Being a judge is a great job in so many ways. Think of the power, the prestige, and the intellectual challenge.
Like any job, though, judging has its downsides. In exchange for the benefits, judges must put up with a fair amount of stupidity and abuse. And they’re expected to do so patiently; that’s what the whole “judicial temperament” thing is all about.
It seems that this judge didn’t get the memo. From Law360:
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The Indiana Supreme Court has chastised a local judge over impartial and derogatory remarks she made in a child custody dispute, which include referring to the parents as “knuckleheads,” calling the dispute “retarded” and pressuring the father into waiving his right to a fact-finding hearing.
And then she dismissed the case by declaring it “totally gay.”
Okay, she didn’t do that. But Judge Marilyn A. Moores of Marion County Superior Court was far from a model judge:
“From the first few minutes of the hearing, the court expressed impatience — responding to the parties’ discussion of the potential overlap between custody in the divorce and placement in the CHINS [Child in Need of Services] case by commenting, ‘My hair hurts,’” the panel wrote.
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Well, Your Honor, it does look a little flat….
One can understand the judge’s impatience. The litigants who appeared before her make the Kardashians sound klassy:
The conflict involved a dispute between the unnamed mother and father over whether their daughter was in need of state services. The mother believed her daughter qualified [for state supervision], telling the Department of Child Services she was tired of the girl and offering to “sign the bitch over to [DCS],” according to the order.
No joke. Here’s the opinion; do a “find” on the page for the b-word.
Although the custody issue has been rendered moot by the child turning 18, the Indiana Supreme Court reversed anyway, citing “the issue of public importance this case presented” and how Judge Moores’s conduct “breached the court’s duty of impartiality and amounted to coercion” of the father, who was pressured into waiving his right to a hearing.
On the bright side for Judge Moores, it seems she hasn’t been disciplined in any way (not counting the Indiana Supreme Court benchslap itself). Let’s hope she can learn from this unfortunate episode and conduct herself better in the future. Maybe she needs to take a vacation, hang out with her horses (all six of them), and return to the bench with a clear head and calm demeanor.
(Flip to the next page to read the Indiana Supreme Court opinion in full.)