photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Justin Spiehs confronts District Attorney Suzanne Valdez on June 26, 2024, at a Douglas County Commission Meeting.

Nearly a week after her deputy abruptly departed her office, District Attorney Suzanne Valdez has not publicly commented on the reason for the departure or answered many questions related to the matter.

Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden, widely regarded as a top decision-maker in the DA’s office, abruptly left Valdez’s employ shortly after he was seen on video mocking a man that Valdez’s office had once prosecuted. The incident, captured Friday by security cameras at the entrance to the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center showed Seiden donning a wig, hat and sunglasses to imitate Justin Spiehs. The video also showed Valdez laughing and pointing at Seiden as he imitated Spiehs in the public hallway outside her office.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden refers to a map of Downtown Lawrence during the murder trial for Chadwick Potter on April 22, 2024, in Douglas County District Court.

The Journal-World, in addition to inquiring what specifically prompted Seiden’s sudden departure, also asked whether Valdez had extended an apology to Spiehs, whether the DA condoned the behavior in the video and whether she intends to continue leading the DA’s office. Her office has not responded to multiple requests for comment. Nor has Seiden, who, as of Friday, was still listed as Valdez’s campaign treasurer on the Kansas Secretary of State’s website, though his name had disappeared from Valdez’s campaign website.

Seiden’s abrupt departure left many criminal cases in limbo. One attorney at a docket call Monday indicated to a judge that he had heard about Seiden’s departure only via a “newsflash” and expressed uncertainty with what was going on in the rape case he had been working on with Seiden. Seiden’s cases are being assigned to other attorneys in Valdez’s office, but it wasn’t clear this week what kind of strain that would put on an office that Seiden himself had recently characterized as lacking qualified and prepared attorneys, besides himself, to handle the rape trial of basketball star Terrence Shannon.

Spiehs, an anti-mask protester who frequently attends government meetings and calls public officials vulgar names, has several federal lawsuits pending against local county, city, school district and library officials, in which he accuses them of discriminating against him because of his viewpoints.

In August 2022, he entered a plea agreement with Valdez’s office and was convicted of two misdemeanors, endangerment and endangerment of a child, stemming from a protest he had staged, as the Journal-World reported.

Just a day after the Seiden video was made public, Spiehs attended a County Commission meeting and discussed the matter during the public comment portion of the meeting, calling Seiden a profane name and describing the event as “completely unprofessional and entirely unacceptable.” Stating his belief that Seiden had lost his job over the video, he asked “Who’s next?”

Valdez also attended the meeting and sat right behind Spiehs, who turned around and directly referred to her. Valdez did not speak at the meeting.

When asked if he planned to file a disciplinary complaint over the incident, Spiehs told the Journal-World that he was playing it by ear.

Under the Kansas Rules of Professional Conduct, anyone can file a disciplinary complaint against an attorney, and the Office of the Disciplinary Administrator regularly receives complaints from clients, opposing counsel, opposing clients, judges, other attorneys and members of the public, according to Disciplinary Administrator Gayle Larkin.

While the rules governing attorney behavior do not have a “conduct unbecoming” rule, Larkin said that KRPC 8.4 provides that “[i]t is professional misconduct for a lawyer to . . . (d) engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice” . . . and “(g) engage in any other conduct that adversely reflects on the lawyer’s fitness to practice law.”

Though Larkin cannot comment on specific case, she noted that, depending on the particular circumstances, the rules also generally frown on making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused and using “means that have no substantial purpose other than to embarrass . . . a third person.”

Whether a complaint is ever made public depends on the outcome of the complaint. If a disciplinary complaint is dismissed, all information about the complaint remains confidential.

But if a hearing is held on the matter, as happened with the disciplinary case against Valdez last year, the matter is generally available to the public.

In April a panel for the Kansas Board for Discipline of Attorneys recommended that the Kansas Supreme Court censure Valdez for “undignified or discourteous conduct” toward Douglas County Chief Judge James McCabria in 2021.

The panel found that Valdez violated “her duty to the legal system, the legal profession, and the public as a result of her comments about Judge McCabria” in a press release and in a Facebook post. It found that she did so knowingly and that her misconduct “caused actual injury to the legal system, the legal profession and the public.”

That case is still pending at the Supreme Court.