Judge Suspended For Misconduct

The Missouri Supreme Court has suspended a judge for six months without pay for misconduct relating to her dealings with the public defender

Having reviewed the evidence before the Commission, it is clear that Respondent intentionally delayed the appointment of public defenders to subvert the rights of indigent defendants. She did this, ostensibly, because of a disagreement over whether the public defender’s office could enter an appearance for an indigent defendant in probation violation cases.

Interfering with the administration of justice, as in this case, undermines the “public confidence in the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary,” to say nothing of the lack of promptness, efficiency or fairness to a defendant’s right to be heard. What is more, the impact of Respondent’s misconduct operated to prejudice indigent defendants who were confined and awaiting appointment of counsel. Their right to be heard according to law was delayed. Finally, Respondent’s threats of filing disciplinary complaints against counsel, and ultimately filing a disciplinary complaint in retaliation for a judicial complaint filed by the director of the public defender’s office, violates the Code of Judicial Conduct and constitutes misconduct. Even if it was not in retaliation, as Respondent claimed, it was inconsistent with the propriety with which a judge should act.

Judge Wilson concurred

I write to emphasize the fact that Respondent was correct (in part) in her reading of this statute does nothing to excuse or mitigate the seriousness of her misconduct. Judges are neutral arbiters of the disputes that come before them. Here, time after time, Respondent let her view of the Public Defender’s authority – which authority was invoked by the defendant and never questioned by the state – outweigh her judicial obligation to maintain both the fact and the appearance of objectivity and impartiality in adjudicating the cases before her. And Respondent’s misconduct did not stop there. In the course of her dispute with the Public Defender, Respondent purposely and repeatedly sacrificed the rights of some defendants in probation violation cases to the statutory interpretation point she felt compelled to make to the Public Defender generally. Time and again, defendants who would have been entitled to representation by the Public Defender were denied that representation for some period because Respondent refused to make a timely determination of whether, under the circumstances, counsel was necessary to protect each defendant’s due process rights.

It is difficult to imagine a reasonable justification for not taking up and deciding this question during a defendant’s first appearance before the court, particularly if the defendant is incarcerated. Of course, an isolated failure to do so would not raise a question of judicial misconduct for the Commission and this Court, but would simply be a matter for ordinary review – and, if error, correction – by a higher court. Respondent’s conduct, however, was no isolated incident.

(Mike Frisch)