SANTA MARIA, Calif. — Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Diana R. Hall, on trial eight months ago on battery and drunk-driving charges that threatened to destroy her career, is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday on charges she violated campaign finance laws.
In the first case, a Santa Barbara jury acquitted Hall of a felony charge of using a gun to intimidate her domestic partner, Deidra Dykeman. And prosecutors agreed to drop a second felony count of damaging a telephone to block a 911 call after a jury deadlock.
Her arraignment in Santa Maria will be on eight misdemeanor criminal charges relating to her alleged failure to properly report a $20,000 campaign loan from Dykeman during a 2002 reelection effort.
If she had been convicted of either felony charge during her first trial, Hall would have faced automatic removal from the bench. Instead, she was found guilty only of two misdemeanor drunk-driving charges, fined, ordered into an alcohol counseling program and placed on probation for three years.
During the domestic battery case, the subject of the loan came up, and Assistant Dist. Atty. Kimberly Smith secured testimony that Hall had reported the $20,000 as being part of a loan from herself rather than Dykeman to hide the fact that she was in a lesbian relationship.
Almost immediately after the first case ended Sept. 29, prosecutors started working on putting together a new set of charges for alleged violations of the California Political Reform Act.
Hall is accused of depositing a check from Dykeman into her own bank account, then using it as a part of a $25,000 loan from herself. She later allegedly failed to report that she was repaying Dykeman partly by paying her lover's share of their monthly mortgage on their house in Santa Ynez.
Formerly the chief criminal judge in Lompoc, Hall was reassigned to civil duties after her first prosecution. Most recently, she has been assigned to family law issues, including some domestic battery cases.
Hall has declined to comment on the new charges, and generally has refused to talk to reporters in recent months except for one exchange when she unexpectedly took a courtroom seat during Michael Jackson's initial arraignment in Santa Maria on child molestation charges Jan. 17.
That was the day Jackson wound up dancing on a car roof and throwing a party for hundreds of fans at his Neverland Ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley.
