The Rucki Judges Without A Clue

                                                  (Retired Judge Kathleen Gearin)

It appears the judges handling Sandra Grazzini-Rucki’s child support are not entirely sure what to do.

As I recently reported, the judge assigned to the case, Judge Phillip Kanning, is no longer assigned.

Meanwhile, a motion first filed in October continues to languish three weeks after a hearing to argue it was held.

That motion awaits a decision from another judge, Kathleen Gearin.

Both Gearin and Kanning are retired judges.

Furthermore, Gearin and Kanning, I have recently discovered, are wrapped up in another Rucki related court issue.

This involves a restraining order filed by David Rucki against Dede Evavold, for things she put on the blog, Red Herring Alert.

Gearin wound up holding Evavold in jail for four days while all this unfolded saying in court, "I'm just afraid other reporters will report on this."

Presumably, she was referring to me as I had been writing about it.

Evavold helped hide Grazzini-Rucki’s daughters from 2013-2015 and was convicted in relation to that.

As I described here, the conviction only occurred after most evidence that David Rucki was abusive was excluded.

Here is how Evavold recently described the timeline of events. Notice how involved Judges Kanning and Gearin are in this. 

07/31/2017  Served with a Temporary Restraining Order (Signed by Judge Asphaug who presided over our criminal trials).
08/18/2017 I filed a motion to vacate the false Temporary Restraining Order

Judge Kanning

09/29/2017   Hearing Motion to Vacate the Temporary Restraining Order (At this hearing, Judge Kanning rescheduled the motion hearing to 12/13.2017 to allow time for opposing counsel to prepare.
12-13-2017  Motion to Vacate Hearing Judge Kanning continued the hearing per Attorney Lisa Elliott’s request to allow more time to complete collection of evidence.

Judge Gearin

03/01/2018  Emergency Motion Hearing to remove blog posts. Unconstitutional purge conditions were met and more posts to remove were added by Attorney Lisa Elliott. Conditions again were met however, Lisa Elliott filed an Affidavit of Noncompliance and Request for Arrest Warrant on 03/09/2018which was signed by retired Judge Kathleen Gearin on 03/14/2018.

I filed an Affidavit of Compliance on  03/17/2018 and was arrested on 03/18/2018. I was brought to Stearns County Jail and transported to Dakota County Jail on 03/19/2018. I was transported to Ramsey County Correctional Facility at 5:00 PM and transported back to Dakota County on 3/20/2018 for a hearing with Judge Christopher Lehmann. He stated that I would have to wait to be heard in front of Judge Gearin on 03/21/2018. I was transported back to Ramsey County after spending the day in a holding cell. On 03/22/2018 hearing took place with Judge Gearin. Judicial order included immediate release from custody, constructive contempt of court sentence stayed until March 26th, at 4:30 p.m. in order to allow continued removal of posts. If items are not removed by 4:30 p.m. on March 26th, I was required to turn myself in to the Dakota County Correctional Facility for women on March 27th, at 9:00 a.m. to serve the remaining 26 days. (Some of the images and articles were hot linked from the Red Herring Alert site to other sites and data remained on the web for a short time before they were purged from the servers. I had no control over the cached data.)

05/16/2018  Motion Hearing to Vacate TRO. (Almost a year after the restraining order was issued.)

This means two retired judges are intimately involved in two cases related the fiasco surrounding this family with no explanation for why two retired judges need to be involved or why the things they are doing are so bizarre.

Meanwhile, Judge Gearin held a hearing on February 12, 2019.

She held a hearing because Kanning, who was assigned to the case, was out of country on vacation at the time it was held.

But she has still not ruled.

As of now, it says, “Taken Under Advisement” on February 12, 2019.

There is a further entry, “Correspondence Index # 934” for February 26, 2019, but no decision has been made. See full docket below.

ruckidocket2 by on Scribd

This means a motion first filed in October has yet to be ruled on in March.

Furthermore, Sandra Grazzini-Rucki did not attend the hearing so since it was her motion, she should have lost by default.

Grazzini-Rucki was asking for the county to reinstate her license; if she didn’t show, the only obvious order is to deny the motion.

That it is taking this long to issue an order is peculiar, even more so, now that I have found out that Gearin is known for delegating orders to others.

As I wrote here, Gearin delegated another order, “Per the instructions of Judge Kathleen Gearin, as she is involved in an unrelated hearing and unable to draft an order.” Reads a letter written by Jean Baldwin, the Operations Manager for the 1^st Judicial District.

Baldwin was writing this letter in lieu of an order denying Grazzini-Rucki’s request to postpone the previously noted hearing.

I have sent emails to Gearin and Kanning but received no response.

I also sent emails to four public affairs officers for the Minnesota courts- Beau Berentson, Alyssa Siems-Roberson, Lissa Finne, and Kyle Christopherson- but also received no response.

I also sent an email to Baldwin and to Heidi Carstensen, the Court Administrator for the 1^st Judicial District, that is the district where these Rucki cases have been decided.

They also did not respond.

Finally, I sent an email to Jeff Shorba, the Court Administrator for the  Minnesota Court System, but he also did not respond.

I talked more about the Rucki case on this podcast; I come in about forty-five minutes in. 

For a fuller report on it, check out the podcast below. I come in about an hour in.