Knight Chair in Investigative & Enterprise Reporting
‘Worst-performing judge’ — continued:
One judge, with the worst record of reversals in his state, was sued in connection with a case in which a man served an extra year in prison because of a wrongful decision. Theappeals court found that the judge mistakenly ordered a defendant to prison for violation of probation. It returned the case to the judge. But neither the judge nor his staff notified the state prison, and the man spent another year there. The judge was dropped as a defendant in a lawsuit brought by the imprisoned man when another court ruled that a sitting judge cannot be sued for his official performance.
In another reversal, the higher court reminded the same judge that a criminal defendant has a fundamental constitutional right to exercise his privilege against self-incrimination without adverse inference or comment at trial. In a trial before the judge, the prosecutor in his closing remarks to the jury said:
The defense counsel objected to the statement, but the judge overruled his objection. The appeals judges ruled against the judge.
Another judge, with the most reversals in his state, rejected the request of an armed robber — who shot at a policeman in a running gun battle — to serve 20 years in prison; the judge sentenced him to 40 years. That might have been the end of the case, but the convict appealed to the judge to reduce his sentence and the judge agreed and reduced his own 40-year sentence to 25, finding his original sentence ”manifestly excessive.” The higher court would have nothing of it and reverted to the original sentence of 40 years.
“The hearing justice abused his discretion and made several errors,” the higher court wrote. The crime was “well-concocted and vicious,” and he carried a gun. The judge noted that the fleeing robber did not hit anyone when he fired the gun, and the reversing justices rejoined, “We deem this fact inconsequential because it was sheer luck or poor marksmanship ...”
In a case reversed by the higher court in another state, the justices wrote that “it is manifest injustice” to hold a defendant liable on a judgment simply because a clerk failed to make proper docket entries. An attorney had submitted a jury demand and an argument against a complaint and filed it on time with a clerk, as documents cited by the appeals court show. But the clerk only made the docket entry for the jury demand. A computer generated an order of dismissal for failure to appear, causing the judge to grant a $300,000 judgment in favor of the other party.
Of course, the losing side objected and showed documentation that it had responded in time. But the judge said he would only set aside the judgment if the defendant established a meritorious defense. When the defense responded with an affidavit, the court rejected it and stated it had shown no good cause for its failure to respond earlier.
The default judgment had stood for three years before the wheels of justice slowly turned and the appeals court reversed it.
Another state appeals court advised that when a policeman gets an anonymous complaint that a “white male wearing blue jeans, a white shirt and a blue visor” is trying doorknobs, the policeman is not entitled to stop and search any white male wearing blue jeans, a white shirt and blue visor. A judge had ruled that “the anonymous tip was sufficient to justify an investigatory stop.”
The higher court countered that while the tipster gave information that a crime of attempted trespass or burglary was being committed, the officer was unable to verify any of the allegations of a criminal offense — only that a man who fit the description provided by the tipster was walking down the street.
A former surburban police chief claimed a disability pension for not being able to do the strenuous work of a police officer. Pension board investigators found him at his new job and videotaped him. He was working as a clown in a rodeo teasing a bull then jumping into a barrel that was rolled around by the bull. A judge was reversed for ruling the pension board had not proved its case.
The judicial authors of appeals court opinions usually refrain from critical commentary, but one case caused them to write, “This case is an example of what happens when law and common sense depart.”
What stirred the judges to editorial prose was the refusal of a judge to allow a woman to display license plates with the word, “IRISH.” She was turned down by the state department of motor vehicles because state law allows them to refuse to honor any request for a vanity plate “that might be offensive or confusing to the general public.”
A Department of Motor Vehicles administrative hearing officer ruled that requests for plates referring to ethnic heritage, irrespective of whether they had a positive or negative connotation could be refused.
The next step in the legal process was the trial court, where the judge found that the regulation to ban plates with ethnic references was “reasonable, statutorily authorized and constitutionally necessary.” The appeals court reversed that finding on the grounds that the state law was too ambiguous to dictate such a restriction.
One opinion among the appeals judges suggested any car owner who felt muffled by the state might get a bumper sticker instead of a vanity plate.
During the class research, the students found many interesting cases and did not always agree with the higher court, but went about gathering the information free of their own opinion.