And, it was public defender Alison Kelly's motion to recuse that Judge Weill reportedly used to retaliate against one of his own (former) members of staff, his former female court administrator.
Judge Weill first, reportedly, harassed Karla Watkins Bailey so that she finally left the job, and then cleverly devised a way to defame her and ruin her reputation - by putting what she says were defamatory claims against her into a footnote of his decision in response to a motion to recuse from 65 criminal cases filed by the local public defender (a female).
The former court administrator sued, but, unfortunately, not for harassment on the job - as it was done in New York, Morin v Tormey, where the case was litigated in federal court for 4.5 years and finally resulted in a $600,000 settlement for the clerk (from taxpayer's pockets, unfortunately, not from the pockets of Chief Administrative Judge of the 5th Judicial District James C. Tormey who viciously retaliated against the woman after she refused to do his bidding and spy upon the judicial candidate for the "opposing" party - remember, judges are claimed not to be political animals, right).
Instead, the clerk sued for defamatory statements contained in the footnote.
While the trial court - let's give that courageous court a credit - rejected the judge's claim of absolute judicial immunity, the top court of the State of Mississippi, the court that "regulates" attorney licenses, by the way and that should be the most honorable of courts, reversed and tossed the complaint on the grounds of absolute judicial immunity.
The court has held that the claims of irrelevancy of the defamatory claims, that the former employee had nothing to do with the motion to recuse, do not take away the protection of absolute judicial immunity.
One judge wisely did not participate in this shameful decision, and two judges filed a short and cowardly concurrence where they agreed to toss the lawsuit against their brother, but "expressed concern" about what their own decision will do in the future, whether it will embolden judges to commit malicious acts in the future knowing they are immune (they know that since Stump v Sparkman, a plurality opinion, by the way, was decided back in 1978).
Here is the concurring opinion:
I have just two questions - if these two judges felt so strongly about the decision (and absolute immunity for malicious acts - they avoided to say "and corrupt", which is what the judicial immunity was self-given by the U.S. Supreme Court justices to themselves and to all of their brothers and sisters in courts of "general jurisdiction" back in 1978), why did they CONCUR, not DISSENT?
Surely, a strong two-judge dissent would have made a potential path to the U.S. Supreme Court smoother for the defamed woman.
Second, isn't that lack of courage attributable to the fact that judges were reluctant to take away the judicial immunity protection (illegally obtained in the first place, since all judges take a constitutional oath of office, and nothing in the U.S. Constitution allows anybody, including the U.S. Supreme Court, to allow other people to violate the U.S. Constitution or engage in malicious or corrupt acts on the bench with immunity) FROM THEMSELVES?
But that, of course, is a rhetorical question.
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