SURPRISING STUFF
Walworth County garnered international headlines last week.
It was reported that a court commissioner was forced to resign after an incident in which he asked to see an immigration arrest warrant. Peter Navis, who worked as a Walworth County court commissioner for four years, resigned from his position last month, county clerk Michelle Jacobs said Thursday.
While court commissioners function in a judicial capacity, conducting preliminary hearings and accepting pleas by defendants, they are appointed to their positions by local judges. As such, Navis’s options were limited. Ultimately, he stepped down.
The incident that cost Navis his job happened on July 15. Navis was presiding in his courtroom that day in the case of Enrrique Onan Zamora Castro, of Milwaukee, who faced a misdemeanor charge of operating a vehicle without a valid driver’s license for the second time in three years. About 15 minutes before Castro’s case was to be called, a deputy told him that Castro was going to be arrested on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, on an immigration warrant. A court transcript shows that Navis objected to sheriff’s deputies attempting to detain Castro without a valid federal warrant.
The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Andrew Herrmann, said Navis had no right to see the warrant. Navis said he spoke with Walworth County Judge Kristine Drettwan for guidance, and she told him he had the authority to run his courtroom as he saw fit. Sometime after Castro was detained, ICE officers appeared with deputies to make a second arrest of someone in the courtroom. Navis said he didn’t know who that person was. According to the transcript, Navis said, “I’ve been instructed by the judges of this county to require warrants before individuals are detained in my courtroom.” Navis said he met with three of the court’s judges six days after the incident, and they told him that because he misstated their position, he could either resign or be fired.
Navis said on Thursday that he misspoke in the courtroom. “I misstated it, I did,” Navis said. “It’s not something I had intended to misstate. It’s not like I was trying to mislead anyone. What I was trying to express was that I had been given the authority to act in my courtroom. That’s what I meant to say, but it didn’t come out that way.” Navis said he is currently looking for work.
One might think that a commissioner might be given more latitude in running his own courtroom. Navis was a good commissioner, and the staff of the GSR hopes he will successfully tie up with a decent firm…one that believes in arrest warrants.
