Chief Judge Kozinski Cleared of Misconduct By Judicial Panel
Someone’s July 4th weekend is off to a good start. Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, has been cleared of misconduct by the panel of Third Circuit judges that was tasked with investigating him. As you may recall, Chief Judge Kozinski called for an investigation of himself, after it was revealed that he had a “website” — which wasn’t really a website, for reasons previously explained by the judge’s wife, Marcy Tiffany — containing some sexually explicit material.
The Third Circuit Judicial Council’s unanimous opinion, authored by Chief Judge Anthony Scirica, is available here (PDF). It was actually filed on June 5, but only made public today. It’s thorough and lengthy, weighing in at 38 pages, and describes in detail the extensive investigation conducted by the council (with the assistance of outside lawyers, from Dechert and Morgan Lewis, and a technology consultant).
To those with a deeper familiarity with the facts of the case, as opposed to just the headlines, Chief Judge Kozinski’s vindication is not surprising. The judge violated no law; rather, the “website” — actually just a private family file server, although imperfectly secured for a period of time, as explained in the opinion — was a personal matter unrelated to his judicial duties. To the extent that the (overblown) public controversy created a problem in an obscenity trial that Judge Kozinski was presiding over at the time, any problem was obviated when the judge recused himself. And let’s not forget that the whole controversy was originally kicked up by a disgruntled litigant, Cyrus Sanai, who tried peddling the story for months before someone finally bit — and who “has been targeting Kozinski for years,” as noted by Ted Frank.
So congratulations, Judge Kozinski, on putting this matter behind you. We look forward to catching up with you at the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference later this month.
A few updates and links, after the jump.
Update: Key portions from the opinion are excerpted by Howard Bashman over at How Appealing. A nice analysis of the ruling appears at Patterico’s Pontifications.
Further Update: More discussion over at the WSJ Law Blog, which notes that Kozinski received letters of support from leading legal ethics gurus — e.g., NYU’s Stephen Gillers, Northwestern’s Steven Lubet, and Hofstra’s Monroe Friedman — and which includes a statement from a “pleased” Chief Judge Kozinski.
Disclosure: As we’ve said before, and as is well-documented elsewhere, we are not neutral observers when it comes to Alex Kozinski.
In re: Complaint of Judicial Misconduct [U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit]
Third Circuit Concludes Proceeding Against Kozinski Without Finding of Misconduct [Patterico’s Pontifications]
A ‘Pleased’ Kozinski Cleared of Wrongdoing [WSJ Law Blog]
(44) Comments
Comments
NICE JOB JUDGE!
firsTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTt again
Still nothing from MysTTTal
PE, why does your generation deny that autism exists?
Hey Lat -- we know you're impartial but how about at least mentioning that the committee found his actions judicially imprudent, an embarassment to the judiciary, and worthy of admonishment?
Hopefully the judge will go back to being his freewheeling self after this. The bench needs more interesting characters.
5 - You mean NOT impartial, right? Lat admits this:
"Disclosure: As we've said before, and as is well-documented elsewhere, we are not neutral observers when it comes to Alex Kozinski."
Lat admits to being drunk when she hired that Elie girl.
7 - disclosure does not waive or excuse "journalistic" incompetence.
Elie is not a girl:
http://www.facebook.com/mystal
And Lat didn't hire Elie; the readers of ATL picked Elie, remember?
http://abovethelaw.com/atl_idol/
9: So this a journalistic venture now? Really? What kind of twitterpated hack are you if you're coming here for hard news and stellar reporting skills? This is not Reuters or UPI. Take your fake soap box and go elsewhere.
This post is written well and lacks all of Elie's horrible attempts at humor and sarcasm. I miss Lat!!
Congrats to J. K. ! How many other judges would invite such a inquiry? Judges are human too, some more than others of course.
11 is readingcomppwned
Elie is female? wtf?
Click on the How Appealing link for the summary of the opinion. They DID admonish AK (so he does stand chastised):
http://howappealing.law.com/070209.html#034605
4 - stop sucking up to Pe. his schtick sucks.
11 -- no one is asking for the WSJ, but Lat's post is outright misleading.
Will Lat now appear at a joint news conference with Kozinski and proclaim that, à la Donald Trump, Kozinski retains his title of judicial hottie?
A swing and a miss by the mighty #2!
We are all lawyers. We can read the opinion, linked multiple times in the post, for ourselves.
*directs Lat to OSCAR, advises him to stop humping AK's leg via own personal weblog*
Kozinski is a great judge, regardless of his personal strangeness. Kudos to him.
21 - the problem with the blog post is Lat rails against a superficial reading of this controversy. Anyone truly familiar with the facts would also acknowledge the embarrassing and imprudent nature of this incident.
Here's a more balanced account:
http://patterico.com/2009/07/02/third-circuit-concludes-proceeding-against-kozinski-without-finding-of-misconduct/
how many seconds left till sanai/sock puppets show up in this thread?
Wow. Could you ATL guys suck his wang a little harder? I mean, he's great and all, but this is dripping with man-love.
You should have titled the post: "THE HOTTEST MAN EVER GETS TOLD HE'S AWESOME BY LESSER BEINGS."
1, 6, 13, 23 = kozinski
Ha, Kozinski is a fan of the camel toe!
I'm glad to see some sense of proportion returning to public life. Maybe if we stop worrying ourselves silly over our judges (and other public figures) sexual proclivities we'll have more time to focus on the substance of how people are performing important public functions.
Nice to see how Kozinski seemed to blame the whole thing on his son's incompetence when it comes to internet security.
The LA Times, which created this whole slanderous mess by taking seriously the allegations by that angry, crazy attorney posted the followint headline, which shows that the paper is so biased against Judge Kozinski that they cannot concede that he basically won:
Judge Alex Kozinski admonished for posting sexually explicit material
The L.A. Times piece:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/07/kozinski-admonished-for-posting-.html
Koz is a perv. Mecham was right: Koz should have been canned years ago.
Or elevated to SCOTUS. Hello, Justice Thomas!
32 - did you read the opinion? Koz was "admonished" and given a pretty healthy bench-slapping by J. Scirica.
Congratulations Justice Kozinski!
(And, 34, ther was nothing "perverted" on Justice Kozinski's private family web server that Mr. Sanai hacked into after trashing the good justice in Daily J. op ed peice and reading Kozinski's cogent (if blistering) rebuttal. It was chosing to respond at all to this creep that lead to the opinion that Kozinski allowed himself to become "embroiled" .)
You realy do not know of what you speak.
Way to go judge!!!!!!!!
37 - from the opinion itself:
"According to the article, the “website” — http://alex.kozinski.com — included “a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows,” “a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal,” and “a graphic step-by-step pictorial in which a woman is seen shaving her pubic hair.”"
Honestly, if this happened to anyone other than a judge, we would be shocked at the invasion of privacy and first amendment rights.
Seriously, how is it right that he gets a multi-judge panel probing his colon for misconfiguring his web server and allowing a pissed off litigant with a gripe to see the kind of emailed around image that every single one of us has received dozens of every year.
38--from my observation of the material itself:
The video was on TV (many times) and also on You Tube. (Farmer being chased by aroused donkey, at some point man's pants fall down, he trips, ha ha ha).
The cows pic is so tame. Far less shocking than many billboards or magazine ads by mainstream fashion houses.
So was the other stuff--nothing sexually explicit at all.
Please READ your own quote from the opinion: when it says "according to the article" it means according to the original Los Angeles Times article--which was dead wrong, and failed to attribute the information to Sanai or to explain his vendetta against Kozinski.
The opinion at that point is not describing materials looked at by the court--only as characterized by the LAT.
The LAT fell for the man-bites-dog premise of the story as pitched by Sanai—judge presiding over porn trial has porn collection—without critically examining (or reporting on) the source and without critically examining the faulty premise of the article.
Kozinski was presiding over the pron trial of a man who commercially produces video’s of women being shat upon. The parallel between the judge and the judge just did not exist.
The LAT dropped the ball and Kozinski was guilty of nothing.
Lazer Von Liquidator rights
Nice how they reach clear across country to the "impartial" jurisprudent 3rd Cir.
Sort of like Nitti judging Capone
Many more American issues are slaughtered by pen of haughtier than Capone ever could.
Judge "Cleared"
Get Real!
Dear 25: Including 107 comments--half of them by Cyrus Sanai--the lawyer who stole the material from Kozinski's private web server and leaked it to the LAT.
Cyrus Sanai is (as one might expect) no longer with the Los Angeles law firm he was associated with when he first instigated his one-man public assault on Justice Kozinski. (Most firms have better things to occupy their lawyers time than pursuing private personal or family vendetta’s—whether against their own father, their former landlord, or judges who just happen to head the largest federal court of appeals in the United States).
Sanai , according to the State Bar of California website, now practices under a firm name derived by bastardizing (no insult intended) his first and last name into “Sanais”.
http://members.calbar.ca.gov/search/member_detail.aspx?x=150387
For a glimpse at his current plaintiff’s mold practice, see summons and (horrors) Judicial Council Form PI Complaint here:
http://newportterrace.net/Boschetto-Lukas%20vs%20NCA%20and%20Board%20Complaint-Summons.pdf
--The-heartbreak-of-Sanais
I concur.