Public defender confirms relationship with judge

FEDERAL WAY, Wash. – A public defender has acknowledged having a “single intimate encounter” with a Federal Way Municipal Court judge who resigned after boasting of the relationship at a holiday party.

Sean Cecil, 31, wrote a letter to the state bar association saying he met Judge Colleen Hartl three times in December – first for drinks, then lunch and finally dinner at her home Dec. 13, where the dalliance occurred. Cecil routinely handled cases in Hartl’s courtroom.

Hartl, 46 and married to a lawyer, resigned Dec. 19, less than a week after hosting a holiday party at which she told her guests – including five court employees – that she slept with Cecil. She also displayed a text message in which he complimented how she looked in “tight jeans,” said Michael Morgan, the court’s presiding judge.

She later claimed that she overstated her relationship with Cecil because she was drunk, and that in reality she had not had sex with him. In a Jan. 3 letter to her lawyer, Anne Bremner, she wrote: “I never told anyone I had a sexual relationship with Mr. Cecil, except for (the night of the party). I did not have an affair with Mr. Cecil.”

Morgan issued an order last month barring Cecil from representing indigent clients in Federal Way Municipal Court, and he filed a complaint against Cecil with the bar association. Cecil’s letter to the bar acknowledging the relationship followed that complaint.

In the letter, Cecil said he handled eight cases in front of Hartl after the encounter.

“It had not yet immediately occurred to me that recusal or disclosure would be the appropriate action,” he wrote.

Cecil’s admission prompted Morgan to lift his order barring Cecil from appearing in the court. It showed he “can be a credible and, therefore, effective advocate for indigent defendants,” Morgan wrote Wednesday.

Hartl has declined to comment. Bremner said Thursday that Cecil’s account is “a lot different than what Judge Morgan was claiming or assuming.”

Federal Way City Attorney Pat Richardson said there were no cases in which Cecil’s clients received preferential treatment.