John Jefferson
Josephine C. Townsend (jctownsend.com).
A Washington state attorney is facing criminal charges after she allegedly forged a legal document to keep her client out of jail.
Josephine C. Townsend is charged with two counts of forgery and could be sentenced to 90 days in jail and a $5,000 fine, the Washington Attorney General’s Office said in a press release. The AG’s office laid out its case against the 64-year-old Townsend in a 27-page probable cause arrest affidavit. It revolves around one of Townsend’s clients, a man named Travon Santiago, who was arrested in December 2023 by the Vancouver Police Department for an alleged assault. Among the conditions for Santiago’s release was for him to stay more than 1,000 feet from the victim’s home.
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In addition to the criminal case, the victim’s girlfriend filed for and received in January a civil protection order that ordered Santiago to stay more than 5,000 feet from their home. But Santiago lives about 1,065 feet from the victim’s home, meaning he would be unable to stay at his residence without violating the order after he posted bail on April 2.
According to the affidavit, Santiago tried to abide by the order by staying elsewhere while Townsend tried to have a judge amend the criminal and civil orders. Santiago alleged that Townsend kept telling him she was attempting to get a court date. Other times Townsend was unresponsive, the affidavit said. On April 25, a judge amended the order from 1,000 feet to 500 feet. But the civil order that had the 5,000-foot rule remained unchanged.
Santiago, apparently unaware of this fact, returned home thinking he was clear of both orders. On July 17, the Clark County Sheriff’s Office responded to Santiago’s home after receiving a complaint that he was violating the protection order. Santiago’s girlfriend, who was also there, provided cops with the amended criminal order but cops had the civil one that said he had to remain 5,000 feet away. The girlfriend called Townsend, who eventually sent her a copy of the amended civil order with Santiago’s signature along with that of the judge and clerk. But no such order existed in the court system. The next day the order suddenly appeared in the court system after Townsend allegedly filed it.
Suspicious, cops began investigating the origin of the order. Investigators took the civil order to Santiago who immediately noticed something was amiss: His name was misspelled and the document had the wrong birth date. He said he never signed that document. The judge and clerk also told cops they did not amend nor sign the civil order.
“Based on what I learned in my investigation, I believe Josephine Townsend received a modification of one of two protection orders on behalf of her client.” Det. Sgt. Jayson Camp wrote. “Ms. Townsend was contacted by her client on the night of 17 July 2024 who advised Ms. Townsend that law enforcement had arrived to arrest her client for violating the unmodified civil protection order. I believe Ms. Townsend then forged an order modifying the civil protection order and emailed it to her client to present to law enforcement and thus evade arrest by deception.”
Police went to Townsend and asked her about it, and she denied forging the document and accused Santiago of lying. She claimed she only represented Santiago in the criminal matter and told him that she would help him with the civil case “only if you pay me,” according to the affidavit. But detectives obtained text messages between Santiago’s girlfriend and the attorney that said otherwise. Townsend claimed the text messages “lacked context.”
An attorney for Townsend declined to comment.
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