Criminal justice
Conflict controversy follows revelation that prosecutor sent nude photos to federal judge
The revelation that a prosecutor sent nude photos to a federal judge has led to accusations that the U.S. Attorney’s Office tried to exploit the situation to force a recusal. (Image from Shutterstock)
The revelation that a prosecutor sent nude photos to a federal judge has led to allegations that the U.S. Attorney’s Office tried to exploit the situation to force a recusal.
Gary Colbath, the deputy chief of the Alaska Federal Public Defender’s Office, told Bloomberg Law he believed the prosecutor was assigned to a murder case to force the recusal of U.S. District Judge Joshua M. Kindred of the District of Alaska, who had a reputation for being more lenient in criminal cases.
After Colbath spoke with the lead prosecutor in the case, the prosecutor who sent nude photos recused himself, Colbath told Bloomberg Law.
Kindred abruptly announced his resignation on July 8, before a Judicial Council resolution was issued accusing him of having a “sexualized relationship” with a law clerk and having inappropriate conversations with others, including discussions about his romantic preferences and sex life.
U.S. District Judge Joshua M. Kindred of the District of Alaska. (Photo by Snickers2686, PD US Courts, via Wikimedia Commons)
The order also alleged that Kindred received nude photographs from a senior U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecutor who had clerked before him. The prosecutor’s name was not identified in the report.
Kindred also told the law clerks about sexually suggestive text messages he received from a local attorney who appeared before him, the report said.
The sexualized relationship with the law clerk continued when she became an assistant U.S. attorney, but she did not appear in cases before Kindred.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco began investigating Kindred in November 2022. A year later, it stopped hearing cases involving the senior prosecutor, but Bloomberg Law noted that “it is unclear exactly when potentially inappropriate conduct between the judge and her began.”
Currently, Kindred’s cases are being reviewed for potential conflicts of interest, Bloomberg Law reports. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alaska has identified more than 40 cases that may have required recusal, according to a previous Bloomberg Law article. In many cases, the lead prosecutor appeared in court.
The former law clerk who joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office has since filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that the firm retaliated against her after she reported Kindred’s misconduct, Bloomberg Law reports in another article. The law clerk said she learned in an office-wide email in September 2023 that her one-year employment contract would not be renewed.
The Bloomberg Law article did not specifically state whether the employee was the one accused of having a sexual relationship with Kindred, but said her name was not mentioned in the article because she was a victim of sexual abuse.
The law clerk’s attorney, Kevin Owen, told Bloomberg Law that his client “courageously exposed not only the misconduct of Mr. Kindred, but also the misconduct of the U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors who appeared in his courtroom.”
