photo by: Bremen Keasey/Journal-World

Former Deputy DA Joshua Seiden addresses the Lawrence City Commission during public comment Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024.

City leaders have chosen not to appoint a former deputy district attorney who is facing a state ethics complaint to a board that reviews allegations of police misconduct, and one city commissioner confirmed that it was her decision to nominate him in the first place.

The appointments to the Community Police Review Board were voted on during the City Commission’s meeting on Tuesday night, and during the discussion of the list of appointees, City Commissioner Amber Sellers said she was the one who had nominated former deputy DA Joshua Seiden to the Community Police Review Board. However, after other commissioners stated they wanted to remove Seiden’s name from the list, Sellers joined the unanimous vote to appoint three other people — Douglass Miller, Adam Kellogg and Brenda Clary — to the board, saying that she wanted to “spare the dramatics.”

Sellers had not previously responded to questions from the Journal-World about Seiden’s nomination. However, commissioners Lisa Larsen and Brad Finkeldei had previously told the Journal-World that they did not nominate him and did not support his nomination, and Larsen was the commissioner who first asked to remove his name on Tuesday night.

Seiden has been on and off the list of nominees over the past two weeks. His name was first added to the list the week before the Aug. 6 City Commission meeting, but it was removed from the list on Aug. 5. Then, at the Aug. 6 meeting, Seiden addressed the commission during public comments, touting his previous work in the DA’s office and asserting that he was the right person to get the CPRB “off the ground.”

On Aug. 8, Seiden reappeared on the list of nominees.

As the Journal-World previously reported, Seiden abruptly departed the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office in June after he was caught on video in costume mocking a man whom the DA’s office had prosecuted.

The footage from a security camera in the county’s Judicial and Law Enforcement Center showed him dressed as Justin Spiehs, a controversial public commenter who had been prosecuted by Valdez’s office. Spiehs was charged with two felony counts of aggravated assault and one count of interference with a law enforcement officer; in 2022 he entered a plea agreement and was instead convicted of two misdemeanors, endangerment and endangerment of a child, as the Journal-World reported. District Attorney Suzanne Valdez is seen laughing and pointing in the video, though she has denied that she was a party to Seiden’s conduct and said that the incident played a role in Seiden no longer being in her employ.

Spiehs has since filed an ethics complaint against Seiden and Valdez with the Kansas attorney disciplinary office, alleging multiple violations of the Kansas Rules of Professional Conduct.

When Seiden addressed the commission last week, a few commenters expressed their frustration over the initial nomination. On Tuesday, multiple commenters, including Spiehs himself, again criticized the decision to nominate Seiden and the fact that Sellers previously had not acknowledged that she had nominated him.