Wendy Joyce Terry, 43, the longtime prosecutor in Davidson County, North Carolina, was indicted this week in a bizarre case where she is accused of texting an offer to pay $20,000 to get an opponent to drop out of an election for a superior court seat. Putting aside the wisdom on texting bribes or payoffs, Terry is accused of texting the offer to district court Judge April Wood.
Category: Lawyering
There is a controversy in the United Kingdom where Alexander Carter-Silk, 57, the head of Brown Rudnick’s intellectual property group in Europe, has been accused from scores of critics of being a sexist, misogynistic monster. His offense? Carter-Silk had received a LinkedIn contact for Charlotte Proudman, 27. He responded by writing that he thought her photo was “stunning.” That led Proudman, a human-rights lawyer, to denounce his “unacceptable and misogynistic behavior” for complimenting the picture.
Defiant Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis has appealed the contempt order that has left her languishing in jail. At the same time, her lawyer has argued that marriage licenses issued without her signature are invalid — an interesting question given the state’s requirement that her signature be affixed to every such license. Below is my recent Washington Post column on Davis and how she fits within our collective social and legal iconography. Defiance is a heroic value when it is Martin Luther King violating police orders and standing unbent before biting dogs and swinging batons. It was inspiring to millions when King cited St. Augustine to declare “an unjust law is no law at all”. Such figures stood against not just our prejudice but our laws in their defiance. As Henry David Thoreau stated “Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” Those who transgress upon unjust laws today are often heralded as heroes tomorrow from early American patriots to abolitionists to suffragists to desegregationists. Even today many praise Edward Snowdon for his criminal actions in disclosing a massive surveillance system of U.S. citizens even though those same laws are designed to protect our national security. Yet, Davis is using her public office to impose her religious values on neighbors. That contrast led to the column below.
Continue reading “Kim Davis: Hero or Villain?”
There is a bizarre case out of Arizona where lawyer Dennis Wilenchik has been given a formal sanction of admonishment from the bar after he sent profanity laced emails to a client who he accused of failing to pay his bills. The emails also included a reference to the movie Deliverance and its notorious rape scene. After accepting the discipline, Wilenchick now is seeking to set aside the discipline in light of new evidence. The discipline included a one-year probation period during which Wilenchick would have to continue with anger management treatment.
Continue reading “Arizona Lawyer Seeks To Vacate Bar Sanction After Profanity Laden Email”
Former TV judge Joe Brown, 66, has surrendered to Tennessee deputies to begin serving a five-day jail term for contempt of court. Brown was held in contempt by Magistrate Judge Harold Horne for an outburst in Juvenile Court in March 2014. He took the issue all the way up to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which denied Brown’s application to appeal a Court of Appeals upholding the ruling. Brown called the court a “circus” and a “sorry operation.” Of course real judges do not have producers and set designers. When Horne told him to stop, Brown did not. He gave him a day in jail but Brown continued until he had five days in jail.
Continue reading ““Judge” Brown Goes To Jail Over Contemptuous Encounter With Real Judge”
We previously discussed the disturbing ethics cases against Texas district Judge Elizabeth E. Coker who was caught sending text messages to prosecutors to help them with a case. Coker is now stepping down in a voluntary agreement with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, though some have objected that such a voluntary departure is not sufficient punishment for such an egregious lack of ethics.
Hillary Clinton has insisted throughout the ongoing email scandal on two points repeated as a virtual mantra: there was no classified material sent on her unsecured personal email system and she was in total compliance with the law. I have questioned both points and noted that she is really saying that no “marked” classified material was sent (a less than compelling argument) and she is speaking of federal criminal laws as opposed to the clear official policy not to use such personal servers. It appears clear that some of this material was indeed classified and, as I discussed this week on NPR, the policy against doing what she did was clear and strong at the time of her tenure at State. Now, United States District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan has weighed in with comments this week that Clinton clearly did violate State Department policy and that violation caused much of the difficulty in retrieving her communications while in office.
Judge Michael Coll of Delaware, Pennsylvania has vacated a child support order and apologized after a bizarre exchange with a party and his lawyer. Coll seemed intent on commenting on the Greek heritage of Kostas “Gus” Hartas despite repeated objections by his lawyer. To the credit of his lawyer, he continued to object as Coll demanded to be able to establish that “Greeks never pay taxes.” No doubt he will now warn his colleagues to beware of Greeks bearing lawyers.
Continue reading “Pennsylvania Judge Vacates Order and Apologizes After Anti-Greek Tirade”
I am rather perplexed by a ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman to order not just four more years of community service for filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza but continuation of psychological counseling despite the countervailing findings of two experts in the case. Judge Berman was on solid ground in much of his opinion on the conditions of the prior sentencing order. While tough, the defense was trying to curtail key aspects of the order. However, the counseling component does concern me.
The Chinese government is carrying out another infamous sweep of human rights lawyers and activists with over 100 people arrested nationwide. The authoritarian communist regime has offered preposterous excuses for the arrests but the message is clear: human rights will not be tolerated in the worker’s paradise that is China. Indeed, with pollution and corruption choking the life out of the public, the communist rulers still view human rights lawyers as the priority danger for the country.
Continue reading “China Arrests Over 100 Lawyers and Activists In Latest Crackdown on Human Rights”
Judge Reese Holley of Dickson, Tennessee has agreed to stop conditioning representation of counsel on making donations to his favorite charities or performing public service. What is most astonishing is not that Holley did not know what any first-year law student could tell him but that he has only been reprimanded and will be allowed to continue to serve as a judge in Tennessee after doggedly maintaining such facially unconstitutional and abusive rule. He only received a public reprimand.
There is an interesting criminal appeal filed in Pennsylvania by a convicted murderer Robert Urwin Jr., 58 who has serious reservations about the judge who presided at his trial. He should know. Former Washington County Common Pleas Judge Paul Pozonsky was later sentenced in the same courthouse for stealing cocaine from the evidence room and replacing it with baking soda.
The Ohio Supreme Court has suspended Rodger Moore, a Northern Kentucky attorney who appears to have been undone by a love for expensive wines — very expensive wines. Moore reportedly admitted to a series of shoplifting incident of wine. As a wine lover, I always joke that this is an expensive habit and that a heroin addiction would be cheaper. Moore appears to have prove the point.
Kentucky Judge Steven D. Combs in Pike County has been temporarily suspended after an array of charges of bizarre comments and actions, including calling officials such names as “Fishface,” “cokehead,” and “Dumbo.” Worst yet, he threatened to put a “bullet in the head” of the next police officer who pulled him over. A temporary suspension until resolution of the 10 charges seems quite modest punishment but his counsel, Stephen Ryan, still conveyed Combs’ “disappointment” with the action taken by the Judicial Conduct Commission.
This week I will be blogging from London, England. Today will be the first day, though I arrive around 10 pm in London. I will be speaking at the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. I will be participating on a program organized by Hon. Delissa A. Ridgway, Judge of the United States Court of International Trade entitled “What if . . . there had been no Magna Carta?”
Continue reading “LONDON CALLING: DAY ONE IN LONDON ENGLAND”