Here's an add-on, or two. Judge Elizabeth Hapner of Tampa was removed from the bench, i. e., defrocked, for abandoning her clients to run for her judgship, perjuring herself to obtain a domestic violence injunction against her estranged husband (a respected Tampa detective), and repeatedly missing official deadlines and perjuring herself about why she had. She ran again for a judgship and came close to a runoff, until the local press put on a full-court press to stop her.
And let's not forget about Asheville's Shirley "Sit on it and hope it goes away" Brown, who corrupted Asheville's district court bench with procrastination and other unauthorized transactions consonant with sleaze and dishonesty. She's dead now and if there's a hell...
Judge Shirley Carlisle Brown
Posted in the Asheville Forum
Mills River, NC
#1 Apr 13, 2010
Asheville, North Carolina is an arcadian town nestled among the highest mountains east of the Mississippi. On a sunny day the youth of the new age crowd into the streets. The cafes and restaurants bustle with commerce and the chatter of playful children. A peregrine falcon has taken up residence in the clerestory of Asheville's 18-story courthouse, a perfect vantage for survey of the city's plump pigeons. If you see a flock of pigeons performing frantic aerial maneuvers, like bunching up and heading north then abruptly turning south, squint your eyes and most likely you will see the swift little raptor selecting his prey and striking it from midair.
But there is other predation worthy of note in the town that was made famous as Altamont in the great novels of Thomas Wolfe.
Asheville has always had its share, more than its share, of rogue
politicians----sheriffs who enriched themselves with payoffs; detectives who gazed upon the women's section of the jail as a ripe source of sexual pleasure; city fathers who lulled, or threatened, the citizenry into ignoring their chicanes; and judges who, owing to some vicious mole of nature in them, took corruption.
Shirley Carlisle came to Asheville after unrewarding years officially
representing the inmates of John Umpstead Memorial Hospital, an institution for the mentally ill. She took a position as an assistant prosecutor with District Attorney Ron Brown. Before long the defense attorneys began to grumble that she was Brown's most aggressive prosecutor. There was talk that she and Brown had a "thing" going, but it soon fizzled and she married Brown's portly investigator, Bob, whom Brown had specially selected as suitable for the DA's office from
the police department.
There were certain cringings when she became judge. These fears in the
courthouse and in the legal community at large, from those aware of an
overzealous prosecutor, had not emerged as hysteria, but as perfectly
rational expectations. She never took off her mantle as prosecutor before she donned her black robe. Many civil libertarians would say that it may not be such a good idea to elevate so many prosecutors to the judiciary.
She now faces re-election, two days away, and a credentialed challenger. A
political advertisement in the town's only newspaper, a member of the
Gannett
conglomerate, states that Shirley C. Brown in effect has sullied her office
with her insolence, arrogance, and violations of the rule of law.
A few of her violations are as follows:
1. She tried an unfortunate criminal defendant when she knew that the
defendant's attorney was in a trial in federal court. By written rule in
the
General Statutes she was required to yield to the federal court's
jurisdiction
until the defendant's attorney was released. Facts are that she went ahead
with the trial, in spite of a call by the federal judge to explain to her
that
defendant's attorney was occupied in his court.
2. Eight out of eight civil cases she tried were overturned in the
appellate
courts, two of them for abuse of judicial discretion.
#2 Apr 13, 2010
You can read the rest of it here, as I am sure she has. That's the reason why she should not be sitting in judgment over any matter in which I am a party, and should recuse herself:
3. The judge sat on numerous cases and refused to sign judgments and orders in them; some of the delays were as long as a year, and were without any justification. Attorneys and their parties at court are well aware of the torment of having to wait for the protracted delay in the entry of judgments and orders. Attorneys, who have to bear the repeated, angry complaints of their clients awaiting closure of their important matters, can tell you how disruptive it is to have to explain daily to them, their family, and friends, that the judge refuses to act. Often, due to no fault of their own, attorneys
are fired, taking the blame for the wrongful delay of an abusive judge. Justice delayed is justice denied. And it is not enough that justice is done. Justice must be SEEN to be done.
4. In outrageous violation of the canons of judicial ethics, she swore
herself in as a witness and testified in a contempt case over which she presided as judge, both of the facts and the law.
In North Carolina the only body for the oversight of the judiciary, other than the electorate, is the Judicial Standards Commission, which distinguishes itself by its refusal to act. The explanation for this phenomenon is that the JSC has historically embraced the tenet that the judiciary is an unimpeachable sovereignty and that only the most egregious defalcations would be considered.
Certain liberties of the masses, it was thought, were expendible in the preservation of order. Therefore, the organized bar were trained, from wet ears on up, that a complaint filed with the Judicial Standards Commission was an exercise in futility. Even worse than that, horrid sanctions would befall the whistleblowing lawyer who was brave and indiscreet enough to invoke the majesty of the
Judicial Standards Commission, where whistleblowers were considered, the same as everywhere else, to be pesky vermin.
Several years ago the secretive JSC defrocked a judge who used his robes as
a
tool to indulge his lust for the flesh of unwilling females. It was a good
time to get rid of him since he was grandfathered in as one of those
anomalies
on the bench who did not have a degree in law. Recently the JSC
auspiciously
rid the bench of Susan Renfer, whose wily aberrations in the courtroom
rivalled
those of Shirley Carlisle Brown.
Tuesday next, the official record of arrogance and misbehavior of Judge
Shirley
Carlisle Brown will come before the voters of Buncombe County, to be weighed
in
the balance with what good she has done.