State Judges

Massachusetts Law Student Engages in Epic Judicial Intimidation

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I love it when crazy people self-identify.

I don’t know where Ray Wolfe goes to law school, and I don’t want to know. This guy seems unhinged and dangerous. You don’t have to take my word for it; you can look at the letters this guy sent to judges in Missouri.

According to court documents, Wolfe was a law student in Massachusetts, but was home in Missouri when he was cited for traffic violations. But there were scheduling conflicts between Wolfe and the Missouri court.

That’s when Wolfe unleashed his crazy. He sent a couple of menacing responses to Missouri judges. The letters were so outrageous that he was convicted on two counts of “tampering with a judicial officer.”

Those convictions were recently upheld in an opinion by the Missouri Court of Appeals — which means we can now all be entertained (and generally horrified) by the apparently unhinged Ray Wolfe….

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Judge of the Day: Minnesota Jurist Grabs Glock, Subdues Intruder

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Which would you rather wield: a gavel or a Glock?

Who says you have to choose? Not Judge Shaun Floerke, of Minnesota’s Sixth Judicial District, who used a .45-caliber Glock from his safe to protect his wife and five children from a home invader on New Year’s Day….

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Judge of the Day: Wisconsin Jurist Manages to Get a Stick All the Way Up His Butt

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Court approved sippy-cup for lawyers appearing before Judge Gene Gasiorkiewicz.

If you’re a fan of state officials wasting valuable time, resources, and mental energy over issues of decorum and etiquette, you’re going to love Wisconsin Judge Gene Gasiorkiewicz. The Journal Times (gavel bang: ABA Journal) reports that this new Racine County Circuit Court judge has hit the bench with all sorts of decorum rules for lawyers appearing in his courtroom.

Many of the new rules are of the dress-code nature that we’ve come to expect from judges more concerned with style than substance. Judge Gasiorkiewicz requires Reagan-esque “coat and tie” attire in his courtroom. And, of course, ladies must have a mastectomy show absolutely no cleavage. We can’t have judges being distracted by barrel-chested men wearing mock turtlenecks or women with plunging necklines.

But while everybody is aware that judges have the attention span of goldfish and can be easily distracted by attorney attire, nobody expected Judge Gasiorkiewicz to take his Orwellian need for conformity all the way down to the level of beverage holders. But that’s because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Lawyers appearing before Judge Gasiorkiewicz now must use court-issued mugs.

And Wisconsin lawyers don’t seem to be pitching a fit over it. Either these attorneys are as docile as dairy cows, or they’ve decided to “let the baby have his bottle”….

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Quote of the Day: Preacher Wants IRS to Make His Day

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Dear God, please allow the IRS to attack my church, so I can take them all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

– Iowa pastor Cary K. Gordon, who is campaigning against three Iowa Supreme Court justices who voted for same-sex marriage, even though tax-exempt churches are prohibited from campaigning for or against specific political candidates.

Mississippi Lawyer Jailed — For Not Reciting Pledge of Allegiance

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Man, have things changed in Mississippi. Mississippi used to be a hotbed for rebellion against the Union, and now it’s putting lawyers in jail for refusing to pledge allegiance to the flag. That’s progress, baby! (Sorry, I just wanted to see what it would look like to write a paragraph portraying Mississippi as progressive about anything.)

Mississippi lawyer Danny Lampley was found in contempt of court and jailed for refusing to recite the pledge of allegiance in open court. According to multiple reports, Lampley stood for the pledge and was “respectful,” but did not recite the words. Chancellor Talmadge Littlejohn (what a name!) then specifically asked Lampley to recite the pledge, and when he refused, he was held in contempt.

An Oxford, Mississippi lawyer who once hired Lampley covered the story on his blog…

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Judge Rejects Plea Deal as Something ‘That Only Goes to White Boys’

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If you spend any time around criminal defense lawyers, progressive lawyers, or people in a black barber shop, you’ll hear the claim that African-American criminal defendants receive harsher sentences than their white counterparts. People have done studies about this, people have written reports about this, people have held conferences about this institutional expression of discrimination.

Rarely do we see anybody trying to do anything about it. There are many reasons this fundamental unfairness persists, but only one of those reasons makes any sense: at the end of the day, nobody wants to be more lenient on a convicted criminal just because that criminal is black. And nobody wants to be more harsh towards a white criminal just because he’s white. So while we have these wide variations in sentencing outcomes, judges can’t re-balance the system from the bench. They have to sentence the criminal in front of them.

But that doesn’t mean judges are blind to the racial injustice of the system. And it doesn’t mean that judges can’t do what they have to in order to make sure that a particular punishment fits the crime.

I’m sure that Judge Joseph Williams of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, will be making all of those arguments shortly. Because he just threw out a plea on the grounds that the prosecutor had been too lenient on the young criminal, just because the criminal is white.

And to be clear, this wasn’t a passing or offhand remark from Judge Williams. Instead, he really laid into the prosecutor in this case…

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Judge of the Day: He Wanted Them to Touch His Nuts

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This is the most bizarre story we’ve seen in quite some time. And we always appreciate the opportunity to use our State Judges Are Clowns tag. (Federal all the way, baby.)

So, Isaac H. Stoltzfus is a judge from Intercourse — yes, Intercourse — Pennsylvania. As for the rest of the story….

Eh, res ipsa loquitur. Just click on the link below.

Judge from Intercourse, Pa., gives women condom-stuffed acorns
[Associated Press via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

Judge of the Day: ‘I find myself… not guilty!’

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Do public officials in Michigan need to jump in the lake? Last week, we covered an assistant attorney general in the Wolverine State who is on the hunt for a gay student at the University of Michigan. Today we bring you news of a misbehaving judge.

According to court records, Judge James M. Justin, a state district judge in Jackson County, dismissed nine traffic cases against himself and his wife. The Jackson Citizen Patriot reports that the judge fixed four illegal-parking tickets that he received from 2002 to 2004. He also dismissed five traffic tickets received by his wife, Kim R. Justin, over a ten-year span. Who says chivalry is dead?

Judge Justin’s tickets were, amusingly enough, “dismissed after explanation” — to himself. Presumably Judge Justin found his explanations very convincing.

So what does His Honor have to say about all this?

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Retired Brooklyn Judge Blasts NYAG Candidate Via Email

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The Democratic primary for the new New York Attorney General is on Tuesday. Earlier this week, I broke down the candidates and liveblogged the debate between the five Democratics that want to follow in the footsteps of Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo.

I wasn’t particularly impressed with the frontrunner, Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice. But I’ve got nothing on retired Brooklyn criminal judge, Amy Herz Juviler. Judge Juviler is definitely not going to vote for Rice. And she doesn’t want her friends to vote for her either. Freed from the bench, she’s been emailing her friends encouraging them to avoid Rice like the plague.

In the email, Judge Juviler gets right to the point:

Friends —
In considering who to vote for in the Democratic Primary, eliminate from your consideration Kathleen Rice.

Bang! Politico has the full email, let’s take a look…

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Understanding Federal Judicial Nominations

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Liveblogging of this interesting panel about judicial nominations at the National LGBT Bar Association’s Annual Lavender Law Career Fair and Conference, after the jump.

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A Jersey Judge Benchslaps Paul Weiss and Lowenstein Sandler — Hard

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Back in June, we bestowed Lawyer of the Day honors upon two of the nation’s top litigators: Ted Wells and Martin Flumenbaum, the co-chair and former chair, respectively, of the renowned litigation department at Paul Weiss. Given the sterling reputations of the two lawyers and their firm, it was a surprising development.

We recognized Messrs. Wells and Flumenbaum after a New Jersey judge sanctioned Paul Weiss and its co-counsel — Lowenstein Sandler, one of the Garden State’s leading law firms, and Wells’s former home (before he jumped across the Hudson) — for pursuing a “frivolous” and “ridiculous” legal claim on behalf of billionaire Ronald Perelman against his ex-father-in-law, Robert Cohen.

In June, Judge Ellen Koblitz ordered Paul Weiss and Lowenstein Sandler to pay Cohen’s fees and costs for opposing the claim; she scheduled a hearing to determine the amount. The hearing took place last month, and now we know the amount.

It’s nothing to sneeze at, even for firms as well-heeled as Paul Weiss and Lowenstein. And to add insult to (financial) injury, Judge Koblitz got super-snarky in the opinion setting forth her reasoning….

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‘Cleavage-Crazed’ Judge Resigns After Porn Found on His Work Computer

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If you’ve ever tried to write a lead paragraph for a story, you’ll know that the New York Daily News staff writers deserve drinks on the house for this impressive opening:

A cleavage-crazed criminal court judge — who fathered a son with a young Legal Aid lawyer — quit after officials found a massive porn stash on his work computer, sources said Thursday.

Bang. Erato herself couldn’t have been more titillating. So I’m assuming you’re going to want some details about Judge Jerks-A-Lot…

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