Agreement bars Postma from Alaska judicial service

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — An Anchorage judge voted off the bench last month will no longer be able to seek judicial office in Alaska, according to an agreement unanimously approved by the Alaska Commission on Judicial Conduct.

The agreement comes after complaints alleging that former Judge Richard Postma, with the state’s Third Judicial District, engaged in unprofessional communications and was unfit to be a judge.

The conduct commission began disciplinary hearings Wednesday, but quickly went into recess for negotiations. According to the commission, Postma accepted the facts as legal proof to support the charges against him.

Other stipulations require that Postma be publicly censured for the charges, and that he drop state and federal discrimination lawsuits filed against the court system, the Alaska Judicial Council and several court employees.

Postma had contended that he was subjected to ethnic stereotyping and unprofessional statements which caused him to suffer from anxiety. Postma’s attorney, Thomas Van Flein, says he would have been able to provide a defense to the charges if the hearing had gone forward.

“Judge Postma believes that the damage to his reputation has already been done, and there’s nothing that can be said or resolved in this hearing that would return him his reputation, so that was another reason that he considered in resolving this,” Van Flein said.

“In addition, there were provisions that information that has been posted on his retention-related websites, that those websites be taken down,” said the commission’s Marla Greenstein.

The agreement now has to be approved by the Alaska Supreme Court.

Contact Christine Kim at ckim@ktuu.com