Retired judge admonished for absences, offensive comments from bench

The Commission on Judicial Performance has admonished former San Diego County Superior Court Judge Howard H. Shore months after he retired from the bench. The charges include extended absences and offensive remarks from the bench.

In written comments to the Daily Journal, Shore claimed the case against him was based on false statements made by people in the Public Defender's office. He retired in January.

"I categorically deny all of the allegations and further deny that any of the alleged conduct violated the Canons of Judicial Ethics," Shore said in an emailed statement.

In a news release on Thursday, the commission noted that in 2023 it had issued a "severe public censure to former Judge Shore for improper absences, without approval, for at least 155 days in 2021 and 2022." The commission also said Shore made "misrepresentations, omissions, and minimization of the facts" during that investigation. This prior discipline was an aggravating factor in the latest findings.

"In addition, while presiding over pre-trial criminal hearings, former Judge Shore made undignified, discourteous, and offensive comments, reasonably perceived as bias, prejudice, or harassment, based on race," the release said. "Former Judge Shore's comments were largely irrelevant to any of the issues before him and constituted gratuitous interjections, including the use of the N-word in a hypothetical while arguing with an expert witness."

Some of these comments were laid out in the 11-page decision. Several involved statements he made in court in cases concerning the state's Racial Justice Act. This law, passed in 2020 as AB 2542, allows criminal defendants to challenge their conviction based on claims of bias because of their racial background or national origin.

For instance, during a 2022 hearing, "Shore expressed disagreement with the law, improperly criticized the Legislature, and denied that systemic racism exists in the judicial system." He also suggested "that more minorities commit crimes than Caucasians" and said "this Legislature has been enacting laws" without thinking them through. Shore went on to make similar comments in other hearings involving the law, the decision said.

The commission also wrote that Shore made questionable comments about his absences in a 2023 meeting with Chief Deputy and Acting Public Defender Katherine Braner and Chief Deputy Alternate Public Defender Megan Marcotte. Shore said he had a granddaughter in Los Angeles with serious medical conditions he visited on weekends. Because he is an Orthodox Jew barred from driving on Saturdays, "he left early on Fridays for a 'couple of years' without asking or telling anyone," the commission said.

However, the decision stated, he was actually "absent every single Friday between May 28, 2021, and November 18, 2022." The "public defender's office subsequently filed statements of disqualification ... against Judge Shore in at least 19 cases," it read.

In his written comments to the Daily Journal, Shore said the counts against him are "based on a series of allegations set forth in a declaration" by Braner and Marcotte. He added that an Orange County Superior Court judge brought in to rule on the disqualification requests rejected 14 of them, finding several were based on "speculative assertions."

"I am saddened that, after more than 33 years of a respectful professional relationship with their offices, the authors of the declaration felt the need to engage in such a vicious and bad-faith attack on my character to have me removed from their cases," Shore wrote. "I am further saddened that the Commission has chosen to accept those allegations and interpret them as violating the Canons."

He also wrote that the meeting with Braner and Marcotte took place shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel. He wrote that he told them his wife is from Israel, and it had been a difficult year for the family.

"If I had wanted to become embroiled in a political discussion, I could just as easily have taken issue with the declaration's authors failure to express sympathy for the thousands of Israeli men, women, and children murdered by terrorists," he wrote.

Shore was represented by Heather L. Rosing and David M. Majchrzak with Rosing Pott & Strohbehn in San Diego.