A recent crime involving phony court documents has prompted the Kings County Superior Court to replace all of its stamp seals as well as take other steps to prevent further crimes.

Court officials say being a victim of this classic case of white-collar crime cost the court at least $8,000 in replacing equipment and some staff time figuring out a way to prevent it.

The good news, they say, is that the court filing system is more secure than before.

Still, they would caution that determined criminals will always seek ways to get around the system..

"We have improved the system, and now we have better checks and balances," said Todd Barton, court executive officer for the Kings County Superior Court. "But there is always the opportunity for somebody to do it."

Specifically, the court replaced the old black-ink seal stamps with purple ink-based stamps and trained clerks to follow new protocols to check the documents for authenticity, Barton said.

These measures were direct results of forgery acts committed by 41-year-old former paralegal Cheryl Zeman, of Hanford, over a period of a year between 2005 and 2006. The crime was uncovered by Hanford police late last year a victim blew a whistle.

Zeman, who worked for the law firm of Groswold, LaSalle, Cobb, Gin & Dowd, is free after she was sentenced to probation and fines earlier this month in exchange for her guilty plea. But the case left the local court system with a lingering aftertaste of an outsider breaching the court security by faking court signatures and creating phony legal documents to benefit her divorce-case client.

Soon after police investigation last December, the court took an immediate step, Barton said.

"It's a breach anytime anyone alters legal documents for whatever purposes," Barton said. "It has an impact on not only the litigants, but also the judicial officers and court staff in processing matters ...

"We were very lucky that this crime was caught," Barton said. "Will it happen again? Hopefully not. Could it happen again? Yes, it could."

On top of five-years probation and community service, Zeman has been ordered by court to pay back $14,000 to the court as well as to seek mental health counseling, according to the court minutes from her sentencing on July 11.

Barton declined to comment on whether the punishment fits the crime, saying that doing so would violate the cannons of ethics for judicial administrators.

Neither Zeman nor her attorney, Mark Coleman, of Fresno, returned phone calls on Friday. She has not commented to The Sentinel since the case surfaced.

Opinions of legal experts regarding the sentence given to Zeman were sharply divided this week.

Two experts reacted to the sentence with disgust, one calling it a "slap in the face to justice." But another expert said the sentence isn't unusual and is in no way unreasonable given the presumed mental state of Zeman at the time of her crime.

Zeman was facing 15 counts of felony forgery charges involving several documents, but she was given a plea bargain by the prosecutors. In exchange for pleading guilty to one count, all other charges were dropped.

She ultimately avoided jail time. To date, there has been no report of sanctions against Attorney Jeff Levinson, of Hanford, who was supervising Zeman during her employment.

"That to me reeks of something very improper. A person like that needs prison time in my opinion," said Bakersfield attorney Dennis Beaver, who is also a columnist for various newspapers, including The Sentinel.

A former prosecutor in Kern County, Beaver recalled a similar case in Bakersfield and said the attorneys involved in the crime served time in jail.

The sentence for Zeman was "disproportionately weak in comparison to what happened," Beaver said, adding that it was a "slap in the face to justice and an insult to paralegals who respect the law." He called for scrutiny of the case by the Attorney General's Office.

Beaver's opinions were echoed by Robert Fellmeth, professor of the University of San Diego School of Law.

"I don't see it as a probation. It is disappointing to me that this was a case with out any jail time," Fellmeth said. "I don't want to second-guess the decision without knowing all the details. But If nothing ever happened except that this paralegal was fired, that sends a very bad message to the system."

Fellmeth, a former prosecutor and the first state Bar of California discipline monitor, said given the way the crime was committed, Zeman clearly deserved a jail time sentence.

"I don't care if it's the first offense or not. If there was an attempt to mislead the court and it was successful and it was repeated and it gave an advantage to one party over another, there has to be some (jail) time," Fellmeth said.

He also said there should have been some civil sanction of Levinson, the attorney who supervised Zeman at the time of her crime.

However, Diane Karpman, a Los Angeles-based expert in legal ethics and a columnist for the California Bar Journal, disagreed with both Beaver and Fellmeth.

Karpman even said those critical of the sentence should know better.

"The district attorney executes his independent judgment," she said. "Obviously, there was something wrong with the woman. That's why the court ordered her to therapy. It's not at all unthinkable"

Just because they are attorneys and paralegals, that does not mean they are immune to emotional disorders or unreasonable pressure in their lives, Karpman said.

"A DA is never an easy guy," Karpman said. "In this case, he must have had some strong mitigating evidence to recommend probation. He has the independent discretion in deciding society would be best served when she gets her therapy. That's what the court's message is."

Nevertheless, Karpman said finding another job in the legal field would be difficult for Zeman.

"She would probably have a hard time getting a job as a paralegal again," she said. "She is no longer trusted."

The reporter can be reached at 582-0471, ext. 3059.

(July 30, 2007)