Georgia Removes Court Of Appeals Judge
The Georgia Supreme Court has ordered the removal from office a judge of the Court of Appeals.
Upon review, the matter is initially a close one: at least some evidence supports many of the Hearing Panel’s findings, while at least some evidence also supports many of Judge Coomer’s contradictory explanations. But the Hearing Panel viewed the live testimony personally and weighed demeanor and credibility in making its findings, and we generally defer to its findings if supported by sufficient evidence. And enough of the Hearing Panel’s findings are supported by sufficient evidence that, notwithstanding alternative ways that the evidence could have been viewed, we defer to the Hearing Panel’s findings regarding Judge Coomer’s actions and the bad faith in which the Hearing Panel found those actions to have been taken. Once we arrive at that conclusion, the matter ceases to be close; the appropriate sanction is to remove Judge Coomer from the bench.
The court had remanded an earlier recommendation of removal.
One of the charges involved a family vacation to Hawaii
Essentially, Judge Coomer floated himself a loan from his campaign funds to pay for a family leisure trip, while knowing from the outset that it was impermissible to pay for such expenses with those funds, and compounded the violation by failing to disclose it despite his knowledge that disclosure was required. He did not reimburse his campaign account fully until the CFC began investigating him, adding to a pattern of failing to rectify his mistakes until it served his own interests to do so. These actions, especially when combined with all the rest of his self-interested conduct, present to the public a picture of a judge who will bend the rules and abuse the access to campaign cash that a public office affords him when it benefits him financially.
The Judicial Qualifications Commission Hearing Panel had proposed removal from office
The thirty-six counts of the Amended Formal Charges fall into five categories of alleged wrongful conduct. First, when practicing law before joining the Court of Appeals, Respondent prepared estate planning documents for a client, James Filhart — a man in his late seventies at the time — that made Respondent a beneficiary of Filhart’s estate. Second, when practicing law before joining the Court of Appeals, Respondent prepared promissory notes and entered into loans with Filhart on terms that were unfair and unreasonable to Filhart. Third, while practicing law immediately before joining the Court of Appeals and while serving as a judge on the Court of Appeals, Respondent failed to provide Filhart with his client records and bills despite Filhart’s repeated requests. Fourth, Respondent repeatedly violated campaign finance laws in the years preceding his appointment to the Court of Appeals and while on the Court of Appeals. Fifth, Respondent made certain misrepresentations and omissions on a March 2020 mortgage application while serving as a judge on the Court of Appeals.
Proposed sanction
That the bulk of Respondent’s improper conduct occurred before he began serving as a judge does not change the sanction equation: removal from office is still necessary to safeguard the public’s perception of the judiciary. Bad acts occurring before one becomes a judge can be just as illuminating of the actor’s character and fitness — and detrimental to the public’s perception of and confidence in the institution of the Courts — as acts that occur after one has ascended to the bench. Similarly, the fact that many of Respondent’s misdeeds, taken alone, may seem minor or inconsequential — $1,000 here and $1,000 there, no lasting financial harm to Filhart, etc. — does not somehow insulate Respondent from blame. Indeed, it is the compounding effect of Respondent’s unyielding disregard for ethical and professional norms that strikes deepest at the public’s trust in the judiciary. Judicial disciplinary proceedings in other jurisdictions in which judges have been removed from office for repeatedly violating attorney ethics rules support the Hearing Panel’s decision that removal is the proper sanction for Respondent’s persistent pattern of wrongdoing and exploitation of positions of trust to his own financial benefit…
In reaching its recommendation of removal, the Hearing Panel has also considered that Respondent has no prior disciplinary record, that he was somewhat cooperative in the JQC and CFC disciplinary proceedings, and that some who know him view him as a man of “good Christian character.” But from the character witnesses Respondent called to testify comes another powerful lesson: they — in particular his superior officer, Colonel Mink, from the United States Air Force’s Judge Advocate General Corps — saw in Respondent a smart, capable leader who excelled in all that he did. Accepting this assessment as true, the Hearing Panel is left to conclude that Respondent, deemed to be in the top one percent of officers Colonel Mink had ever met, knew exactly what he was doing when he convinced Filhart to loan his assetless and judgment-proof limited liability company hundreds of thousands of dollars on those unreasonable terms, when he drafted and executed those ethically impermissible and indefensible estate documents, when he “loaned” his judicial campaign the ghost $50,000, and when he used thousands of dollars held in public trust to fly his entire family over 4,000 miles away to the beaches of Hawaii for a private vacation at a time when he had already been appointed to be a judge on the Court of Appeals. Respondent’s long-term pattern of violating attorney ethics rules and campaign finance laws to his own financial benefit, his lack of remorse, and his payment of restitution only after his wrongdoing came to light outweigh mitigating factors and demand removal from office.
(Mike Frisch)