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Appellate court requests complaint file

This story originally appeared April 18, 2004

The Bakersfield Californian | Thursday, Feb 15 2007 5:11 PM

Last Updated: Thursday, Feb 15 2007 5:11 PM

The entire personnel complaint file against Vincent Brothers, a Bakersfield City School District administrator, must be filed with a Fresno appeals court, the court ordered April 12.

The school district had appealed a Kern County Superior Court ruling ordering that portions of the file be made public after The Californian filed a public records lawsuit seeking the documents.

The newspaper learned of the complaints against Brothers after he became a suspect in the June 2003 slayings of his wife, three children and mother-in-law. The newspaper then filed a public records request for the records detailing the allegations and district investigation, which was denied.

A Kern judge ruled in September that part of the complaints against Brothers be released and the school district immediately appealed.

The 5th District Court of Appeal heard oral arguments from the district and the newspaper on April 8 and appeared poised to overturn the ruling, noting that there must be corroborating evidence that supports the complaint the school district investigated.

But on April 12, the appeals court issued the one-paragraph order directing the school district's lawyers to immediately file, under seal, the "unredacted personnel files or records that are the subject" of the newspaper's public records lawsuit.

The unusual appeal court order seems to indicate that the school district's lawyers did not give the court the entire file used by the Kern judge, but only the records the judge ordered should become public.

All of the records remain under seal and attorneys for The Californian haven't seen them, so it is unclear exactly what the appeals court already has in its possession.

The district was appealing the ruling by Superior Court Judge Kenneth Twisselman II that it must release to the public redacted documents from a 1996 personnel complaint involving violence, threats of violence and sexual misconduct against Brothers while he was vice principal at Emerson Middle School.

Twisselman ruled that two of the three complaints he reviewed should remain private, because they were trivial or appeared unfounded.

He ordered the third to be released to the public because the allegations were substantial in nature and the district investigation of them indicated they were "well-founded."

Urrea Jones, the school district's attorney, was unavailable for comment Friday and has previously declined to comment on the case.

At the time of the complaint, Brothers was vice principal at Emerson Middle School, but was transferred to Fremont the semester following the allegations. The school district maintains that he was not disciplined.

A family friend discovered the bodies of Brothers' wife, Joanie Harper, 39; their children Marques, 4, Lyndsey, 2, and Marshall, 6 weeks; and Joanie's mother, Earnestine Harper, 70, in their central Bakersfield home on July 8. They had suffered gunshot and stab wounds.

Although a suspect, Brothers has not been charged in the case and continues to work for the district. He now works at the district's maintenance and operations office.