I wrote on this blog a lot about sexual shenanigans of federal judges, and about the power they wield to quash exposure.
I wrote about the case of a federal judge within the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, judge Walter Smith, who was only censured, but not taken off the bench, despite available transcripts of the former court employee indicating that Judge Smith:
* spotted her when she joined probation department of his court;
* monitored her movements around the courthouse through the court security surveillance system, monitor was in his chambers;
* then, at one point, when she became a court clerk (but not a clerk usually working with the judge), he met her in the hallway, drunk, and ordered to come to his chambers;
* in his chambers, the judge tried to press him on the clerk, the clerk refused and escaped;
* the judge then continued to stalk the clerk, sent her flowers, came to her office, sent away her supervisor and again tried to force himself upon the clerk
When the clerk complained, the judge's law clerk called the clerk and tried to persuade her to end her allegations because the judge is taking it very hard.
This is a sanitized account of what the judge did and what discipline was imposed on him.
I actually read the transcripts, made available through this blog. They are really bad. Judge Smith, according to witness accounts, is a stalker and a sexual predator, and my personal opinion is that the public, and vulnerable court employees, should be protected from him.
Yet another federal judge, Samuel Kent in Texas, was not so long ago indicted for sex crimes, after a long campaign of intimidation of two women he was sexually assaulting for years.
Even after a federal indictment, Judge Kent was allowed to escape with a very light sentence, and was not held criminally accountable with interference with grand jury proceedings and witness intimidation.
We are now having yet another scandal with a rapist on the bench unfolding - now about the recent-former Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Richard Warren Roberts who, according to the quickly updated Wikipedia article, "retired from the bench for unspecified health issues" on March 16, 2016.
The health issues of former Judge Richard W. Roberts might be "unspecified".
What is very clearly specified though is that the former judge Richard W. Roberts has been recently accused, based on his own recorded admission in a telephone conversation, of rape of a 16-year-old witness in a criminal investigation where he participated as a prosecutor 35 years ago.
The courageous woman recorded the admission in a telephone conversation and pressed charges.
It is interesting that the former Judge Richard W. Warren "retired" yesterday, the very same day as the article was published about the accusations stating that the Justice Department has "conclusive proof" of the sex crime.
This sexual predator who did not think much about raping a 16-year old who was a witness in the proceeding he handled as a prosecutor in 1981, had his glorious career, receiving hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars - and benefits - while "serving" first as a prosecutor, then a federal district court judge, then the Chief Judge of the U.S. District court for the District of Columbia.
I wonder whether he will be allowed to keep his pension and whether he will be ordered to disgorge his salary and benefits so far paid, because had he been outed and convicted those years ago, he wouldn't have kept his law license, and wouldn't have made the career he made.
I will continue to monitor Richard W. Roberts' case and see whether he will lose his law license and whether his retirement benefits will be revoked.
By the way, in his retirement letter, judge Richard Roberts did not mention that a lawsuit has been filed against him based on "coerced sex", he only mentioned his alleged disability.
One cannot expect complete candor from a judge, can one?
THE EVOLUTION OF JUDICIAL TYRANNY IN THE UNITED STATES:
"If the judges interpret the laws themselves, and suffer none else to interpret, they may easily make, of the laws, [a shredded] shipman's hose!" - King James I of England, around 1616.
“No class of the community ought to be allowed freer scope in the expression or publication of opinions as to the capacity, impartiality or integrity of judges than members of the bar. They have the best opportunities of observing and forming a correct judgment. They are in constant attendance on the courts. Hundreds of those who are called on to vote never enter a court-house, or if they do, it is only at intervals as jurors, witnesses or parties. To say that an attorney can only act or speak on this subject under liability to be called to account and to be deprived of his profession and livelihood by the very judge or judges whom he may consider it his duty to attack and expose, is a position too monstrous to be entertained for a moment under our present system,” Justice Sharwood in Ex Parte Steinman and Hensel, 95 Pa 220, 238-39 (1880).
“This case illustrates to me the serious consequences to the Bar itself of not affording the full protections of the First Amendment to its applicants for admission. For this record shows that [the rejected attorney candidate] has many of the qualities that are needed in the American Bar. It shows not only that [the rejected attorney candidate] has followed a high moral, ethical and patriotic course in all of the activities of his life, but also that he combines these more common virtues with the uncommon virtue of courage to stand by his principles at any cost.
It is such men as these who have most greatly honored the profession of the law. The legal profession will lose much of its nobility and its glory if it is not constantly replenished with lawyers like these. To force the Bar to become a group of thoroughly orthodox, time-serving, government-fearing individuals is to humiliate and degrade it.” In Re Anastaplo, 18 Ill. 2d 182, 163 N.E.2d 429 (1959), cert. granted, 362 U.S. 968 (1960), affirmed over strong dissent, 366 U.S. 82 (1961), Justice Black, Chief Justice Douglas and Justice Brennan, dissenting.
" I do not believe that the practice of law is a "privilege" which empowers Government to deny lawyers their constitutional rights. The mere fact that a lawyer has important responsibilities in society does not require or even permit the State to deprive him of those protections of freedom set out in the Bill of Rights for the precise purpose of insuring the independence of the individual against the Government and those acting for the Government”. Lathrop v Donohue, 367 US 820 (1961), Justice Black, dissenting.
"The legal profession must take great care not to emulate the many occupational groups that have managed to convert licensure from a sharp weapon of public defense into blunt instrument of self-enrichment". Walter Gellhorn, "The Abuse of Occupational Licensing", University of Chicago Law Review, Volume 44 Issue 1, September of 1976.
“Because the law requires that judges no matter how corrupt, who do not act in the clear absence of jurisdiction while performing a judicial act, are immune from suit, former Judge Ciavarella will escape liability for the vast majority of his conduct in this action. This is, to be sure, against the popular will, but it is the very oath which he is alleged to have so indecently, cavalierly, baselessly and willfully violated for personal gain that requires this Court to find him immune from suit”, District Judge A. Richard Caputo in H.T., et al, v. Ciavarella, Jr, et al, Case No. 3:09-cv-00286-ARC in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Document 336, page 18, November 20, 2009. This is about judges who were sentencing kids to juvenile detention for kickbacks.
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