Legal News

Judging . . . A Good Job, But Could it Be Safer?

By Ashby Jones

Lots of people would consider being a judge to be a good job. You get to sit up a bit higher than everyone else, slam the gavel, wear a robe and make lawyers be quiet. Plus, everyone stands up when you enter the room.

The dirty little secret, however: Judging can be a dangerous job. Just ask California state judge Cinda Fox, who was stabbed with a jail-made shank by a murder defendant during a break in his trial last week. The murder defendant was shot by a detective and killed. Meanwhile, Fox received cuts on her neck and arm and was released from the hospital after receiving stitches. Court officials in Stockton, Calif., the site of the incident, declined comment, saying the incident is under investigation.

Since then, according to a story in Tuesday’s Los Angeles Daily Journal (link not available), courthouses across the Golden State have turned their attention to safety.

For good reason, it seems. A 2007 study by the Administrative Office of the Courts found 35 percent of California’s judges were threatened, with one-third of those threats considered “imminent.”

Courtroom attacks seem “to be happening more and more, and I don’t know why,” said Los Angeles County Judge Ricardo Ocampo, who was a Compton prosecutor in 2001 when a defendant tried to shank him during a sentencing. Judges aren’t always the target: Two examples in recent years: In 2001, a child-molestation defendant shot a witness and her husband before killing himself at a Siskiyou County, Calif., courthouse. In 1993, a Northern California woman shot her son’s alleged molester in a Tuolomne County, Calif., courtroom.

In spite of the risk, judges have little choice but to show up for work, said Judge Bernard Garber, a colleague of Fox’s at the San Joaquin County Superior Court.

“I’ve been a judge for 25 years,” he said, “and let me say this: the day I’m afraid to take the bench is the last day I’ll take the bench. You can’t be afraid. You just have to have faith in the system.”

Some judges have even taken protection in to their own hands. According to the story, Tehama County, Calif., judge Richard Scheuler packs a .380 pistol under his robe.

“Why wouldn’t you?” said Scheuler during a telephone interview Monday. Scheuler’s predecessor in the courts was shot at with a 12-gauge shotgun in 1985 by a litigant. The shot missed.

“If that guy had tried to come over the bench to me,” Scheuler said, referring to the Stockton incident, “he would’ve been looking down the barrel of a .380.”

Photo: iStockPhoto

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 10, 2009 (boomark / email).