Arkansas Judge Resigns After Allegations That He Forced Male Defendants To Come To His House and Photographed Them
jonathanturley
Arkansas judge O. Joseph Boeckmann Jr. has resigned in a truly bizarre scandal where he was accused of ordering male defendants to be spanked, engage in sex acts and bend over for thousands of photographs to fulfill their “community service.” What is interesting is that he was under investigation by the State Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission, which began an inquiry in 2014 over a possible conflict of interest in an unrelated case on elder care. When they started to investigate, they were shocked by accounts of these other parties. He has not however faced criminal charges, which is curious given his alleged abuse of office.
Many of the cases stemmed from traffic cases where male defendants were pressured to accept community service and found themselves being ordered to the judge’s home or to some other location to be photographed by the judge bending over. He would tell them that he was collecting photographs as evidence of community service.
In one case, Boeckmann ordered a man to his house, where he photographed the man bending over and offered him $300 to pose as Michelangelo’s statue of David. The Commission found 4,600 photos of men, including defendants, who were naked and photographs after “apparent” paddling or other sex acts. Over a thousand of those photos were sent to the judge’s lawyer to add to the record last week. He then resigned.
