City Commission Chooses Not to Appoint Former Deputy District Attorney to Police Review Board; Commissioner Sellers confirms that she nominated | News, Sports, Jobs

photo by: Bremen Keasey/Journal-World

Former Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden addresses the Lawrence City Commission during public comment Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024.

City leaders chose not to appoint a former deputy prosecutor facing a state ethics complaint to a board that looks into allegations of police misconduct, and a city commissioner confirmed it was her decision to nominate him to the first row.

Appointments to the Community Police Review Board were voted on at Tuesday night’s City Commission meeting, and during discussion of the list of appointees, City Commissioner Amber Sellers said she was the one who nominated former Deputy DA Joshua Seiden to the Community. Police Review Board. However, after other commissioners said they wanted to remove Seiden’s name from the list, Sellers joined the unanimous vote to appoint three other people — Douglass Miller, Adam Kellogg and Brenda Clary — to the board, saying she wanted ” to save the dramatics. “

Sellers did not previously respond to questions from the Journal-World about Seiden’s nomination. However, commissioners Lisa Larsen and Brad Finkeldei previously told the Journal-World that they did not nominate him or support his nomination, and Larsen was the first commissioner to ask that his name be removed Tuesday night.

Seiden has been on and off the list of nominees for the past two weeks. His name was first added to the list a week before the Aug. 6 City Commission meeting, but was removed from the list on Aug. 5. Then, at the Aug. 6 meeting, Seiden addressed the commission during public comment, touting his previous work in the DA’s office and saying he was the right person to get the CPRB “off the ground.”

On August 8, Seiden reappeared on the nominees list.

As the Journal-World previously reported, Seiden abruptly left the Douglas County District Attorney’s office in June after he was caught on video wearing a costume mocking a man the DA’s office had prosecuted.

Footage from a security camera at the county Law Enforcement and Judicial Center showed him dressed as Justin Spiehs, a controversial public commentator who had been pursued by Valdez’s office. Spiehs was charged with two counts of aggravated assault and one count of interfering with a law enforcement officer; in 2022, he took a plea deal and was instead convicted of two misdemeanor counts of endangerment and child endangerment, the Journal-World reported. District Attorney Suzanne Valdez is seen laughing and pointing in the video, though she denied she was part of Seiden’s behavior and said the incident played a role in Seiden no longer being her employee.

Spiehs has since filed an ethics complaint against Seiden and Valdez with the Kansas attorney’s disciplinary office, citing multiple violations of the Kansas Rules of Professional Conduct.

When Seiden addressed the committee last week, several commentators expressed frustration with the initial nomination. On Tuesday, several commentators, including Spiehs himself, again criticized the decision to nominate Seiden and the fact that Sellers had not previously acknowledged that she had nominated him.