Graduating from law school & passing the bar doesn’t make you a lawyer…or a judge!
SELENA URSA SMITH vs JAMES DANIEL WELLS, #20-7-30788-34
Rebekah’s academic credentials are impressive and her judicial temperament (as can be observed in the above case) was good. But her perspicacity and ability to separate the wheat from the chaff in matters affecting children and their families were sorely wanting. Litigants (as here) frequently use these proceedings to gain unfair advantage or to CONTROL the other party more than the pretense to seek protection. Not infrequently, neither litigant is a fit parent and the alleged ‘victim’ demonstrably more violent than the defendant. Ms. Zinn appears to be oblivious or nonplussed to the reality of this fact, making her out of touch and unsuitable as yet to be judging these types of cases.
Ms. Zinn’s judicial alacrity resembled a department store Santa on a good day. She did nothing to confirm the unopposed allegations she heard, to verify the credibility/true motives of the unsworn testimony, appoint a guardian ad litem, or conduct a search for the whole truth–which was much more disturbing than what was presented in court. In short, Rebekah abandoned all pretense of doing justice by all the parties…the 3 young children in particular. Her appointment to the bench appears egregiously premature.
Further hearings are scheduled and the video for the one held on 12-17-20 has yet to be processed or polished before posting. They will appear here as updates when available. Meanwhile, please consider the following video as a metaphor for Zinn’s judicial style:
This post is hard t0 read, my partner was in front of Zinn on 7/14/21. Not only did she do exactly as you stated above, but she also failed to acknowledge that he is disabled, and at the time was homeless because of the false allegations against him. She ordered supervised visits that would have cost him all but $10 of his monthly SSDI check, and require a DV evaluation that cost over half his income at the time. During her ruling she said a whole lot about herself and totally skewing what his wife testified to, basically she found him guilty of spanking his children and violating the RCW 9A.16.100, typically used as a defense used by parents to defend their right to spank. NONE of either parties testimonies matched what she was saying. Then, a year and a half later Zinn completely made up her own allegations, stating that my partner had been found to be guilty of the most extreme form of domestic violence, “non-fatal strangulation….no one had EVER mentioned strangulation in this case prior to that hearing! But you can bet my partner’s ex and her attorney used Zinn’s egregious error, and made new allegations that he had strangled her which stopped his visitation, which he had just earned back. He has not seen his kids for over 4 years. I could go on and on….there were so many rights violations for both he and his children, and even myself as his advocate.