In sign of growing legal fallout, man challenges federal stalking conviction citing Alaska federal judge’s misconduct

At the end of June, Rolando Zamora-Hernandez was convicted in Alaska federal court of cyberstalking.

Less than a week later, the judge who oversaw his trial, U.S. District Judge Joshua Kindred, resigned amid a maelstrom of misconduct allegations.

Now, Zamora-Hernandez’s attorney wants his conviction thrown out on grounds that Kindred’s court was too compromised by judicial and prosecutorial misconduct for the trial and its outcome to remain valid.

The case is the first of what will likely be many challenges to court cases adjudicated by the resigned judge, and a sign of a mounting fallout in the federal courts over the scandal.

“This is not just opening a can of worms, this is a landfill of worms,” said Rich Curtner, a retired former Alaska federal defender.

A blistering, public 9th Circuit judicial council order released July 8 found that in Kindred’s four years on the bench, he’d fostered a hostile, inappropriate work environment for his staff, conducted a sexual relationship with a female law clerk — and had received nude photos from a federal prosecutor with cases before him, as well as flirtatious sexual texts from another private attorney who also had business in his court. He also lied to investigators, the order said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office identified at least 23 cases where Kindred had a conflict of interest with an attorney on the case. Defense attorneys contend that despite a lengthy investigation, defendants and their lawyers learned far too late about the misconduct.

In a July 17 letter to Alaska U.S. Attorney Lane Tucker, current federal defender Jamie McGrady accused federal prosecutors of “knowing and willful suppression of information about the conflicts of interest in affected cases.”

“The defendants in these cases had an immediate right to know that their litigation was infected by a conflict,” McGrady wrote. “Especially a conflict that gave rise to the appearance of favor between Judge Kindred and the two attorneys with whom he maintained a sexualized relationship.”

On July 19, Zamora-Hernandez’s court-appointed attorney Alexis Howell filed a motion asking for the indictment against him to be thrown out and asking for a new trial, citing judicial misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct and insufficiency of evidence.

Zamora-Hernandez’s case is just the first of what will likely be many cases potentially compromised, Curtner said.

“This is only the beginning of the legal side of it, going to be a ton of cases that have to be looked at again,” he said.

Zamora-Hernandez was arrested in 2021 and charged with cyberstalking. His case was assigned to Kindred, then one of two full-time U.S. District Court judges in Alaska. Over the next three years, Zamora-Hernandez cycled through seven different defense attorneys, underwent a psychiatric evaluation and made multiple filings on his own behalf in the case before his June 2024 trial in Kindred’s courtroom.

The same senior assistant U.S. attorney who Kindred received nude photos and flirty texts from sat in the courtroom through most of the trial, Howell wrote. She introduced herself to the defense attorney, spoke to two assigned federal prosecutors at length and in detail, according to the motion.

An analysis of court records by the Daily News shows that the unnamed senior federal prosecutor is Karen Vandergaw, who federal court dockets show was removed from multiple cases involving Kindred during the judicial council investigation. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office did not answer questions about Vandergaw’s status and employment with the office.

Kindred’s interactions with the attorney and others had been under investigation since November 2022.

“At this point, it is unknown how much direct involvement she had in preparing this case, but it is clear by her position alone that she was at least aware of the case and then chose to be present throughout its entirety,” she wrote.

Howell also contended that the conduct Zamora-Hernandez was on trial for didn’t differ much from what Kindred himself was accused of doing by the federal investigators.”

“The very conduct which Judge Kindred was actively under investigation for at the time of Rolando’s trial meets the legal definitions of ‘cyberstalking,’” Howell wrote in the motion.

There has been no decision yet as to whether Zamora-Hernandez will receive a new trial. Howell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It’s hard to imagine the federal courts — known for decorum and formality — in such disarray, said Curtner. In his 24 years practicing in them, he said, “it’s unthinkable that this would have ever happened.”