Humboldt County Judge Greg Kreis accused of sexual harassment, drunken bullying, throwing curveball into his reelection bid

The commission that oversees California’s judiciary has served presiding Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Gregory Kreis a 35-page notice charging him with 19 ethical violations including drunken bullying of attorneys, lewd behavior toward women, poor courtroom behavior, cronyism and abuse of power.

The allegations outlined by the commission on Feb. 2 stretch back years and have thrown his reelection campaign into turmoil just weeks before the March 5 election.

In one case, in May 2019, he is accused of using an antisemitic slur against a deputy public defender, insulting his manliness and then pushing him fully clothed off a pontoon boat into Lake Shasta.

A 2015 allegation from before he became a judge states that he took two attorneys with him to buy cocaine, then used the drug in the car as he drove back from the purchase.

Another accusation alleges he sneaked into a sleeping woman’s bedroom, exposed his genitals and tried to wake her.

Kreis declined to speak to The Press Democrat, citing the advice of a San Francisco attorney he’s retained for an upcoming hearing on the allegations. Kreis’ attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

However in posts to his campaign’s social media accounts, Kreis denied the accusations broadly and the antisemitic remarks specifically. He also questioned the timing of the charges just ahead of Election Day.

Judicial investigators appear to have interviewed a wide range of professionals working in Humboldt County Superior Court, where Kreis has been the presiding judge for two years.

The first set of allegations in the inquiry, which involve the pontoon boat incident, were the subject of 2020 lawsuits that drew local media attention. In May 2019, a group that included Kreis and a number of attorneys from his former workplace, the Humboldt County Public Defender’s Office, went camping and boating at Lake Shasta.

According to the complaint, an apparently intoxicated Kreis used the slur on the deputy public defender, mocked his manliness and then shoved him off the boat.

While on the boat, Kreis simulated a lap dance over a woman who was holding her child, “and moaned or made other noises that suggested you were having sex,” with her, the charging document said.

It also noted that Kreis had previously used the same antisemitic slur in front of a local attorney in 2016.

His opponent in the race, April Van Dyke, told The Press Democrat she decided to run in part “from my observations of my opponent in court, engaging in conduct that I consider very questionable.” She described what she’d seen of Kreis in the courtroom as “suboptimal behavior,” that included threatening to report attorneys to the bar.

But, she said, “clearly, I didn't know the extent of what the complaint alleges.”

Gregory Dresser, the commission’s director and chief counsel, told The Press Democrat the timing of the report had nothing to do with the election.

“The commission is agnostic about whether there is or is not an election,” he said. “Once a case has been fully investigated and is ready for charges, that’s when we charge it.“

Kreis was appointed to the bench by Gov. Jerry Brown In 2017, but commission investigators looked into allegations dating as far back as 2015, when Kreis was a supervising attorney in the public defender’s office. According to the charging document, the cocaine incident occurred around October of that year.

The episode involving the sleeping woman also occurred in 2015 and is one of three sexual harassment allegations. In addition to the pontoon boat lap dance, Kreis is accused of grabbing or slapping a woman’s rear end during a social gathering in 2018.

Another charge deals with an inappropriate relationship with a court employee in 2019. In that case, investigators wrote, Kreis began an “intimate relationship” with the court’s family law facilitator. In 2020, when Kreis learned another court employee had voiced concerns about the relationship, he complained to another judge and the court CEO about what he labeled “false rumors.” The court conducted an investigation and fired the employee who had voiced concerns about the romance. According to the charging document, however, Kreis made “false or misleading statements” when he complained.

The current court CEO, Meara Hatton, was not the executive at that time. In a brief phone call she told The Press Democrat court officials would not comment on the charges against Kreis.

A number of other charges brought by the commission deal with court cases in which the commission’s investigators found that Kreis should have recused himself because he had a personal relationship with the attorneys involved. Among those cases were some litigated by a law firm Kreis retained to defend himself in the civil lawsuit brought by the attorney he pushed off the boat.

That attorney sued both the judge and the public defender’s office in 2020. A judge dismissed the case against the public defender in December 2023, shortly after Kreis launched his reelection campaign. At that event, the judge told media outlet Lost Coast Outpost that the lawsuit against him was settling out of court. Kreis continues to list an endorsement from Humboldt County Public Defender Luke Brownfield on his campaign website.

Judicial oversight process

The charges and a rebuttal by Kreis will be reviewed in a hearing overseen by appointees of the California Supreme Court. If the accusations are upheld, the commission can impose discipline ranging from advisory letters to public censure, which could result in a judge being barred from receiving court assignments, to removal from office in the most serious cases.

“There aren't that many cases that are quite like this, frankly,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former state and federal judge who now serves as the executive director of the UC Berkeley Judicial Institute. “If they prove most of this stuff, or even a significant amount of it, I would suspect that they're going to recommend removal. It's hard to see how they wouldn't.”

While qualifying that the allegations have yet to be proven, Fogel, an expert in judicial ethics who has worked with the California commission, said the charging document stands out from others.

“It's notable in the number of allegations, the detail of the allegations and just the scope of the conduct. I have not, in my experience, seen very many formal proceedings where the charges are as numerous as they are here and the detail that's provided in the notice of formal proceedings is as granular as it is.”

A response from Kreis, which will be posted on the commission’s website, is due Feb. 22. After the public hearing, where both sides can provide evidence and cross-examine witnesses, the appointees overseeing the case will issue a report on their findings and both parties can further respond before the commission ultimately makes a call on discipline. The process can take several months. Kreis will be allowed to petition for a review of the decision by the state Supreme Court.

“When we charge cases, we have a good faith belief that we can prove all the charges by clear and convincing evidence,” Dresser said.

Removals, and even censures, are rare. The commission receives about 1,300 complaints per year. From 1995 through 2022, the body issued 668 advisory letters where the commission advises caution or expresses disapproval, 117 public admonishments, 43 public censures and 13 removals, three of which have come since 2016.

Judicial oversight and accountability or lack thereof has received increased attention, especially amid a series of bombshell national media reports about conflicts of interest among U.S. Supreme Court justices.

The effectiveness of California’s Commission on Judicial Performance has been the subject of public criticism in the past several years as well, leading to a 2019 report by the state auditor that concluded “weaknesses in its oversight have created opportunities for judicial misconduct to persist.” The audit made 12 recommendations for the commission and three for the state Legislature, which included funding for an investigations manager and an overhaul of the case management system. The commission has implemented all but one of those recommendations, Dresser said. In 2021, the Legislature created a committee to conduct its own review and produce recommendations, which were published in 2023.

Overall, UC Berkeley’s Fogel said California, which was the first state to establish an independent constitutional body to oversee judicial misconduct — has a solid track record, especially with recent changes.

“California, looked at in the national context, does really well, because there is a tradition, particularly in the last 20 years or so, of taking this stuff seriously,” he said. “The commission has a public interest focus, it has more staff than it used to have, it's not shrouded in secrecy the way that it used to be.”

Still, even with heightened public interest, judicial elections rarely get as much attention as other races.

Early on, political insiders in Humboldt County had described Van Dyke’s campaign to unseat Kreis as an uphill battle, she said, and many voters weren’t aware of the race. That dynamic has now changed.

On his reelection campaign site, Kreis continues to list endorsements from attorneys, law enforcement officers and other local officials, but the names of other elected officials and attorneys have disappeared.

“Judges’ decisions change people's lives forever,” Van Dyke said, “but before the news came out people didn't know about the judges' race. People didn't really know either candidate.”

Since news broke about the charges last week, “it’s been kind of a whirlwind.”

You can reach Staff Writer Andrew Graham at 707-526-8667 or andrew.graham@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on X (Twitter) @AndrewGraham88. You can reach “In Your Corner” Columnist Marisa Endicott at 707-521-5470 or marisa.endicott@pressdemocrat.com. On X (formerly Twitter) @InYourCornerTPD and Facebook @InYourCornerTPD.