A little “light” reading for Judge Stefany Miley (Ret.) while she was working as a judge but not actually sitting on the bench during a hearing or trial.

There’s been some speculation — innuendo and outright libel, in our opinion — that Judge Stefany Miley (Ret.) was a slacker; that she goofed off while not sitting on the bench hearing a case. Allegations that she’d go shopping or go workout while supposedly working. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

The photo at the top of this post — this is just an example of what Judge Stefany Miley did while not on the bench.

Judge Stefany Miley (Ret.) in her black robe.

The headline on Steve Sanson’s VeteransInPolitics.org site screams:

“Judge has a history of violence & black robe syndrome!”

His exclamation point, not ours.

What exactly is black robe syndrome? According to the legal website, law.com, the term ‘black robe [syndrome]’ is used to describe judges who let their own self-importance cloud their good judgment.

This is simply amazing. Let’s walk through the incidents:

1. As you can see from the above frame grab of the narrative in the first of four police reports on Miley, the lawyer representing Stefany Miley’s husband in their divorce for some reason decided to visit the very gym where Stefany Miley had a membership while she was there working out with a person this attorney, Bruce Gale, described as her boyfriend. Gale purportedly was there to tour the place and consider becoming a member.Stefany Miley sees him, recognizes him, and according to Gale wanted to introduce him to her boyfriend. They shake hands and, according to Gale, Miley says to her boyfriend, “This is the attorney who called the cops on me.” (A different report, see below.) Her boyfriend responds by saying, “You better get him out of here quick before I kick his ass.” Gale walks away. According to him, Miley tries to approach him a few more times, but Gale walks away each time. Gale files a police report about this “coincidental” meeting. Really? This is what you’re hanging your hat on, Sanson? When this alleged incident occurred, the Life Time Fitness club was full on a weekend mornjng with people working out on the equipment on each side of Stefany.  And no witnesses were able to corroborate Gale’s report? That’s extremely unlikely given that the machines on either side of her were less than two feet apart. His police report paperwork showed he filed it as “Edward Miley’s attorney.” Stefany Miley only found out about this alleged gym incident following a call from news entities looking for comment.
2. Second report. A little before Christmas in 2018. Again, Gale makes an appearance as Stefany Miley’s husband’s divorce attorney. He shows up to call the cops on Stefany. She and her son had just arrived home in their car. Her son was driving. Upon arrival, the estranged couple’s son had told his dad that his mom smacked him in the car on the way home. Why? Because he ran a yellow light. Stefany Miley reprimanded him for how he was driving. He talked back to her, called her names, and Stefany Miley lashed out physically, apparently, slapping him, according to the police report, as detailed by Gale. As a result of this, Stefany Miley was charged with domestic abuse. That’s where the mug shot of her that seems to be all over online media came from — at her booking. After a short time, the charges were dropped. Not pursued. There was nothing there. But the police report and the unflattering mug shot live on online. Adding fuel to the fire, Stefany’s husband, Edward Miley, called news agencies and gave interviews after the arrest. Ultimately, the domestic violence charge was dropped “with prejudice in the interest of justice”.
3. Incident three: A secretary at Stefany Miley’s husband’s law firm filed a police report, stating that Miley allegedly barged into her husband’s offices (again, the couple was in the middle of divorce proceedings) and allegedly pushed the arm of this secretary to get by her. The secretary said she “felt bullied” by Stefany Miley’s actions. Nothing happened beyond that and beyond this police report filing. Judge Miley was in court that day. She doesn’t recall the incident at all. It’s interesting that this report was filed the day before Stefany Miley’s husband filed for divorce. Judge Stefany Miley (Ret.) confirmed that she was in court on the same day the incident allegedly occurred. Another detail — at the time, Stefany Miley owned 50 percent of the “office” her husband used. And Stefany also did not even know about the alleged incident with the secretary until Edward Miley produced the report during the divorce proceedings.
4. Incident four: Body bumping … and an argument. Here’s how the Las Vegas Review Journal reported this: “The Las Vegas city attorney has decided not to prosecute a misdemeanor battery complaint filed in May against a District Court judge. The complaint was the result of an argument between Judge Stefany Miley and Rhonda Gold-Charbonneau on May 19 at a soccer field at Buffalo Drive and Summerlin Parkway, according to a Las Vegas police incident report. Gold-Charbonneau accused Miley of a body bump. City Attorney Brad Jerbic said in a statement, ‘After review, the case has been denied for prosecution based on inability to prove the charge beyond a reasonable doubt.’ Gold-Charbonneau filed the complaint on May 20. According to the police report, Gold-Charbonneau said that Miley approached her and accused her of touching her children and talking about their family. An argument ensued between the two women. At one point, a soccer coach unsuccessfully tried to get them to stop arguing, the incident report said. Gold-Charbonneau alleged Miley then said, ‘If you ever touch my boys again,’ but didn’t finish her sentence, according to the report. Gold-Charbonneau then contended that Miley, with a clenched fist, bumped her body into Gold-Charbonneau’s, the report said. Gold-Charbonneau asked Miley whether she wanted to fight, according to the report. “Suspect yelled ‘Shut up’ and she (victim) replied ‘You shut up.’”The incident ended with Miley walking away, according to the report. So who’s the one making threats here? Interesting note: Edward Miley was standing beside Stefany at during this alleged incident with Rhonda … and he sought an affidavit from her to be used in our divorce. Hmmm, who’s stirring the pot here?

Wow. Public enemy Number 1, right?

It’s just astonishing what people can get away with when there’s an agenda (like a divorce) and they use the police and subsequent report filings as weapons against their opposition. You’ve heard of suicide by cop? Well, this is character assassination by cop. And courts.

How do we see it? Stefany Miley’s a victim of all that. Her husband obviously had an agenda while they were going through their divorce, and he played it like Sir Lawrence Olivier playing a role in a Shakespearean drama. And Sanson is a willing participant in this character assassination plot. Where do you think he got his information from? He and Sanson are friends.

Sanson’s headline screams, “Judge has a history of violence” — He acts like he’s super-sleuth again by writing pompously that, “We filed a Freedom of Information Request,” like it’s some big secret he’s digging up, as if he’s just discovered where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. It’s all public record. Police reports are a matter of public record. The FOIA filing is simply theater.

And of course, he uses all this as yet another opportunity to publish Stefany Miley’s police mug shot. Disgusting.

Gimme a break.

On his Veterans in Politics website, Steve Sanson published confidential Clark County Eighth Judicial District Court human resources personnel files regarding action taken with regards to a deputy marshal who often oversaw order and security in Judge Stefany Miley’s (Ret.) courtroom.

We won’t link to the article, because we don’t want to promote it. However, if you’d like to see the published documents we’re referring to here, you can certainly Google it and come up with the specific blog post.

A copy of the 9-page investigation and its conclusions were attached to a letter from Linda Marie Bell, at the time the Eighth Judicial District Court’s Chief District Judge. In her letter accompanying the report, Chief Judge Bell wrote, “ … the recommendation is that [the deputy marshal] received a written reprimand and that he attend de-escalation training to assist with [the deputy marshal’s] conflict resolution skills.”

That letter from Bell, as well as the entire 9-page confidential HR-produced investigative file was published on the VIP website under the following headline:

“How far would a Clark County District Court Judge go, to cover up the corrupt behavior of her Deputy Marshal? Just ask Clark County District Court Judge Stefany Miley!”

This was a hard copy document that was sent to retired Judge Miley informing her of the findings of an investigation into the allegations made against a deputy marshal who worked in her courtroom. There are very few ways that VIP’s Sanson would have been able to acquire the file:

1. Directly from the court’s HR department
2. Directly from Judge Miley herself
3. From someone who had access to Judge Miley’s desk or to the court’s HR director’s official office and stole or copied those papers.

Also, oddly enough, two pages of a bio highlight of Judge Stefany Miley’s promotional literature regarding her elect-ability when she was running a campaign for re-election in 2014 were included in the document dump by Sanson. Here they are:

Was someone, like Steve Sanson and his Veterans in Politics organization out do do harm to Stefany Miley? What would be the purpose of pushing those documents into the public eye? To demean and defame Judge Miley? To embarrass her?

Think about who would release that file. Would it be the court’s HR director? Highly unlikely. Would it be Judge Stefany Miley? Again, highly unlikely, as it casts a shadow over a deputy marshal who worked in her courtroom. Would it be someone who had access to Judge Miley’s office? Say, someone who was trying to impugn her courtroom and her character? Someone like her former husband? Or perhaps someone who was close to her former husband and was a known entity in the courthouse where Judge Miley’s office was and who wouldn’t be given a second thought if he or she were seen lurking about Judge Miley’s office?

Think through those scenarios. What do you think would be most likely?

When this first emerged, Judge Stefany Miley raised concerns with with the court’s HR department. Nothing happened. But that may not be the end of the story. We’ll see how this evolves. Stay tuned.

In our opinion, Steve Sanson is to Investigative Journalism as a Pencil is to a Modern Computer. They’re light years apart in terms of competency and capabilities. Steve Sanson posing as an investigative journalist is like former NFL middle linebacker Dick Butkus posing as a ballerina. You get the idea.

NFL linebacker Dick Butkus; not a ballerina

Sanson writes on his Veterans in Politics website about former Nevada District Court Judge Stefany Miley’s supposed conflict between being a judge in Nevada and at the same time being a bar member in the state of Texas. (See above graphic call-outs.)

Sanson references the Nevada judicial code in writing that:

“Nevada Code of Judicial Conduct, Rule 3.10 prohibits judges from practicing law. “Unless otherwise permitted by law, a judge shall not practice law,” [Rule 3.10]. This prohibition—‘a judge shall not practice law’—presumably applies to practicing law, not just in Nevada, but in any state.”

Then he writes,

“If it turns out that Stefany Miley practiced law in the Lone Star State, then presumably, she violated NCJC Rule 3.10.” He asks, “Issue: Was Judge Stefany Miley practicing law in Texas while sitting on the bench in Nevada?”

Very simple answer: No.

There’s nothing wrong, either legally or ethically, with being a member of the bar in multiple states. In fact, it’s quite common across the judicial landscape. Judge Miley was a member of the Nevada State Bar, and she sat on the bench in Nevada, and she obeyed the Nevada code by not practicing law in Texas. Big difference between being a current bar member in the state of Texas and actually practicing law there. She had no clients there; litigated no cases there. She simply was a member of the Texas State Bar.

Why? Why was (and is) she a member of the Texas State Bar in good standing?

She was born and raised in Austin. Texas. She has an undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University. Texas. Texas A&M is not too far from Austin. Here in Nevada as her career as a judge in Clark County was drawing to a close, she was going through a rough patch at the time with her then-husband, also an attorney whom she eventually divorced. Joining the Texas bar was a premeditated move. She knew eventually she would be leaving Las Vegas, leaving the bench, leaving her husband, and returning home to Texas to begin practicing law there. After she stepped away from her role as a Clark County Eighth Circuit Court judge. After her divorce from her husband.

Thing is, Mr. Sanson, you likely knew about all that being as tight as you are with Stefany Miley’s ex-husband. We’re taking a wild guess here — speculation on our part, so forgive us — that your primary source for the info you published on Veterans in Politics (perhaps the only source) was Stefany Miley’s ex-husband.

This all isn’t that hard to figure out. You’ve got to know your subject in order to write effectively about that subject. You know the old writer’s saying, right? That a writer can only write about what he or she knows.

God gave you a head. You might try using it every now and then. Comes in handy when you’re doing work where you actually have to think about stuff. Or did you just want to feel satisfied about trying to bring some influence to the Las Vegas area’s politics and elections scene regardless of who you walked over?

Judge Stefany Miley (Ret.)

It’s pretty clear that Steve Sanson has used his purported “charitable” 501(c)(3) organization — Veterans in Politics (“Internation”) — to go after former Las Vegas District Court Judge Stefany Miley. It’s not like she’s the only one they’ve gone after, but it’s apparent she certainly had a target on her.

Judge Miley was up for election in 2020 after having been elected previously on November 4, 2014 receiving 71.8 percent of the vote. Elected Nevada district judges serve 6-year terms. So she was up for election in 2020. She did not run for re-election.

On January 17, 2020, 10 months before that year’s Election Day, which was Tuesday, Nov. 3, Steve Sanson ran the following story on his Veterans in Politics website:

“Clark County District Court Judge
 ONLY worked 14 afternoons in 2018!”

January 17, 2020 is significant, because it was the deadline for Judge Miley to file for re-election.

In his article, Steve Sanson goes after Miley with a vengeance, implying that she was shirking her duty as a judge and mocking her over how little time she spent “on the bench.”

He wrote that, “Judge Miley was only on the bench for 149 of those days, leaving 112 days unaccounted.” And, “Judge Miley only worked 14 afternoons, she is hardly on the bench Thursdays and Fridays.”

We guess Sanson doesn’t know much about how judges operate. Actually a judge’s time on the bench in the context of their workweek is relatively minimal. The majority of a judge’s time is spent out of public view, reading case material from both the prosecution and defense; looking up case law and precedents that are germane to whatever cases they, themselves are in the middle of or that are referred to in the case filings and/or briefs related to the case in question; and making voluminous notes on all that. And then there’s reflecting on the merits of the case and writing up opinions to back up their decisions on the bench.

It’s a thankless task that most of the public (and apparently Sanson) doesn’t understand.

Even though judges don’t spend 8 to 10 to 12 hours a day sitting on the bench in court, they still spend countless hours behind the scenes preparing for when the actually appear in court.

We guess that’s lost on Sanson.

Judge Stefany Miley (Ret.) Adamantly Denies Allegations

That’s the headline on the Veterans in Politics (VIP) website. The story begins:

“157 DAYS on the BENCH in 2019!  Judges have no accountability on the bench, hardworking judges are minimized by slackers!”

• The story continues:

“Judge Stefany Miley!  Why did you move to Texas?  Stefany Miley!  How many days were you on the bench in 2020?  In 2019?  In 2018?”

Two defamatory statements that should be addressed, and we’ll do it in two separate postings. First, the implication is that Judge Stefany Miley only worked 157 days in 2019. Then the gratuitous jabs at Judge Miley implying that she has “no accountability on the bench” and that she’s a slacker.

That 157 number is backed up within the story of a laborious documentation of Judge Miley’s 2019 days on the bench, with month-by-month accounting of the judge’s time spent either sitting in on a civil case or sitting in on a criminal case. Then the monthly figures are added up and a grand total of 157 days is arrived at (with the note that there were 261 working days in 2019). Quite the math exercise.

Key phrase in that first bold-face quote is “on the bench.” That’s exactly right. A judge doesn’t spend every single day sitting on the bench in judgement of a case or cases. That’s the proverbial tip of the iceberg. That’s what everybody sees publicly.

What is not seen or documented are the countless hours upon hours spent out of public view on the bench reading court cases, making notes, doing background research on similar cases that may have set precedents previously or that are referred to in the case filings and/or briefs related to the case in question.

Consultation with clerks regarding various aspects of cases is an ongoing thing. Then there’s the process of analysis and arriving at a decision. Sometimes that’s fairly straightforward and is obvious. Sometimes it’s quite complex and requires a great deal of thought.

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Judge Stefany Miley (Ret.) Adamantly Denies Allegations

That top headline is the headline that appears on the Veterans in Politics (VIP) website. The story begins:

“157 DAYS on the BENCH in 2019!  Judges have no accountability on the bench, hardworking judges are minimized by slackers!”

The story continues:

“Judge Stefany Miley!  Why did you move to Texas?  Stefany Miley!  How many days were you on the bench in 2020?  In 2019?  In 2018?”

We addressed the first statement in our Part 1 post (JUDGE STEFANY MILEY — GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN! — PART 1). Now we’ll address the second statement.

Serial defamer Steve Sanson of Veterans in Politics (VIP) wrote this article. There’s more to dive into within the article, but for this post and the previous Part 1, we’ll stick to just the two introductory statements.

Sanson asks the question, “Judge Stefany Miley! Why did you move to Texas?”

We’ll answer for Judge Miley. Stefany Tewell (her maiden name and now her current name after divorcing Las Vegas attorney Randy “Ed” Miley) moved back to Austin, Texas, where she was born and raised. She spent the formative years of her life living in Austin and was an undergrad at Texas A&M University (the Aggies), just a couple hours up the road from Austin in College Station, Texas.

She moved back to Austin to escape Las Vegas, her husband, and to some extent the pressures, stresses and responsibilities of being a judge for 16 years in the Eighth Judicial District Court of Clark County, Las Vegas, Nevada. In the 16 years she had been a judge, she had seen everything. Multiple times. You can read about many of the cases she sat in on here: https://judgestefanymileynv.com/

She saw everything from the silly to the super serious. From immigration scammers to homicides to multiple homicides to an ax murderer to playing a role in the exoneration of an innocent woman who had spent 16 years in prison to putting herself in the crosshairs of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department regarding her ruling in the 1 October mass shooting in Las Vegas — the biggest mass shooting in the history of the country.

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What would we do without you, Steve Sanson? We need you desperately as a watchdog to oversee administrative transitional moves (like when one judge leaves his or her seat and another judge gets voted in and sworn in to take over).

What would we do without your extraordinarily sharp-eyed oversight on that?

You wrote on Dec. 2, 2020 in your post on your Veterans in Politics website headlined, “GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN,” that, to quote — “ ‘apparently’ [our single quotes] Judge Stefany Miley is no longer a judge in Clark County.”

Um, hey, bro — Steve. Psssst: There was an election in the state of Nevada on Nov. 3, 2020. I’m thinking given your professional career as the very lowly paid president of Veterans in Politics Internation (yes, that word Internation is correct; you can look it up on the Nevada Secretary of State website) you might have heard about it. Being political and all. But maybe not. We were just assuming. (Sorry, didn’t want to call you out there.)

Judge Stefany Miley didn’t run for re-election. She’d been at it for 16 years as Eighth Judicial District Court (Dept. 23) judge, sitting in judgment on all kinds of horrific crimes, hearing every gory detail in all kinds of homicide cases as well as other nasty violent crimes. Not to mention her divorce. She’d had enough.

Not that you deserve any explanation whatsoever, though.

And a judge elected on Nov. 3, 2020 takes office at the beginning of the next year — in this case on Jan. 4, 2021. That was the first Monday of the new year — the first official work day in 2021. It’s Nevada state law. We looked it up, just to be sure. So, because Judge Miley was not officially replaced by the newly elected Jasmin Lilly-Spells, who would take over when she was sworn in as the Eighth Judicial District Court (Dept. 23) judge on Jan. 4, 2021, the assumption is that Judge Miley still had computer access. But she didn’t know. Once she was no longer a judge, she never tried to log into the system. She was done as a judge. You, being the super-sleuth you are with your “sources,” and your FOIA filings could probably drill down and check out the access logs over the time in question. You won’t find her being logged as logging into the system.

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Judge Stefany Miley (Ret.) and Sheriff Joe Lombardo — possibly the next Governor of the state of Nevada

When you can’t come up with hard evidence, you do the next best thing, right, Steve Sanson? You report on rumors and innuendo.

We’re not accusing you of this idly. You actually admit it.

Here’s what you wrote in a post on your Veterans in Politics website on December 2, 2020:

“Clark County elections brouhaha teaches us that FACTS can be misleading, while RUMORS, true or false, are often revealing. Our VIPI I-Team has been pounding the streets to reveal clues! Rumor around the campfire is that Stefany Miley was asked NOT to return! OMG!”

We didn’t touch that above paragraph at all. We ran it verbatim. That’s exactly how it appeared on the VIP website.

Sanson openly writes that,

“FACTS can be misleading … “

And follows that up by writing that

“RUMORS, true or false, are often revealing.”

And then he writes,

“Our VIPI I-Team has been pounding the streets to reveal clues!”

Are you kidding us? This is about as sophomoric and journalistically unprofessional as it gets. How can you or your website possibly be taken seriously?

There’s a thing in journalism — actually in writing in general — known as a “fog index.” It’s an index that estimates the level of education a person needs to understand what he or she is reading. For instance, a fog index of 12 requires the reading level of a United States high school senior (around 18 years old) — in other words, a 12th-grader.

We think Sanson has broken the fog index with that paragraph above. On the one hand, it’s so simplistic that a fog index of about 5 feels about right to us. Although you did use that big word, not very often used, “brouhaha;” so maybe we’d have to bump that fog index up a little more. On the other hand, it’s so confusing — facts mislead and rumors, true or false, are revealing. Huh? What journalism school did you come out of? Oh, wait. You didn’t go through J-school. That may explain it.

In any event, yet another slanderous piece of writing and publishing from Steve Sanson and VIP.

To paraphrase a famous line from former President Ronald Reagan: “Mr. Sanson, tear down those posts.”

Seriously. You should remove them. Could wind up being very problematic for you.

Judge Stefany Miley (Ret.) — not a slacker.

This is how it works in the world of the modern media: one media outlet reports on something, and then other media outlets pick up that story and either run it verbatim or enhance it with their “original reporting.”

And so that’s how a story as libelous as the one Sanson wrote and published on the VIP website about former Las Vegas Judge Stefany Miley reverberates around the echo chamber of like-minded media entities.

Sanson wrote a piece about Miley’s apparent lack of work ethic, excitedly reporting that “Clark County District Court Judge ONLY worked 14 afternoons in 2018!” That was their headline, and yes, the exclamation point was added by them, not us.

Then an online news entity called 360 News Las Vegas picks up the story (slanderous in our opinion) and runs with it, adding very little to the story. Here’s their headline: VEGAS JUDGE STEFANY MILEY WAS ON THE BENCH 14 AFTERNOONS IN 2018 (360’s all caps, not ours).

And that’s how it goes. Shameful.

You’d think before one “news” organization picks up another’s report that they should be very careful about what they’re doing. But these days it seems all journalistic standards have been thrown out the window.

“According to our sources, she has been spotted at Lifestyle Athletic Club working out, or getting her nails and hair done at the local beauty shops during work hours,” writes Sanson in the VIP post. “According to our sources, she has been spotted at Lifestyle Athletic Club working out, or getting her nails and hair done at the local beauty shops during work hours,” writes 360 News Las Vegas in its post.

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