The Best Of Times, The Worst Of Times

The Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission dismissed an investigation with an admonishment of a judge for “serious and ongoing problems with several aspects of [his] actions and attitude as a judge for a decade that ended with we brought our concerns to [his] attention in September 2020, after which he became a different judge.”

The abrupt favorable change after September 2020 made the story “a tale of two judges.” 

The most frequent complaints involved demeanor issues, which the judge and the commission  attributed to trauma induced by a shooting outside his courtroom in 2016.

After that incident, he disparaged criminal defendants in personal terms that called his impartiality into question, twice ignored the concerns of defendants whose lawyers were absent, disparaged defense attorneys, and threatened defense attorneys with sanctions for allegedly filing frivolous motions

Your definition of “frivolous” seemed broad enough to encompass you thought would be unsuccessful.

He considered fines against public defenders who were not present when “the reality of [his] courthouse is that public defenders were expected to be ready to proceed in multiple courtrooms at the same time.”

He advised a criminal defendant that he could file a malpractice suit against his attorney for “poor lawyering” 

That was a serious infringement on the attorney-client relationship.

Bond decisions were apparently motivated by “anger” rather than an application of the law.

He also engarged in misconduct relating to his wife’s campaign for a non-judicial office.

We recognize that the campaign was your wife’s and that the circumstances put you in an awkward position, but the canons contain no exception for spouse’s campaigns.

(Mike Frisch)