Ohio Common Pleas Court Judge Lance Mason, 46, has been arrested after he allegedly punched, choked and bit his wife. Mason is now charged with felonious assault. His wife of eight years was hospitalized with facial injuries including a fractured orbital bone after the incident.
Police say that the attack occurred during an argument while driving. The evidence includes a 911 call from a witness who saw the fight in the vehicle after leaving a train station. What is notable is that the wife was driving the SUV while the witness reported seeing “fists flying.” As a result, the SUV swerved across traffic lands and almost hit a number of cars.
There is also a 911 call from Aisha Mason who told a dispatcher the judge attacked her in front of her two children and “I’m afraid he’s going to hurt my daughters.” Such contemporaneous calls are highly damaging for any defense since they are played to the jury.
Aisha Mason later filed for divorce citing gross neglect of duty and extreme cruelty in the filing.
The judge has been released on $65,000 and hit with a restraining order. Mason is a former assistant county prosecutor as well as a state senator. He was put on the bench by the governor in 2008.
When Mason took the appointment from Ohio Gov. Strickland, he cited his children as the reason. He noted that his 8-month-old daughter, Audrey, at the time had had open-heart surgery after she was diagnosed with Down syndrome: “That shook me up, so I thought I’ve got to get home and help out my wife with my baby.”
Before taking the bench, Mason was the Democratic Senate minority whip and ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary and Criminal Justice Committee. He also held a position with Baker Hostetler.
Source: Cleveland
I agree totally with what bettykath said and was trying to say. She did not condone the action of the judge, and it did not have to be a judge, but when something untiward happens it is incumbent on the sensible folk to seek answers as to why. It is reasonable to suspect that there is some mental instability in this case as besides the physical abuse, the man was also putting his own life at risk. Therefore when she suggests that a better and more responsive mental health system might have been able to avert this situation, one should not ignore it. When someone has a disease we do not talk about personal responsibility unless it is an STD but when the spectre of mental illness raises it’s head, we demand personal responsibility. And this is one of the reasins why so many do not seek help; because they are supposed to be able to handle it.
Stewart – our go-to person on mental health is Charlton Stanley, Ph.D. You would have to ask him why the mental health system keeps failing in these situations.
Eric – true. There is a broad spectrum of humanity in the judicial and law enforcement communities. You hope they are all fair and altruistic, but that’s not always the case.
Paul – I know. I’m curious as to what happened, too. Not because I think it was her fault, but to understand the slide.
In my time with the DA’s office, I worked on a lot of DV cases, and we had police officers and judges as defendants. People is people. Being law enforcement doesn’t change that.
If they let him practice law after he gets kicked off the bench, he ought to do divorces.
Paul – just to clarify, I get that you do not condone his actions, or blame her, but are curious about what the heck they were fighting about that would make him so nuts.
Paul – it is true that women can be physically and verbally abusive. And there are some women who violently attack men, in a cowardly fashion, because their sex protects them.
But the vast majority of men could absolutely destroy women physically.
If a woman is physically or mentally abusive, a man should vote with his feet, and walk away. He should not engage.
I heard one of my favorite talk radio hosts, Bill Carroll, discuss this one day. He said that he had a girlfriend who had a violent rage against him one day. He picked her up, deposited her on his porch with her purse and keys, and locked the door. I believe he broke up with her through the closed door. In any case, there was no “working it out” because someone who would be violent once would be violent again, unless they made major, and unlikely, personal changes.
But although is anger might have been justified by their argument, physically assaulting someone who is driving a car with you, and your children inside, is never justified. But one does get curious what preceded such a debacle.
Karen – I am not trying to defend his actions, just curious as to what was the tipping point.
I’ll bet the arraignment was certainly an uncomfortable moment on both sides of the bench.
Paul-
Interesting point. There are, of course, no “trigger words” that justify physical violence. Period. But I’m willing to bet that many of the people adopting “trigger words” as a defense to the disgusting behavior of that professor, would not be willing to do so in this case.
anon – no of the ‘new’ precept of campus speech is that students are to be warned of potential ‘trigger words’ by faculty. In the olden days, we used to call them ‘fighting words’ but times change.
bettykath – ‘trigger words’ were a potential defense for the asst prof who stole the protester’s sign and assaulted her. Her trigger words were ban abortion.
Paul, It’s her fault he was beating on her?
nick, my first comment was sarcasm. I thought that was obvious but I guess not. I should have flagged it as such.
paul, so glad we agree that he is a danger to himself and others and needs to be off the streets.”
bettykath – I just want to know what the ‘trigger word’ or ‘trigger words’ was/were. I do not agree with his actions at all. They cannot find a place deep enough in the dungeon for him.
@Nick Spinelli – Get a grip! WTF is it with your inference that bettykath’s comment is suggestive that this Mason character’s behavior is someone’s else’s fault, and/or she doesn’t recognize that people have to take personnel responsibility for the behavior. Personal responsibility = definite “code words”
Domestic violence against women or children sickens me.
It does not matter the provocation. A man should walk away, and never get into a physical fight with a woman. What pathetic excuse did he have in his mind at the time for why she “deserved” to get choked, hit, and bitten, while driving with himself and their children?
As for his excellent personal achievements, we never know what goes on behind closed doors. He clearly has anger management and impulse control issues, and an abhorrent lack of personal responsibility. How many times has a man killed his entire family, and then himself, and everyone has said, “But he was such a wonderful man and father?” The fact that it was a surprise does not mean that it was out of character, just that he successfully hid that side of himself from public view. Because I doubt this was the first time he’d acted out. Every time they don’t get caught, some men get emboldened, and go farther and farther each successive time they lose their temper.
He could have killed not only his own children, but someone else’s if his wife had gotten into an accident. Some people, including judges, believe they are above the law.
I hope he gets anger management counseling, but I also hope that he is not granted leniency simply because he was a judge. What does it matter how he acted in his public life if in his private life he was an abuser? Judges should be held to the same standards, and have the law applied the same to him, as we all are. His affluence should not protect him.
Karen – I am intellectually curious about what she said or did that set him off. Now that we are getting some equality into the law, cops are reporting that women are just as much the abuser as the men.
bettykath, Does personal responsibility mean anything to you? Or. is it always someone else’s fault?
bettykath – he clearly is a danger to his wife and probably his children. With the weapons and ammo he was probably just getting his zombie attack plan down.
It’s tough being a man these days what with the wife calling the cops when he beats on her.
Seriously, this is probably a case where a good mental health system might have helped him deal with his issues without getting violent. For a man to have the achievements that he has had, there’s something else going on in his life that he can’t deal with. He seems to be a danger to himself and others and needs to be off the streets.
Here’s the part that’s a red flag:
12:42 p.m. Cleveland police arrested Mason and confiscated smoke grenades, semi-automatic rifles, a sword, a bulletproof vest and more than 2,500 rounds of ammunition.
A member of Mason’s family called Cleveland police and said she was afraid he was going to use weapons inside his home near the Shaker Heights border to commit suicide, the report said.
Seems like the Cleveland police made a clean arrest, because there’s no mention of Mason complaining about arresting police using a choke hold on him. Like Mason did to his wife.
Punishment before the trial.
All branches of government are getting into that these days.
There is a lot of hatin’ on Texas and Florida on this blog. But, there have been some nasty judge stories coming out of the Buckeye State. The hatin’ on red states is political. Because there is craziness, nastiness, wackiness, evil, in ALL states; red, blue, and in this case, swing.