One of the reasons people got sick and tired of alcohol prohibition was the way it corrupted everyone. That’s the way it is when you make a crime out of things that humans consume. The consumers and suppliers are criminals, and because consumers can be anywhere, prohibition leads to corruption of the enforcement classes. Lots of people drank alcohol, including police, prosecutors, and judges.
I was outraged earlier to learn (via Glenn Reynolds) that the convictions of the defendants who tortured and killed Channon Christian and Chris Newsom (discussed in a number of posts) have been thrown out. Why? Because it turns out that the presiding judge was a drug addict who was actively addicted to opiates like oxycodone during the trial. According to what passes for legal reasoning these days, this meant that the convictions had to be thrown out regardless of any showing of legal errors in their case. Because the judge was an admitted criminal (who engaged in doctor shopping, street purchases, and allegedly bought from accused drug defendants and even police officers), everything he did including the murder trial is considered to be rife with “structural error”:
Blackwood’s labeling of “structurally” flawed trials presided over by Baumgartner in the Christian/Newsom case meant that no actual error by the disgraced judge had to be shown in order to merit new trials. Blackwood cited evidence dating to at least 2008 that shows Baumgartner was “doctor shopping” – a crime – to get hundreds of pills a month even before he began buying hundreds more from street dealers. Noting witness accounts that Baumgartner was taking as many as 30 pills a day while on the bench, Blackwood said it was clear Baumgartner was “intoxicated” throughout that period.
Actually, use of opiates by an addict does not mean intoxication per se. Anyone who thinks it does should read about the father of modern surgery.
Reversing the jury verdicts in the Christian-Newsom case is an absolute outrage, and what is even more outrageous is that “drugs” will be blamed instead of the laws that created this problem. The judge — one Richard Baumgartner — had a Rush Limbaugh type painkiller habit. This might not have been a big deal had he been able to buy legally over the counter or had his doctors been allowed to prescribe for him without worrying about legal consequences. But because it is illegal to prescribe drugs to maintain an addict’s habit, doctors have the DEA breathing down their neck, so Baumgartner could not trust them and played the typical addict game of lying to doctors, doctor shopping, buying his drugs in the street, covering up, etc.
Obviously, if an impaired judge makes reversible errors, these can and should be redressed on appeal. But a judge being on drugs is in itself not normally cause for reversal of a case, any more than a judge being an alcoholic. To get a case reversed has traditionally required a showing of reversible error — i.e., what legal errors did he make which require reversal?
But the traditional rules doesn’t seem to be the emerging rule in the case of illegal drugs. The new rule seems to be that if a judge uses illegal drugs, everything he does has to be reversed, without any need to show actual legal mistakes. Sorry, but that is absurd.
Would the result have the same if a judge were shown to have been an active alcoholic? Even during Prohibition? I very much doubt it.
So what is the explanation? I’m thinking that illegal drugs have evolved from malum prohibitum to malum in se. Which means that a judge who is on illegal drugs becomes inherently evil.
Comments
4 responses to “The judge was an addict so the jury verdicts are reversed!”
Respectfully, while I agree that the drug war is insanity, I don’t think the idea that the judge may have been under the influence on the bench is what is driving the structural error argument.
Rather, as I understand the opinion, the structural error argument is more that: (1) because the judge knew he was engaged in illegal activity, then (2) he may have had a bias towards being police/prosecutor friendly in his decisions, and would do so (3) precisely to avoid further scrutiny by law enforcement into his own behavior.
There are hundreds of small decisions that are made by a trial judge that, in the aggregate, can ultimately have an effect on outcome–and where you cannot say under court-of-appeals standards the district court committed legal error or an abuse of discretion (eg, whether a piece of evidence is admissible, whether an expert meets Daubert standards, how far an expert can go between “opinion” vs sheer speculation… lower court judges get a LOT of leeway on these issues from the C of Appeals).
FWIW, I do not believe that this means that all of those cases cannot be re-filed and re-tried. It is not a double-jeopardy issue, which usually requires a genuine not guilty verdict in a typical jurisdiction. And, the fact that people were convicted before should give these defendants a pretty good clue that if they go to trial again, they might be convicted again. So the opportunity for plea arrangements matters.
But I think that particularly in criminal cases, where the resource bias is usually heavily in favor of the State, it is not a bad thing to ensure that procedurally, you lessen risk that the judge is not tipping his finger on the scale even just a little bit. (Which, BTW, is why I am not mad keen on former prosecutors and government employees becoming judges, because I believe they are always biased in favor of statism, but that is a separate issue…).
I see your point, but that goes to bias. There are many, many biased judges, both pro-prosecution and pro-defense. Bias is not reversible error. It has to demonstrated in a court of appeal that such bias resulted in legal error.
Suppose a judge is on the take, or is a child molester. These are crimes for which he can be removed from the bench, but they do not automatically require reversal of decisions.
I suspect that what happened here was grounded in an emotional reaction by other judges, who may also be trying to preserve their own credibility, and remove the taint of previous coverup.
No, the whole point of making a finding of structural error is that the judge doesn’t have to have made a legal error to vacate his rulings. If a judge is on the take, I think that could easily be grounds for vacating his decisions. If he was a child molester and in charge of a family court, I could see reasons why you would be able to argue structural error. As a related example, suppose I found out the judge presiding over my case once had the other party as a client. That usually means automatic recusal by the judge, even if both sides wanted to keep the judge because he is a good judge, and both sides think the judge can address the issue in an unbiased fashion. If he failed to recuse, his judgment can be vacated even if he committed no legal errors in deciding the case.
Of course, given some of the material that is being published over at Katie Granju’s blog, http://mamapundit.com/2011/12/read-it-for-yourself-investigative-file-in-judge-baumgartner-case/, which indicates the judge headed up the drug crimes court, and that “law enforcement” was at least at one point a drug supply, it seems like a tighter nexus. They may be hoping that they can staunch the bleeding by ditching the judge; but if it turns out a lot of cops were dirty, then yeah, I can see how many, many defendants will have a right to a new trial as well; if the cop providing all the evidence against you is corrupt, that can be enough for a jury to find reasonable doubt….
“If he was a child molester and in charge of a family court, I could see reasons why you would be able to argue structural error.”
That’s because there is a nexus between the behavior of the judge and the subject matter. But would it require reversing a jury verdict in a murder case? I think not.
Bear in mind that this is an adversary system. Both prosecution and defense are duty-bound to see to it that the law and facts which advance their positions are thoroughly explored, and beyond that, it is ultimately up to the jury and not the judge. Even a sleeping or senile judge could theoretically preside, and unless there was a showing that his decisions were incorrect, his having been asleep or senile would not require reversal.