judges

Now THIS Is An Unethical Judge…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Blind Justice

Texas Judge Elizabeth E. Coker will be resigning from her post as judge in the 258th District Court of Polk, Trinity, and San Jacinto Counties as part of a deal that allows her to resign rather than face disciplinary action. The ethical transgressions she apparently engaged in were many, shocking and outrageous.  Investigators found that she regularly engaged in ex parte communications  with members of the Polk County District Attorney’s Office, the San Jacinto County District Attorney, and defense attorneys regarding cases pending in her court, favored certain attorneys and was prejudicial toward others in both trials and court appointments, and even met with jurors, without the knowledge of counsel, while they were deliberating in criminal trials, in order to influence their verdict. Even as she was being investigated for judicial misconduct, Coker attempted to influence a material witness against her prior to that witness’ testimony before the Disciplinary Commission, and lied about it when she was questioned about her contact with that witness.

Yet as awful as all that is, these are not the most spectacular of her ethical breaches. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

dunce-capSenators should not intentionally set out to make the American public stupid, or to validate invalid ethical constructs. Thus this explanation of his current proposal from Sen. Rand Paul needs to be derided, and should also cause concern for anyone who thinks it’s important for the Republican party to find some leaders who are trustworthy. Paul, in the course of pushing his stillborn, grandstanding plan to use a constitutional amendment to require government bigwigs to live with the same health care laws they impose on the rest of us, said this to The Daily Caller:

“My amendment says basically that everybody including Justice Roberts — who seems to be such a fan of Obamacare — gets it too. See, right now, Justice Roberts is still continuing to have federal employee health insurance subsidized by the taxpayer. And if he likes Obamacare so much, I’m going to give him an amendment that gives Obamacare to Justice Roberts.”

See, the fact that U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts refused to declare the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional using a highly-controversial legal distinction in no way suggests that he personally “likes” it, and anyone who thinks that is what judicial opinions, especially Supreme Court Opinions, mean is shockingly ignorant of the judicial system, the legal system, the law, the role of judges in society, the Constitution, and by extension, pretty much most of the principles that give government, management and leadership any integrity or competence. The fact that such an anyone has risen to the level of U.S. Senator goes beyond shocking to terrifying. Continue reading →

More Name Ethics: An Incompetent Judge Blocks An Irresponsible Name

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments
"Mom...Dad! It's your son Messiah!"

“Mom…Dad! It’s your son Messiah!”

Let us stipulate that while  parents in the United States have an absolute right to name their children whatever they please, it one of those aspects of free speech that is often horribly abused by irresponsible, self-centered or just plain dumb parents who treat their children as bumper stickers or social science experiments. Naming your boy “Sue,” (You know) or your daughter “North West,” (Kanye West) or your daughter “Fifi Trixibelle” (Bob Geldof) is unforgivably and gratuitously cruel, virtually guaranteeing that your child will be a target, a head case, or will change his or her name the second legal majority comes around. Nonetheless, the state doesn’t raise children in America—yet—and parents can still decide what they wear, watch, learn and eat, as well as the name they have to answer to. The operative term is “free country.” Many of our fellow citizens don’t like or understand that concept, which is also their right in a free country. Judges, however, must not only understand the concept but constrain their power by it.

This is why Cocke County (Tennessee) Child Support Magistrate Lu Ann Ballew needs to be a) removed from her job and b) set on a more appropriate career path, like say, taking tolls in a tunnel or orders at Papa John’s. She ruled—it doesn’t matter how or why this came about—you can read the ridiculous story here-–that the parents of a baby couldn’t name him “Messiah,” because, she said in an interview with a reporter whose mouth had to be surgically closed afterward, “The word ‘Messiah’ is a title, and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person – and that one person is Jesus Christ.”  Continue reading →

Rejecting Mob Justice Even When The Mob Is Right: Ethical And Necessary

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments
The Taco Bell employee-to-be,

The Taco Bell employee-to-be,

Prediction: Those who don’t comprehend the George Zimmerman verdict will never understand this one. Yet it is absolutely right and necessary in every way.

Summary: The Montana Supreme Court blocked an incompetent judge from changing an offensive and inexcusably inadequate sentence for a serious crime, because he was trying to do so as the result of public criticism.

Background: Judge G. Todd Baugh, an elected district judge in Montana’s Yellowstone County, sentenced  former high school teacher Stacey Dean Rambold to 15 years in prison with all but 31 days suspended—that’s one lousy month, friends— for having sexual intercourse without consent, also known as rape, with a 14-year-old female student (the teacher was 49 at the time) who later committed suicide while the case was pending. The judge, who appears to be an idiot (he later said that he can’t imagine what came over him) explained his decision at the time by saying that the underaged victim of the statutory rape was “older than her chronological age” and had “as much control of the situation” as the teacher.

Beginning with the late student’s mother, who reacted to the absurd sentence by screaming “You suck!” at the judge (Excellent diagnosis, by the way) and storming out of the courtroom, the ridiculous verdict caused an overwhelming backlash of negative public sentiment that spread nationwide. There was so much wrong with the sentence and the way it was arrived at that the mind, and conscience, boggles: Continue reading →

I Would Have Fired Sympathetic, Well-Meaning, Grandmotherly Sharon Snyder, Too: The Perils Of Consequentialism

/ Jack Marshall / 132 Comments

Hear me out.

Why do I suspect that if this had been the clerk in question, we wouldn't be hearing about this story?

Why do I suspect that if this had been the clerk in question, we wouldn’t be hearing about this story?

The news media is indignant over the firing of Sharon Snyder, 70, a court worker who provided a copy of a successful motion for seeking post-conviction DNA testing that gained Robert Nelson a reversal of his wrongful 1984 rape conviction. He had been sentenced to more than 50 years in prison, and the belated DNA testing showed that he was innocent. Nevertheless, court officials in Jackson County, Missouri ruled that Nelson’s “angel” had improperly provided advice about a case, among other violations of court rules.

Snyder  was fired nine months before she was scheduled to retire, and there is little question that without her efforts, Nelson would still be in prison. In August 2009, Nelson filed a motion seeking DNA testing that had not been available at his trial 25 years earlier, but Jackson County Circuit Judge David Byrn denied the request. Two years later, Nelson asked the judge to reconsider, but again Byrn rejected the motion because Nelson’s self-drafted document was insufficient under the statute Nelson had cited.  After the second motion was rejected, Snyder contacted Nelson’s sister and gave her a copy of a successful motion, drafted by a lawyer, that resulted in the same judge granting another DNA testing request.  Nelson then used it as a template for a motion he filed Feb. 22, 2012, again seeking DNA testing.  Byrn sustained the motion, found Nelson to be indigent and appointed Laura O’Sullivan, legal director of the Midwest Innocence Project, to represent him.  Last month, the Kansas City Police Department’s crime lab concluded that DNA tests proved that Nelson was not the rapist in the crime he had been convicted of committing. He was freed on June 12, 2013

This is all good, and an example of justice finally, if belatedly, prevailing.

Snyder’s role, however, got her suspended without pay, and then fired on June 27. Continue reading →

The Persecution of Paul Ogden, The Justin Carter Of Legal Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
When you become a lawyer, Justin, don't do it in Indiana. Ask Paul Ogden why.

When you become a lawyer, Justin, don’t do it in Indiana. Ask Paul Ogden why.

He hasn’t been jailed like his teenaged, online-gaming counterpart, but Indiana attorney Paul Ogden is also facing government sanctions for what was an unequivocal First Amendment communication. In Ogden’s case, he may lose his right to practice law. His offense is insulting a judge…in a private e-mail.

Ogden represented a client before Superior Court Judge David H. Coleman, and was not happy with Coleman’s handling of the case. Neither were Coleman’s supervisors, who removed Coleman from the case for failing to act within an appropriate period of time, under the so-called “lazy judge” act.  Attorney Ogden, who also blogs about politics, commented to a fellow attorney in a private email that Coleman “should be turned in to the disciplinary commission for how he handled this case. If this case would have been in Marion County with a real probate court with a real judge, the stuff that went on with this case never would have happened.” 

Somebody, perhaps the original recipient of the e-mail, forwarded it to the judge (lawyers can be a back-stabbing bunch), and the judge, insulted, demanded an apology. Ogden refused (lawyers can also be stubborn and have a tendency to stand on principle even when it is going to get them in trouble). Because Ogden declined to grovel, Judge Coleman invoked Indiana Rule of Professional Conduct 8.2 and filed a grievance against him to the Indiana Attorney Disciplinary Commission. The Rule, which is essentially identical to the American Bar Association version, prohibits a lawyer from… Continue reading →

More Juror Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

funny judgeFrom the Erie Times News:

An Erie woman, dismayed that she had been picked to serve as a juror in a weapons case, audibly harrumphed the worst curse word of them all, then huffed and puffed her way to her seat in the jury box. Erie County President Judge Ernest J. DiSantis was having none of it. When apprised of the outburst by the lawyers on the case, DiSantis came to the courtroom and called the woman, Kathleen Port, in front of the bench.

Port was off the jury, for start, DiSantis said. “But we are not done,” he said. DiSantis held Port in contempt of court and fined her $500 for the improper behavior. “You are totally out of line,” he said….Jury service is a duty of citizenship, he said.

“It is inconvenient at times,” he said.

Good.

That’s one less juror who will go on ABC to prove that her vote was meaningless and that she had no idea what she was doing.

____________________________

Pointer: ABA Journal

Now THIS Is Incivility!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
"Thank you, counselors. We will proceed to fucking closing statements."

“Thank you, counselors. We will proceed to fucking closing statements.”

I just saw a  local Boston TV ad for Ace Tickets. The slogan at the end was “Sit your Ace down!” So clever! Just throw gratuitous vulgarity into a commercial during a baseball game, doubtlessly viewed by many children, because it’s inherently amusing. The message is that vulgarity is cool, clever and acceptable. Other messages in the media, both in advertising and in pop culture, convey the same permissive standards regarding obscenity. Over on the Drudge Report, a much-admired news aggregator for  political junkies, especially on the right, no mention of Anthony Weiner’s annoying candidacy for Mayor of New York is made without a cheap “weiner” joke. Today, Drudge noted that Weiner was “inching up” in the polls. Get it? HAR!  Just under that “gag,” the news that men favored Weiner in polling was headlined “Male Enhancement.” Soooo witty!  The U.S. is being transformed into one huge junior high school. After growing up in such a vulgar, undignified, sleazy environment, the next generation won’t be prone to inadvertently use words like “fuck” and “shit” in public forums such as live award shows and TV interviews, like our current politicians, newscasters and celebrities. They’ll just use them intentionally, all the time. Won’t that be cool? I’m sure David Letterman thinks so. Cool Dave had A.J. Clemente, he of uttering “fucking shit” on the airways in his debut as a news anchor, as a guest on his show. Dave suggested to A.J. that his ex-bosses were jerks to fire him. Good point Dave! A.J. was just ahead of his time. In a decade or so, “fucking shit” may be the sign-off of the next generation’s Walter Cronkite.

Maybe less than  a decade. Note this account, in a court opinion, of a lawyer’s conduct before a magistrate: Continue reading →

Texting Ethics: The Lawyer’s Duty To Propose A Ridiculous Theory And The Judge’s Duty To Reject It

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments
"You almost had me, Miss. Your plan was clever---you knew your boyfriend would answer that text message you sent, and timed your call so he would be driving on Dead Man's Curve. It was almost a perfect crime!"

“You almost had me, Miss. Your plan was clever—you knew your boyfriend would answer that text message you sent, and timed your call so he would be driving on Dead Man’s Curve. It was almost a perfect crime!”

Last year, a Superior Court judge in Morristown, New Jersey ruled that Shannon Colonna should not and could not be made to pay damages to David and Linda Kubert, who both lost a leg after her boyfriend, Kyle Best, driving his car, read Colonna’s text message and crashed into the motorcycle the Kuberts were riding.

The Kuberts are appealing the ruling, with their attorney, Stephen “Skippy” Weinstein, arguing before a three-judge panel that texters should have “a duty of care” imposed on them, making them potentially liable when they send a message knowing that the intended recipient is driving, as Best was. It’s a novel theory and a genuinely terrible one, an insidious concept that would allow plaintiffs to drag completely innocent parties into crushing personal injury litigation, and that over time would be certain to ooze into other areas. Good for lawyer Weinstein, though; he’s doing his job, which is zealous representation. The future mischief such a duty would wreak isn’t his concern, only getting the best result for his clients is. Continue reading →

Further Reflections On The Cheerleading Prosecutor (and an Ethics Pop-Quiz!)

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments
"By the way, counselor, nice work last Sunday..."

“By the way, counselor, nice work last Sunday…”

I wrote the post about Ina Khasin, the Fulton County assistant district attorney in the morning yesterday as I prepared for a morning ethics session for new D.C. lawyers, and had not made up my mind about whether there was or was not a legitimate “Cheerleading Prosecutor Principle” by the time I posted it. I returned to my keyboard late in the day to read the comments on the post, and finally had a chance to consider the issue carefully, benefiting from the varying perspective of the commenters. My conclusion is that for a prosecutor to indulge herself by moonlighting in a high-profile, frivolous and cognitive dissonance-generating activity like NFL cheerleading is not only weird (Ick!) but also irresponsible, and yes, unprofessional.

I’m pretty sure I’m right, too. Continue reading →