CHARLESTON – A current Nicholas County magistrate has been censured and suspended for making misleading statements when she applied to be a Kanawha County magistrate.
In addition to the formal reprimand, the state Supreme Court suspended Elizabeth Boso for two months without pay and ordered to pay $618 in court costs.
Boso
The court did say five of the six allegations against Boso by the state Judicial Investigation Commission did not apply because she was neither a judge nor a judicial candidate “subject to public election.”
While Boso was not a judicial officer at the time of the incident in 2024, the Supreme Court says she violated a rule that applies to both judges and judicial candidates regarding false or misleading statements.
Boso’s “misconduct was undertaken to secure appointment to a position of public trust in the judiciary,” Justice Haley Bunn wrote in the court’s October 24 opinion. “In her application and resume, respondent attempted to create the impression that she was residing in Dunbar, Kanawha County, despite never having even visited the listed address. …
“There can be little doubt that the public’s perception of the administration of justice is affected by respondent’s misconduct. …
“That said, we agree that respondent was cooperative in the underlying proceedings and has demonstrated genuine and appropriate remorse. We recognize respondent’s many years of service to our magistrate court system and the apparent absence of any allegations of prior misconduct. …
“We find that respondent’s admitted misrepresentation to garner a vacancy appointment is serious misconduct warranting suspension and formal condemnation.”
The Judicial Investigation Commission’s formal statement of charges filed last year says Boso committed at least six violations of the Code of Judicial Conduct.
According to the charges, Boso filed an application January 23, 2024, to fill a vacancy created by the resignation of Kanawha County Magistrate Mike Ferrell. On the application, she listed her address as a residence in Dunbar, which is in Kanawha County. She also said she is “working in Nicholas (County).”
“Importantly, at the time she applied to serve as a magistrate of Kanawha County, her residence/domicile was clearly in Nicholas County,” the JIC charges states. “The Dunbar address actually belongs to Magistrate Ferrell/Whittington’s assistant, Kirstie Trabert, who purchased the 865 square foot two bedroom one bath home in June 2023 and lives there with her dog and cat.”
On January 26, 2024, Earl Whittington was appointed to replace Ferrell. At 1:17 p.m. that day, Trabert texted Boso to tell her Whittington had been appointed.
“The only thing I think she (Chief Kanawha Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers) could have tried to make an issue of was your renting from me but the thing is we aren’t related and it doesn’t matter,” Trabert texted Boso.
As chief circuit judge, Akers was in charge of appointing someone to fill the vacancy.
That same day, Boso filed for candidacy for magistrate in Nicholas County, listing her legal residence as a home in Summersville.
The next day, Boso texted Trabert to tell her she had filed in Nicholas County, adding, “If I win, you’re moving!”
On January 29, 2024, Judicial Disciplinary Counsel received an email from Akers alleging Boso had lied on her Kanawha County application about her address. Akers questioned Trabert, who claimed she and Boso had an agreement for about three months. But Trabert only had one payment receipt from January for $150.
“I had moved to Kanawha County in 2021 and, after transferring to Nicholas, I have maintained a residence in Kanawha due to wanting to run in the upcoming election for one of the new magistrate seats,” Boso wrote in an email to Akers on January 22, 2024.
But the JIC says that was a lie because Boso sold her condo in Kanawha County on June 9, 2023, and didn’t supposedly pay rent to Trabert for the first time until January 12, 2024.
On January 31, 2024, the JDC opened a complaint on Boso. A few days later, Boso texted Trabert about the investigation.
“I’m under investigation by the Judicial Investigation Commission,” she wrote. “Someone filed a complaint against me alluding to the notion that I was somehow aware of Ferrell quitting and trying to use your address to get the appointment. They have copies of my and Doug’s real estate and tax records and shit.
“I haven’t looked at it completely because my mom is being transported to the hospital right now because she can’t breathe. F**kers. I have been actively looking for an apartment for several months to move back down there and when I paid my January rent to you we have absolutely no clue about Ferrell. I’m so pissed … Whatever. I have all my emails to apartment places and facts are facts.”
The JIC says Boso never submitted any of those emails to it, and a subpoena to the state Supreme Court IT department didn’t return any emails related to renting in Kanawha County.
In a February 12, 2024, letter, Boso denied the allegations.
“I absolutely applied and I used my current rental address on my application,” Boso wrote in that letter. “My agreement with Kirstie Trabert was reached last year because I had every intention of running for magistrate in Kanawha County and, per that agreement, I will be paying rent to her through May of 2024. …
“It was never my intent, when I applied for the appointment, to be anything other than transparent and honest.”
Boso wrote that she had purchased a condo in Charleston in 2021 because she was tired of driving to and from Summersville to Charleston every day and paying for a hotel room when she had weekend court or when the weather was bad. She said the condo sold very quickly, so by the time she realized she wanted it back, it was gone.
Not only does the JIC say Boso was not a Kanawha County resident when she applied for the magistrate appointment, it also says she never visited Trabert’s address prior to claiming it as her residence, never lived there or stayed there and never paid any utilities there. The JIC also says Boso’s address on her driver’s license “is and always has been” in Nicholas County, as is her voter registration address. It says she also pays real and personal property taxes in Nicholas County.
Trabert testified that Boso never left any personal belongings at the home and never saw her there, including on security video footage.
In a sworn statement on May 22, 2024, Boso said she had lived at the same address in Nicholas County since 2005.
“I put in there that I was working in Nicholas because I thought that was where you put the home county or the county that you are currently working in,” Boso said in the statement about why she put “working in Nicholas” on her Kanawha application, adding she “probably should have” used her Summersville address but used the Dunbar one, explaining she “just put the address that I was going to use if I ran there. … I mean, I did what I did. I can’t make excuses for that. I put the address on there that I thought she would want to see that I was renting, you know, that it was the address that I was going to use if I stayed down here.”
Boso won the magistrate seat in Nicholas County last year. Before that, she was a longtime magistrate assistant in both Nicholas and Kanawha counties.
West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals case number 24-436 (Judicial Investigation Commission complaint number 22-2024)
