Laws in Iowa: Swift Justice Rendered as Justices Sua Sponte Remove Magistrate from the Bench

The Iowa Supreme Court has removed from the bench a magistrate who questioned the veracity of an alleged sexual assault victim because he was a teenage male and asked whether a defendant in a separate case was a “wetback.”

Magistrate David J. Hanson, who is based in Fayette County and has practiced law for more than 36 years, is “simply and unalterably unsuited to be a judge,” and is “unable to preside over any proceeding involving a sexual assault,” the court ruled on Friday.

Its decision to remove Hanson from the bench takes effect in 10 days, assuming Hanson has not resigned before then.

In March, the justices heard oral arguments in the disciplinary proceedings against Hanson. The Iowa Judicial Qualifications Commission, which hears complaints about judges’ conduct, had recommended that the justices suspend Hanson for 90 days due to his conduct in two separate criminal matters.

On Aug. 5, 2022, he refused to sign an arrest warrant for a 17-year-old girl in a sexual abuse case in which the alleged victim was a 15-year-old male. According to court records, Hanson reviewed the matter and denied the warrant, writing that “any self-respecting young male” would have simply removed himself from any sexual touching that was truly unwelcome and he described his own response as a teenager to “unwelcome” sexual advances.

Hanson went on to write that as a teenage boy, the alleged victim’s actions were “contrary to nature” because the “normal, hormone-ridden teenage boy’s reaction to being undressed by a teenage girl” is, “Alright! I’m gonna GET some!” His written decision then went into graphic detail about the physiology of the male sex organ.

In July 2023, Hanson was presiding over a case in which an individual was charged with driving without a license or insurance. A law-student intern who was prosecuting the case later complained that during the proceedings Hanson asked, “Is this guy a wetback? An illegal?”

According to the commission, Hanson also asked whether the prosecutor was sure the defendant, who wasn’t present at the time, hadn’t stolen someone’s identification.

Hanson says use of slur was once ‘common’

At last month’s hearing before the Iowa Supreme Court, Hanson told the justices that with regard to the allegations made by the victim in the sexual abuse case, “I honestly thought, ‘This is a lie. It reads like bad pornography.’ I hate pornography. Pornography is lies … I still, to this day, am convinced that the arrest warrant request, the complaint, was resting on lies.”

At the time, Chief Justice Susan Christensen appeared to bristle at Hanson’s comment and questioned his equation of pornography with lies.

“Sir, are you aware that things that happen to people are pornographic in nature? And sometimes, in order for there to be an arrest warrant, someone might have to give details that are really ugly to give (and) heartbreaking to hear? Just because you’re giving the adjective ‘porn’ — what if those things actually happened to that person? Because it qualifies as porn in your mind and you hate porn, you think it’s a lie?”

“I seriously questioned it,” Hanson replied. “The other problem I had was the utter lack of interest, as far as I could tell, in the policeman attempting to corroborate what the young man said.”

Hanson then likened the decision he faced in that case with what he called the “travesty” of the testimony that was given during the U.S. Supreme Court nomination hearings for conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, and for Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991.

“Those were lies,” Hanson said, pounding the podium as he addressed the Iowa justices. “Televised lies! And I was appalled by that, and I thought, ‘I will not be an instrument of anyone seeking to destroy someone without any backing up of what (the alleged victim) said here.’”

As to the second matter involving the case in which Hanson used the term “wetback,” Christensen asked Hanson, “Do you think the term ‘wetback’ is offensive?”

“I’ve learned since using it that it is,” Hanson said. “I grew up in west side, working class Waterloo, and it was fairly common.”

Christensen cut Hanson off, shaking her head and telling him, “You definitely, that one, I am gonna call ‘foul’ on that, that you didn’t know it was offensive.” Hanson told the justices he was agreeable to taking whatever educational courses the court might prescribe for him but asked that he not be removed from the bench due to the heavy caseloads in Fayette County.

Justices remove Hanson from the bench

In the decision Friday to remove Hanson from the bench, Justice Dana Oxley, writing for the full court, stated that “it should go without saying that the term ‘w——‘ is a racially derogatory, highly offensive slur that does not belong in a courtroom — and especially not from the mouth of a judge … We cannot overemphasize how inappropriate it was for Magistrate Hanson to use the slur … Rather than recognize the term as the racial epithet that it is, he labels it as ‘someone’s taboo’ that he ‘apparently’ transgressed.”

In deciding that Hanson’s conduct warranted not just a suspension but his removal from the bench, the court stated that if Hanson “cannot recognize bias or prejudice in his own conduct, we cannot trust him to recognize it in those he is tasked with policing,” referring to attorneys and other officers of the court.

Hanson, the court added, “has not shown regret for his choice of words. He has not shown genuine remorse for the effect his statements likely had on the litigants. He has shown no aptitude for self-improvement. Indeed, he suggested in his brief that the commission simply provide him with a list of ‘bad words’ so that he can avoid them in conversation.”

With regard to the sexual assault case, the court found that Hanson is “unable to preside over any proceeding involving a sexual assault,” and noted that in a written brief, Hanson had explained his view of sexual assault allegations by writing, “All judges should know, and fear, false accusations of sexual crimes alleged long after the supposed events. I witnessed the televised atrocities visited upon U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominees … by women whom effective cross examinations showed to be telling falsehoods. I will never abet such ‘high-tech lynchings.’ ”

The justices stated Hanson’s remarks were “not those of an independent, impartial arbiter carefully considering whether the allegations provided in the affidavit before him supplied probable cause to support an arrest warrant. Instead, they reflect the biases of someone with preconceived and inflexible notions about alleged sexual assault victims.”