Panel recommends another suspension for Judge Henderson

A state panel is recommending that the Kansas Supreme Court suspend Sedgwick County Judge Timothy Henderson for a second time.

The panel found that when Henderson testified last year about sexual-harassment accusations against him and other concerns, he wasn’t credible and candid, according to a document filed late last month and recently obtained by The Eagle.

The disciplinary panel, made up of judges, lawyers and lay people, found that Henderson came across as misleading, uncooperative and selfish. “Testimony from a member of the Kansas bench that lacks candor and probity is unacceptable under any circumstances – but is particularly perverse when it occurs in the course of a disciplinary proceeding,” the Commission on Judicial Qualifications said.

Henderson, 53, couldn’t be reached for comment Monday. But his attorney, Thomas Haney, said he expects to file objections to the panel’s findings and recommended punishment. Henderson has a right to appear before the Supreme Court, Haney said, but it’s not clear when that would occur. Haney is arguing, in a document filed with the high court Friday, that the panel is proposing to discipline Henderson again for testimony for which he has already been sanctioned. Haney also is seeking more information on how the panel based its findings.

The panel is asking the Supreme Court to suspend Henderson for 30 days and publicly censure him. A censure is essentially a scolding. Of the five panel members who voted, four recommended the censure and suspension. One member wanted a “more severe sanction,” the panel said.

Henderson, a Republican whose judgeship is up for election next year, had been the head judge for the juvenile court system in Sedgwick County. Months after the complaints arose, he was reassigned to the court’s civil department.

In late February, the Supreme Court gave Henderson an unpaid 90-day suspension. The court found then that he made “repeated inappropriate and offensive remarks” to female staff members and female prosecutors appearing in juvenile court. The high court’s action followed an initial hearing that Henderson had before the commission on the harassment complaints and other issues.

A new panel of the commission heard evidence in August on the question of whether the judge’s May 2014 testimony was credible.

The new panel focused on three issues:

‘Stitch Story’

Witnesses at the August hearing refuted Henderson’s version of the so-called “Stitch Story,” the panel decided, according to a 10-page document filed on Sept. 23. According to a witness, the story had to do with Henderson telling how when his wife was being stitched up after giving birth, the doctor offered to make an additional stitch to increase his sexual pleasure.

The panel found that although Henderson had testified that he didn’t think the story was funny and that the last time he mentioned it was in the late 1990s, evidence showed that the judge had told it multiple times to several witnesses since 2000. The panel concluded that he recounted the story in a humorous way and told it to an assistant district attorney, Melissa Green, around October 2006 when she was close to giving birth.

Wife’s job

A second finding dealt with a court business meeting that Henderson had in June 2012 with Lanora Nolan, a juvenile justice education liaison for Sedgwick County. At the time, Nolan also was a Wichita school board member, and Henderson asked her to “investigate the reason his wife, a school teacher, was not offered a contract for the next year,” the panel said. Nolan found out that Henderson’s wife had been offered a full-time contract but rejected it, and Nolan told him that. Later the judge asked the school board member if there was a half-time job for his wife, and he “followed with several other contacts on that subject” into the fall of 2012, the panel said.

Henderson had testified that he didn’t seek Nolan’s help getting a job for his wife, that his talk with Nolan was a “throwaway conversation,” that he had only asked Nolan to make sure paperwork on his wife’s benefit (KPERS) funds could be “rolled over” or used for college, the panel said.

The panel concluded that the judge’s version of his communications with Nolan was refuted by Nolan’s testimony and other evidence, including emails sent by the judge.

‘Reach around’

The third finding dealt with Green, the assistant district attorney, and an “over-the-hill” birthday cake she had made for court reporter Jennifer Redd. The panel noted that Henderson admitted that he pointed to the cake showing an older couple and “mentioned a ‘reach around’ to Ms. Green.” According to Green, the judge said: “Look, it looks like she’s giving the reach around.”

Henderson had testified that he was referring to his wife assisting him in walking because he had just turned 50 and had aches and pains because of his age. He also testified that his “reach around” comment was his attempt at joking about his body size – that his comment didn’t have a sexual meaning and that he didn’t know it to have a sexual connotation, the panel said.

The panel decided that the judge’s “explanations of the meaning of his comment are not credible.”

Conclusions

Based on its determination on the three issues, the panel found that Henderson had violated judicial canons that a judge must uphold integrity and avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

In recommending that Henderson be disciplined, the panel noted “conclusions that many of the statements made by (Henderson) … were not credible.” It said his testimony in some instances “changed in questioning on the same subject” and that in other cases, “his testimony was contradicted by documents and other evidence the Panel found extremely credible.”

Henderson’s denials or “misleading statements” showed a lack of cooperation with the disciplinary panel, and he “acted with a selfish motive as he attempted to disguise his inappropriate conduct by attempting to recast his conduct as innocent and ignorant,” the panel concluded.

To his credit, the panel said, Henderson had shown commitment to the juvenile justice system and had no disciplinary record before the issues arose.

This story was originally published October 5, 2015 at 5:50 PM with the headline "Panel recommends another suspension for Judge Henderson."