The federal judicial system, generally speaking, frowns upon witness tampering. It’s extra finicky about judges who engage in witness tampering. So it should come as no surprise that Judge Kurt Pomrenke of Virginia is now former Judge Kurt Pomrenke of Virginia, after the Virginia Supreme Court kicked him off the bench, after Pomrenke admitted contacting two witnesses in a federal corruption trial against his wife.
Unfortunately for Pomrenke, he never tried the John Dowd strategy. I mean, judges can’t tamper with witnesses! Judges rule on objections involving witnesses all the time, so that’s basically the same thing as telling a witness what to do, right? Crackerjack legal reasoning!!!
Stacey Pomrenke is serving 34 months for a variety of corruption charges stemming from years of pressuring vendors for perks while she served as chief financial officer of a public utility. As the Washington Post reports, the former judge’s problems started when he sent a “friendly” letter to Stacey’s boss, who was publicly known to be cooperating with prosecutors:
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Three weeks after his wife’s indictment, Pomrenke sent a handwritten note to her boss, the BVU chief executive Donald L. Bowman, with his business card included in a “thank you” envelope. “I just wanted to sincerely thank you for your kindness and understanding support for Stacey during these horrible times,” Kurt Pomrenke wrote. “It is horrible what our government is doing to her. She will be proven innocent.”
Bowman is a lawyer and had been cooperating with the widely publicized investigation of corruption at BVU, and had made his cooperation known in the news media, the Supreme Court noted. He was shocked to receive the note from Pomrenke, and drove directly to the U.S. attorney’s office in Abingdon, Va., to show it to them.
Bowman never ended up testifying — not that the decision to testify or not changes the ethical implications — but a woman named Connie Moffatt did testify, and she also received some unsolicited advice from ol’ Kurt:
Next, on the eve of his wife’s trial in February 2016, then-Judge Pomrenke left a voicemail for a BVU employee expected to testify during the trial. “Hey, Connie, this is Kurt,” the judge said, according to the Supreme Court. “Um, when you’re testifying in that trial there might be a couple of things that you could do that would really help Stacey. If you could kinda slip in when you have a chance just little remarks like how Stacey did a great job, or Stacey was the one that took care of the employees … just something like that even though it’s not directly in response to the questions.”
And with that, Virginia decided it had seen enough of Kurt Pomrenke in a robe, concluding that, maybe, a judge contacting witnesses in a trial where he had a family stake just might reflect poorly on the post:
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We cannot escape the conclusion that having a sitting judge who apparently attempted to manipulate trial testimony would tend to impair public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of not only that judge, but also that of all the other members of the judiciary, and our entire system of justice.
Well, yeah.
Judge thrown off bench for witness tampering in wife’s federal corruption trial [Washington Post]
Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.