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When a judge stops being an impartial adjudicator.

By Marks & Katz, LLC

 Bill of Rights (From public domain.) When I started working as a public defender lawyer in 1991, I observed about fifteen minutes of a felony jury trial being presided over by a then-longtime sitting judge. I was astounded to see the judge -- in front of the jury -- silently and emphatically mouthing words, apparently to coach the prosecutor during the prosecutor's cross examination, without any objection from defense counsel. I could not tell what the judge was saying, so perhaps the jury could not, either. However, the judge's actions clearly could have made the jury thing the judge was on the prosecutor's side. This was an older courtroom where the proceedings were only recorded by a court reporter's stenographic machine; there was no videocamera to record the judge's improper and silent actions...continue to full post

Full post as published by Underdog on October 13, 2008 (boomark / email).