photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez, left, Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden, and attorney Steven Angermayer are pictured Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023, outside the hearing room at the Kansas Judicial Center in Topeka, where Valdez was attending her disciplinary hearing. No cameras were allowed inside the hearing room.

Oral arguments in the disciplinary matter of former Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez are now on the docket at the Kansas Supreme Court, which will soon determine what, if any, punishment she will receive after a disciplinary panel found nearly a year ago that she had violated the attorney code of conduct.

The arguments are scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on April 1 at the Kansas Judicial Center, 301 SW 10th Ave. in Topeka. The hearing can be viewed on the Kansas Supreme Court’s YouTube page or attended in person.

Valdez has asked the court to give her, at most, an informal admonition after a panel for the Kansas Board for Discipline of Attorneys recommended in April 2024 that the high court censure Valdez for “undignified or discourteous conduct” toward Douglas County Chief Judge James McCabria in 2021, as the Journal-World reported.

In her plea for leniency to the Supreme Court she largely blamed media coverage for her plight and argued that she had been punished enough.

“DA Valdez has already been severely punished by a form of public censure through the local press,” wrote her attorney, Stephen Angermayer.

The special prosecutor in the case, Kimberly Bonifas, has objected to Valdez’s request for a private or informal punishment because such a punishment would not match the public nature of Valdez’s conduct toward McCabria. Bonifas had originally asked the discipline panel to suspend Valdez’s law license for one year.

“Respondent’s conduct wasn’t privately done,” Bonifas wrote in her response to Valdez’s plea for leniency, “but rather she wrote things to the public in the news and on the Internet, with unlimited viewing. Those harmed and affected should be given the opportunity to view this Court’s published opinion and corrective discipline.”

At the hearing, each side will have 15 minutes to make its case, and the hearing can be extended if there are questions from the justices, who will issue a decision at a later date.

Despite the disciplinary matter, Valdez mounted a campaign for reelection but lost overwhelmingly in the Democratic primary to Dakota Loomis, who went on to win the general election.