Kerry Johnson

speaker

362 appearances 40 recordings 4 series first heard Jan 2025 last heard 7 Jun

Kerry Johnson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 36 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 8.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The NPR Politics Podcast · NPR Investigation: Harassment In The Federal Court System · 1 Mar 2025 podcast

When the Alaska clerk reported the assault, she told a colleague who had been assigned to mentor her, but that mentor said she also had been coerced.

Her mentor later said the judge's power and authority contributed to the pressure she felt, and he told her he would have sway over a job she wanted. The former clerk heard from friends the judge was furious she'd told anyone. When she ran into him in the hallway at the courthouse, she says he warned her to keep her head down and shut up.

The court system ultimately launched an investigation into the judge, Joshua Kindred. What followed were multiple rounds of interviews with investigators who cross-examined her and stress-tested her credibility. The court investigation took more than a year. All the while, two other young women clerks in the judge's chambers continued to work by his side.

Judge Joshua Kindred told investigators that the sexual experience was consensual and that he had no, quote, sinister intent. The special committee found the judge deliberately lied when he said nothing sexual had happened between them.

But the committee did not reach a conclusion about whether the judge sexually assaulted the former clerk, finding there was enough evidence to say the judge committed misconduct without even resolving that issue. Judge Kindred did not respond to NPR's attempts to reach him for comment. The clerk said she felt let down by the process. I want to be careful here.

And you respond in the way that you feel comfortable. After you left the job, the judge met up with you and assaulted you. And the Ninth Circuit report is less than clear in concluding that. But it's certainly clear in your mind and the mind of your attorney that is exactly what happened.

The federal judiciary points to the departure of the Alaska judge as a demonstration the system works. The Administrative Office of the Courts, which sets policy from Washington, says they've taken extensive steps to protect clerks and other workers since the MeToo movement swept the country in 2017. And they say they hold judges to the highest standards.

But our investigation uncovered problems with the reporting system in the judicial branch. For one, there's a widespread culture of fear. And there's a good reason for that. Jamie Baker is a former judge who also worked in the White House and the military.

Not only is the relationship intense, it often comes with a huge age gap.

Gabe Roth is executive director of Fix the Court. He's pushing the federal courts to be more accountable. Here's the way the system works. Let's say a clerk has a problem. The first option is something called informal advice.

The next step, however, gets more complicated.

The courts say there are about 500 people across the system who can hear about problems and offer advice. A lot of that happens informally, through mediation, where a clerk or other court employee can raise concerns and get an apology or even a job transfer. Then there's the most serious option, making a formal complaint. But staying anonymous is not guaranteed, clerks say.

I talked about that with Aliza Schatzman. She runs the Legal Accountability Project, a database where clerks can share honest feedback about judges, the good and the bad. I spoke with a clerk recently who talked about going in for an interview with investigators. One of the investigators was planning a party for the judge this clerk complained about.

And when the interview ended, the clerk walked out into the hallway and there was the judge about whom they were complaining.

But hard data about misconduct in the court system can be hard to come by. For example, no one tracks that first step we mentioned, the informal advice.

A report in November did show that more court employees are using the dispute resolution process, but few of them are law clerks. There are more than 1,400 federal judges with life tenure, and they each have at least two clerks. Just seven complaints came from law clerks between 2021 and 2023. But the federal courts interpret that low number to mean something different.

I asked Aliza Schatzman about that. Just a few months ago, the head of the administrative office of the U.S. courts, Judge Robert Conrad, came out and said the numbers of complaints filed by law clerks, EDR complaints, is very low, which to him means that they have kind of a middle manager problem in the judiciary. And it's not the judges. What do you take that data to mean?

The clerk in Alaska, for example, never used the judiciary system to report Judge Kindred. She says she didn't know it existed. And that's not uncommon. A national research study last year found many federal courts failed to put required information on reporting misconduct on their websites. Here's retired Judge Jamie Baker.

One person, a former coordinator, told me there are a lot of people trying to help and do the right thing. But they told me it was a struggle to get information updated on the court's website, so clerks could find out who they can talk to. if they have the courage to speak. Even this coordinator was afraid to talk because of possible reprisal for talking about the courts.

And then there's inaction. Before the court started to develop more formal systems for reporting abuse seven years ago, and even to this day, clerks are left to figure out a solution for themselves. That's what happened many years ago with a woman who would only use her initial S. S worked for a federal judge in Puerto Rico just out of law school.

Showing 301–320 of 362 · page 16 of 19