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Judge Admits Ethics Breach Over Torrid E-Mails With Former Clerk
New Jersey Law Journal
March 26, 2009
A Mercer County, N.J., judge has admitted breaching judicial ethics and policies by sending romantic e-mails to his former law clerk via his judiciary e-mail account and by using his judicial office to help land her a public defender job.
Superior Court Judge Lawrence DeBello made the admissions in an answer filed Monday to a complaint by the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct.
DeBello neither admitted nor denied charges that he gave misleading answers when interviewed about his actions by ACJC Executive Director John Tonelli and investigator Jennifer Endrzajewski.
DeBello admitted they questioned him under oath on Oct. 20, 2008, asking about the frequency of his communications with the clerk and his decision to keep communicating with her, even after his assignment judge told him to stop.
In his answer, DeBello said he had insufficient information to form a belief as to the truth of that allegation because he was unsure what it meant. But he added that he would amend that response once he obtained discovery.
DeBello's former clerk has not been named but the ACJC complaint said she clerked for DeBello from September 2006 through August 2007, while he sat in the Hudson County Family Part, prior to his transfer to Mercer.
DeBello admitted that at a December 2007 meeting with Hudson County Assignment Judge Maurice Gallipoli and Hudson County Trial Court Administrator Joseph Davis, he conceded the e-mails were inappropriate. Gallipoli and Davis had obtained copies of two exchanges that discussed "personal matters" and used "offensive language."
But after that meeting, the e-mails continued and even heated up. DeBello admitted that in December 2007 and mid-January 2008, he "participated in the escalation of the intimate tone and nature of those e-mail exchanges, which concerned their respective romantic feelings for one another."
In January 2008, DeBello was transferred to Mercer County, but kept up the e-mails, trying to help the former clerk get a new job. He admitted he "used the power and prestige of his office" to advance her "private interests" by making an unsolicited telephone call to Deputy Public Defender Edward Marable -- head of the Office of Law Guardian for the northwest region, who had appeared before him in court -- telling him the former clerk was interested in a law guardian job.
DeBello said in his answer that at the time of the call, Marable was no longer appearing before him. He admitted though, that he did not follow guidelines that say judges should avoid making recommendations over the telephone and should provide them in written and oral form only when solicited. He also said it was poor judgment to act as a reference, given his romantic feelings.
DeBello also admitted violating the judiciary's information-technology security policy, which prohibits personal use of e-mail. The policy, articulated in a Feb. 15, 2006, Directive No. 3-06, says users of court electronic communication systems have no reasonable expectation of privacy and are subject to monitoring and interception by management.
DeBello's lawyer, Arnold Lakind, of Szaferman, Lakind, Blumstein & Blader in Lawrenceville, declines comment.
DeBello, 51, was appointed to the bench by Gov. Christine Todd Whitman in 1997 and given full tenure in 2004. Before taking the bench, he was an assistant Jersey City corporation counsel and also in private practice.
The case is In the Matter of Lawrence P. DeBello, Judge of the Superior Court, ACJC 2008-116.
