Previously censured California judge, now retired, admonished by state judicial commission

For the second time in less than 18 months, California’s Commission on Judicial Performance has publicly disciplined former San Diego Superior Court Judge Howard Shore, this time for making “in-court comments reflecting the appearance of racial bias” and misleading statements about his prior discipline.

The commission issued the public admonishment last week, a little more than two months after Shore retired. In December 2023, the commission issued Shore a rare “severe” public censure — a step below removing him from the bench — after finding that he skipped 155 days of work without authorization and was initially dishonest when confronted by his supervisors about the unexcused absences, which included every Friday for an 18-month period in 2021 and 2022.

An admonishment is the lowest level of public discipline the commission can impose, after removal, censure and reproval.

Unlike the public censure, which was the result of a stipulated agreement between Shore, his attorneys and the commission, the retired judge wrote in a lengthy statement provided to the Union-Tribune that he “categorically (rejects) this Public Admonishment as unjustified.”

The admonishment is the latest blemish on Shore’s record, bringing to a close the tumultuous final year of what had been a long and distinguished career as an attorney and judge. Early last year, about a month after Shore was censured, top leaders from the Public Defender’s Office asserted in a sworn declaration that Shore had “lost judicial legitimacy.” Months later, an Orange County judge disqualified Shore from hearing multiple cases under California’s Racial Justice Act, finding there were reasonable questions about whether he could remain impartial given his prior “insensitive language and comments” in the courtroom. San Diego Superior Court leaders then did away with the pretrial motions department that Shore headed and moved him to the civil division after he’d spent more than 25 years in the criminal division.

“While presiding over pre-trial criminal hearings, Judge Shore made undignified, discourteous, and offensive comments that could reasonably be perceived as bias, prejudice, or harassment … based upon race, national origin, or ethnicity,” the commission wrote in its admonishment.

Though the admonishment deals with allegations of wrongdoing by Shore that are separate from his actions related to his censure, the discipline is intertwined in multiple ways. For instance, the commission found that private comments and a public court filing by Shore sought to downplay the reasons for his prior discipline, and thus Shore lacked candor in violation of one of the canons of the California Code of Judicial Ethics.

Also, the commission stated that it “considered Judge Shore’s prior discipline to be a significantly aggravating factor” in deciding to issue the new admonishment.

A central issue in the admonishment is a meeting that Shore called with Katherine Braner and Megan Marcotte from the county’s Public Defender’s Office on Dec. 4, 2023, when Shore knew he was about to be censured but the discipline had not yet been made public.

Braner, who at the time of the meeting was the interim chief of the Office of the Public Defender, and Marcotte, the head of the office’s Alternate Public Defender component, later wrote in a sworn declaration that Shore had made racist and insensitive comments during the meeting. They asserted that Shore had “lost judicial legitimacy and irreparably damaged confidence in his judicial integrity” and took the exceptional step of requesting that Shore no longer be assigned to preside over the cases of defendants represented by public defenders.

Braner and Marcotte wrote that during the 45-minute meeting with Shore, he downplayed the censure, made troubling comments about Mexicans and Palestinians living in Gaza and expressed a bias against renters.

The commission found that Shore’s omissions during the meeting and his “minimization of the facts” underlying the censure constituted a lack of candor.

Shore took umbrage with the declaration made by Braner and Marcotte.

“Many of the conclusions drawn in the declaration, as well as those contained in the Admonishment, are simply wrong and, unfortunately, reflect an alarming degree of bad faith on the part of its authors,” Shore wrote in his statement. “Because of the purpose of the meeting — to advise of the impending censure, rather than to review all of its content — I did not discuss the censure in detail … Any conclusion that I intentionally concealed parts of the censure to mislead is incorrect.”

Braner and Marcotte’s declaration was filed in court by a deputy public defender as part of a wider effort to disqualify Shore from presiding over many cases, but especially over motions based on the Racial Justice Act, a 2020 state law that seeks to ensure race does not play a factor in the administration of justice. As head of the pretrial motions department, Shore was assigned to rule on Racial Justice Act motions in all cases heard in the Superior Court’s downtown central division.

In a ruling last April thought to be the first of its kind, Orange County Assistant Presiding Judge Cheri Pham disqualified Shore from hearing multiple cases under the Racial Justice Act, with the decision coming less than two months after an appellate court had overruled Shore in a Racial Justice Act case.

“From his comments, a person aware of the facts could reasonably believe that Judge Shore believes certain racial or ethnic groups commit more crimes than others,” Pham wrote in part, citing remarks Shore had made in previous hearings.

The commission cited many of those same comments in its admonishment. In one hearing cited by the commission, Shore “disregarded an expert’s opinion concerning racism and offered his own opinion concerning ‘reverse racism,’” the commission wrote.

“Whatever his intent, Judge Shore’s comments were largely irrelevant to any of the issues before him and constituted gratuitous interjections,” the commission wrote. “In particular, Judge Shore’s use of the N-word while arguing with an expert was unnecessary.”

The commission also wrote that Shore improperly denigrated the state Legislature while criticizing the Racial Justice Act. The commission found that his comments concerning race and ethnicity and his comments critical of state lawmakers violated multiple canons of judicial ethics, including his duties to be impartial, to be faithful to the law regardless of partisan interests and to perform his judicial duties without bias or prejudice.

“I deny that my comments violated the Canons of Judicial Ethics,” Shore responded in his statement. “My quoted comments from various RJA hearings, in isolation, convey the false impression that I harbored a bias against the Racial Justice Act. In reviewing the entire record in each of these motions, it is apparent that I attempted to engage for the sole purpose of reaching a just decision based on the facts and the law, a goal I have pursued throughout my career.”

Shore likewise denied that his comments about the Legislature were improper. “The Racial Justice Act contains many provisions that have yet to be interpreted by our appellate courts, and there is a paucity of guidance thus far for trial judges,” he wrote. “I made my comments to engage in a meaningful exchange with the attorneys in order to address the significant issues and important goals of the Racial Justice Act, not to disparage the Legislature.”

Nine members of the commission, which is made up of six members of the public, three judges and two attorneys, voted in favor of the admonishment. One member was recused and one other member did not participate for undisclosed reasons.