younger than 14 years old.
=== While Hanshaw was rescheduling court appearances or trials for the end of February and later, court-appointed attorney Dan Hancock set some of his clients for bench trials before Hanshaw, asking for a special prosecutor to be appointed. This is not the first time there has been speculation that McCastlain was interested in Han-shaw's job. There were rumors last year when the judge missed some work because of illness.
=== At that time, McCastlain dismissed those rumors as "ridiculous," saying she just wanted to do the job to which she had been elected–prosecutor. Her fourth term began Jan. 1. Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley said he had heard rumblings of problems between McCastlain's office and Hanshaw.
=== "I'm not aware of something like this having happened (elsewhere) in recent times," he said. The rift is all the more unusual because McCastlain was once Hanshaw's law clerk, and Hanshaw, a Democrat, supported McCastlain, a Republican, in the 1998 general election when she ran against Barbara Elmore for the office, winning the prosecutor's office by a single vote. Reporter Brian Rodriguez contributed to this story.