Remember the saying, “Judge not, lest ye be judged?” Here are a few more stories about men in black who would have done well to follow that advice.
SEE YOU IN (MY) COURT
In 1999 Delaware County Municipal Court judge Michael Hoague was convicted of misdemeanor coercion and fined $250 after he mailed a threatening letter to a woman and her fiancé following a traffic altercation. Hoague had become upset at the way Jenny Panescu and Walter Russel Brown were driving. So he chased them—tailgating at speeds of up to 80 mph, and screaming obscenities. Afterward, Hoague (illegally) used a police computer to obtain Panescu’s address from her license plate number and wrote her the letter threatening to arrest her and impound her vehicle if she failed to appear in his court, even though she was not the driver and had not been charged with a crime. When the Ohio Supreme Court’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel learned of the incident, it slapped Judge Hoague with a six-month suspension from the bench. Justice? Not quite—they also suspended the suspension.
In December 1997, the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct suspended Judge James Barr from the 337th District Court for his “lack of social graces.” Among the incidents cited: making obscene comments to the three female prosecutors, whom he refers to as his “all-babe court,” and telling an unnamed lawyer, “I feel like coming across the bench and slapping the crap out of you.”
While presiding over deliberations in a drunk-driving case, Lakewood, Washington, Municipal Court judge Ralph H. Baldwin disappeared into his chambers and returned a short time later with a 12-pack of beer, inviting the attorneys, jurors, and court staff to “stay for a cool one,” but admonishing them not to tell anyone, promising them, “I’ll deny it if you repeat it.” Afterward, he carried an open container of beer to his car, telling onlookers, “I might as well drink and drive. I do it all the time anyway.” Judge Baldwin admitted he made the statement but claimed he was joking and that the can he carried to his car was empty. He said he regrets making the mistakes. “When I thought about it later, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, you fool!’” he explained.
High pressure: A pumping human heart can squirt blood as far as 30 feet.
One week after the city of Potosi, Missouri, discontinued paying for his health insurance, Judge Ronald Hill announced that he was lowering all municipal fines to $1. Hill insisted that he was just trying to clear up a backlog of nonviolent cases, not retaliating against the city. But at its next meeting, when the board again voted down health insurance for elected officials, an angry Judge Hill reportedly muttered, “It’s a good thing I left my gun at home because I might have shot the mayor.” Not long after that, Judge Hill was scheduled to hear a case in which the mayor’s daughter was the victim of an assault. He subpoenaed her four days before trial and when she failed to appear, had her arrested. By that time the Missouri Supreme Court had had enough…and removed him from the bench.
In February 1998, the Supreme Court of Texas removed Justice of the Peace Bill Lowry from the bench in Irving. Among the infractions cited: making an ethnic slur against a parking attendant who refused to let the judge park his car for free, and holding court in an auto repair shop (the judge said that since all concerned parties were present, he swore them all in and went to work). The final straw: faking attendance at a course aimed at correcting his behavior.
In 1997 Manhattan Supreme Court justice Salvador Collazo was removed from the bench for covering up an incident that had occurred five years earlier. In 1993 Judge Collazo had written a lurid note about an intern’s “knockers” and passed it to a law clerk. Then, when the intern complained about the heat, he suggested she remove her top. The offensive incident might never have come to light except that the law clerk, Ralph Silverman, kept the note… and then gave it to investigators in 1993 after Collazo fired him.
If you kiss an average amount over a lifespan, you’ll spend about two weeks kissing.