This woman was elected a District Court judge in Las Vegas in 2006, beating her opponent by less than 1 percentage point. Next to her in the photo holding a note pad is her husband.

Right away after she started the $130,000 a year job in January 2007 there were problems. She didn't know the basic rules of being a judge so improperly met with a deliberating jury, and gave improper instructions in a criminal case. So lawyers started getting their cases removed to other judges and the people in charge removed any criminal cases from her docket.

But then other problems came up. She fell asleep on the bench during trials, blamed it on oxygen deprivation and complications from diabetes, and treated her staff in a very demeaning manner, ordering her bailiff to massage her feet and neck among other things. She was banned from the courthouse for a while because the security guards she hired somehow didn't fit in with courthouse requirements. She said demeaning things to and about her husband in front of them, calling him her slave and laughing at him.

So she was suspended with pay until there could be a hearing before the state judiciary discipline board to determine if the staff allegations of a hostile work environment and other problems amounted to misconduct, but in the meantime, this year she was up for re-election. Fortunately she did not make it through the primary elections.

And the bailiff testified in the disciplinary hearings:
"She said, 'Pull out your gun and shoot him,' " according to the hearing transcript, which was released by the state Supreme Court.

When asked whether Jordan thought Halverson was joking, he replied, "She never said she was joking or anything. And then when I didn't reply to it, she looked at Ed and said, 'See, he don't even do what I say.' "

Then, after Ed had left the room, Jordan testified , Halverson told him that she would dispose of the body. " 'You don't have to worry about that,' " she told Jordan, according to the transcript."

Through all this her husband (who has a number of drug and burglary convictions in his past) was by her side, apparently her faithful helper even though she was continually disrespectful and verbally abusive to him. Until September 4, 2008.

According to her, at 7:30 pm on September 4 she was sitting on her bed cleaning green beans and her husband was supposed to make dinner. He said he didn't want to prepare anything, so they agreed he would cook a couple ears of corn. Three hours later she asked him where was the corn, it shouldn't take that long, and he said something about 'don't know, guess I'm just lazy.' The next thing she knew he was in the bedroom with a nasty look in his eye and hitting her on the head with a frying pan.

Edward Halverson struck his wife of 10 years in the head so hard that she was hospitalized and needed more than 100 staples to close the deep wounds, authorities said.

She called 911 and they could hear her talking to her husband in a conversational, soothing tone of voice: 'you'd better clean up that blood, get some bleach' and then urgently whispering to the 911 operator: 'send someone quick, he's going to kill me.'

Elizabeth Halverson said that after the attack, he told her that her eye 'looks real bad, hon.' He got her a glass of ice water and wrapped the ice cubes from the glass into a cloth for her eye, she said. On the 911 call audio we can hear him talking to her as she tells him to bring ice for her eye; he sounds surprised: "Gee, that's really swollen ... here you go, dear."

He is pleading not guilty to attempted murder and battery charges. Can't wait to hear his side of the story.

Her $130,000 salary ends with next month's elections, not a moment too soon. I think she has done less than a month of work since she started the job in 2007.