Oklahoma County judge's ouster trial begins

Oklahoma County District Judge Kendra Coleman was never given a chance to establish herself, her attorney told the Court on the Judiciary on Monday at the start of her ouster trial.

“We've got nothing to hide,” Joe White said.

“We want you to have all the evidence because everything she did, I submit to you, was judicial. Her temperament is good. Her reasoning and her rationale is good. What they did to her at times is unspeakable.”

The Court on the Judiciary is to decide whether Coleman is to be removed from the bench. She is accused of gross neglect of duty, oppression in office, judicial misconduct and other wrongdoing.

Her attorney said she never had a chance at the courthouse after defeating an incumbent judge, the daughter of a former longtime special judge.

“At the end of this trial, the citizens of northeast Oklahoma County are the ones who should decide who sits as their judge. And they decided in November of `18,” White said .“And it shouldn't come down to something like this because she doesn't deserve it.”

Six witnesses testified on the first day of the trial that was livestreamed on oscn.net, the state courts website. Close to 400 people were watching at one point.

The trial is expected to last as long as three weeks.

Most of the testimony Monday dealt with her repeated rulings against prosecutors in a 2017 fatal dog-mauling case.

The manslaughter case had been moved to her for trial in May 2019 because the assigned judge, Natalie Mai, was presiding over a murder trial.

Upsetting to prosecutors were limits Coleman placed on what evidence they could show jurors. Most significantly, she blocked prosecutors from showing any crime scene photos of the elderly victim except one from a distance of the body covered with a blanket.

“She was essentially neutering our case,” one prosecutor, Adam Panter, testified. “I ... never had a judge keep out every shred of my evidence.”

Prosecutor Kelly Collins described Coleman as hostile right off the bat during the hearing on the evidence.

Prosecutors asked for her to step down from the case after finding out the defense attorney, Ed Blau, had held a fundraiser for her. They also asked her to step down because she had complained in the past that she had to pay another pet owner's vet bill after her dog attacked another dog at a dog park.

She refused but did not end up presiding over the trial anyway. The chief judge that month, Amy Palumbo, moved the case back to the assigned judge pursuant to court rules because the potential jurors had been sent home.

Pal umbo revealed in testimony Monday that Coleman became angry over the transfer and scolded her like she was a child for the decision. “It was honestly kind of shocking,” Palumbo told the Court on the Judiciary.

She said it made her wonder why Coleman was so invested in the case. “It was just pretty stunning,” she said.

The assigned judge, Mai, also revealed Monday that Coleman confronted her and asked her not to take the case back. Mai said their conversation became heated and Coleman said she did not believe “we supported her as a colleague.”

Mai later stepped down from the dog-mauling case herself because of a fight involving her own dogs. The case is still pending.

The Court on the Judiciary also heard testimony Monday about Coleman' s demeanor during a 2019 child molestation trial.

Assistant District Attorney Gayland Gieger said Coleman was very focused on making sure everybody in the courtroom respected her authority and was “jumping” on defense attorneys over irrelevant things.

“I never knew at any moment if she was going to come across in a demeaning or extremely aggressive or hostile way to defense attorneys. It's what I witnessed and I also thought it might happen to us,” the prosecutor said.

Testimony is set to resume at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.