The forgery and id theft trial for Vancouver protection legal professional Josephine Townsend concluded Thursday with attorneys asking a Lewis County decide to resolve who’s mendacity about faking a court docket order in a safety order case.
The trial was initially scheduled for 2 days in Clark County Superior Courtroom, however prolonged questioning of witnesses and negotiations over proof to be admitted pushed it to 4 days.
Choose Joely Yeager was set to move again to Lewis County and difficulty her verdict after she’d deliberated.
Townsend, 65, is accused of altering paperwork associated to a civil safety order in opposition to her former consumer, Travon Santiago.
Investigators mentioned Townsend copied Clark County Superior Courtroom Choose Suzan Clark’s signature from a earlier order Clark issued in Santiago’s felony case to a civil safety order in opposition to him that attorneys agreed was solid. Investigators alleged Townsend additionally affixed Clark County Clerk Scott Weber’s digital submitting stamp to the highest of the faux order.
Townsend ceaselessly participated within the trial, instructing her attorneys on objections to the prosecutor’s questions and informing the decide of Clark County court docket procedures. She additionally typically fetched reveals and witnesses for her attorneys.
Santiago and his girlfriend, Nicole Eagle, gave prolonged testimonies over the primary two days of trial concerning the evening Clark County sheriff’s deputies got here to their condo in July 2024 to arrest Santiago for violating the space restriction within the civil safety order. Santiago and Eagle mentioned once they confirmed deputies a court docket order that lowered the space Santiago was ordered to keep away from the sufferer, deputies mentioned that order wasn’t the one they have been there to implement.
Eagle forwarded the doc to deputies, she mentioned, they usually finally left the condo.
Investigators testified that a while later, they decided the order was not within the court docket file, they usually suspected it had been solid. It had Clark’s digital signature — with the identical time stamp, all the way down to the second, because the modified felony safety order — together with the clerk’s workplace’s e-filing stamp, in accordance with court docket data.
“I swore at them and yelled at them, and I told them I didn’t think this was a correct order,” Townsend mentioned on the stand.
Eagle denied that Townsend shouted at her or advised her to not use the doc.
Townsend testified that she didn’t make the doc, and he or she suspected that Eagle did.
Throughout closing arguments, Townsend’s protection legal professional, Vern McCray, questioned how Townsend would have been capable of fraudulently affix signatures to an altered court docket order on the fly. Employees at her agency had testified Townsend was not expert with know-how.
McCray additionally questioned why Townsend would threat her fame as an area legal professional, earned over many years, for a consumer who hadn’t paid her to do any work on a civil case.
“She must have said, ‘You know what, I’ve been practicing too long, and I don’t want to have a legal career anymore,’ ” McCray mentioned. “Was she getting some major payday for this? Were Ms. Eagle and Mr. Santiago offering thousands of dollars to put her reputation and livelihood on the line?”
Assistant Lawyer Basic Jaime Taft, who prosecuted the case on the request of the Clark County Prosecuting Attorneys’ Workplace, mentioned she doesn’t must show Townsend had any motive. However, she urged Townsend may have risked skilled self-discipline for advising Santiago he may return to his condo when doing so meant he would nonetheless be violating the space restriction within the civil order. She additionally pointed to texts from Townsend to a cellphone Santiago and Eagle shared saying she’d set a listening to to have the space lowered on the civil case, too.
Taft mentioned that whereas Townsend wasn’t obligated to assist Santiago with the civil case totally free, when he requested Townsend if he may return to his condo, she ought to have advised him no.
“What the defendant did in this case is subvert the legal process,” Taft mentioned.
The prosecutor additionally questioned why Eagle wanted to name Townsend that evening to get a replica of a doc if it was Eagle who created it. Eagle testified she saved a flash drive of court docket data equivalent to the one she gave Townsend’s workplace.
McCray mentioned the detective investigating the case in opposition to Townsend didn’t search Eagle’s pc. He known as the investigation biased and mentioned the detective aimed toward taking Townsend down from the start.
McCray requested the decide to search out Townsend not responsible and to ship the message: “If you’re going to come at an attorney than you better darn well do it right. Because a person’s livelihood is at stake.”
