A judge will not disbar a judge

I have been analyzing reports of judicial misconduct and reactions to them from various states of this country.


As you, probably, know if you read my blog regularly, I am also researching the issue of judicial retaliation against attorneys who criticize judges.


A peculiar pattern appears from all reports of judicial misconduct.


A judge apparently can do nearly anything - and still escape with his or her law license, and all that an attorney has to do to lose his law license is to criticize a judge.


I decided to put some of my findings into a table illustrating to what lengths judges can go and still keep their licenses.


With no effective judicial discipline, ever expanding judicial immunity for malicious and corrupt acts and nearly no criminal prosecutions of judges no matter what they do on the bench - judgeships are, probably, the safest careers of all.


Such careers are safety nets for incompetent and immoral people who can do ANYTHING in their office - and still escape with their law license.


Apparently, the public does not have to be protected from a lawyer the same way that people are to be protected from a rogue judge.


It is beyond me why attorney disciplinary authority do nothing to remove law licenses from former judges taken off the bench for misconduct or mental instability - it is very easy to do, by using the same "collateral estoppel" that is regularly used against attorneys who get disbarred without an opportunity for a hearing because some state court has decided a related issue by a low evidentiary standard.


Here, disciplinary standards are the same in the judicial disciplinary proceedings and the attorney disciplinary proceedings.


So why not discipline these judges as attorneys, too?


The only answer that comes to explain this situation is judges of the attorney licensing courts are afraid to create such precedents as to not to destroy their own safe harbors, should they themselves be removed from the bench for misconduct, incompetence or mental instability.


And that is one good reason to take attorney licensing out of the hands of the judiciary.

No.	Name of Judge	State	What did the judge do	Disciplined as a judge?	Suspended or disbarred?	Where works now
1.	James C. Tormey	New York	Asking a court employee to spy against a democratic judicial candidate, a judge of Family Court;  demoting and harassing the employee when she refused	No	No	Chief Administrative Judge, 5th Judicial District
2.	Bryan Hedges	New York, Onondaga County Family Court	Allegedly molestation of a 5-year old deaf-mute niece The alternative version is that Judge Hedges actually warned Attorney Morin that Judge Tormey is planning a retaliation against her, and that’s why he was destroyed by Judge Tormey’s friend William Fitzpatrick who failed to get a payoff from Judge Hedges	Yes, taken off the bench	No
3.	Diane L. Schilling	New York, East Greenbush Town Court (also until the scandal, special counsel to Judge Coccoma, Chief Admin. Judge of upstate New York)	Fixing a traffic ticket for another judge's wife	Yes, taken off the bench	No	Partner in MGuire and Cardona where a son of a late chief appellate judge Anthony Cardona and a niece of the present federal NDNY judge Mae D’Agostino are partners.  The law firm mentions in the website that Diane Schilling has “served” as a judge in East Greenbush court, not that she was taken off the bench
4.	Robert Restaino	New York, Niagara Falls City Court	Jailed the whole courtroom full of people because one cell phone rang	Yes, taken off the bench	No
5.	Gerald P. Garson	Former judge of NYS Supreme Court	Convicted for bribery	Taken off the bench	Disbarred
6.	Gilbert A. Abramson	Family Court, Saratoga County	Sexual jokes and suggestive behavior with female litigants	Taken off the bench	Registration status delinquent, but not suspended or disbarred
7.	Gerard E. Maney	Family Court Judge Albany County	Caught driving drunk, asked for a "professional courtesy" from the police	Censured, remained on the bench Joseph W. Belluck, a Manhattan lawyer, wrote that it was “mind-boggling” that the judge would be left on the bench after making “a calculated effort” to ensure that the law “would not be applied to him personally.”	No	Acting Supreme Court Justice, Supervising Judge, Albany County Family Court
8.	Cory Woodward	California, Superior Court Kern County	Having Sex in chambers	Reprimand, remained on the bench	No
9.	Scott Steiner	California, Superior Court, Orange County	Having sex in chambers	Reprimand, remained on the bench	No
10.	Wade McCree	Detroit, Michigan	Having sex in chambers with a witness in a criminal case, discussing sentencing of her husband who did not pay child support with that witness	Taken off the bench	No
11.	Kimberly Brown	Indiana	47 counts of misconduct: Delayed release of defendants from jail, failed to train court employees, created hostile environment for staff, did not cooperate with investigation	Taken off the bench	No
12.	Cynthia Brim	Illinois, was a judge since 1994, had mental breakdowns since 1994, with at least 5 hospitalizations	shoved a court deputy, found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity	Taken off the bench for mental instability	No
13.	Robert Spitzer	California	Gross neglect of cases, delays, disorganized files	Taken off the bench	Suspended, but not disbarred
14.	Giselle Polack	Florida, Broward County Drug Court	DUI	Suspended From the bench	No