JUDGING CRIMES

A few years ago a friend of mine was asked to serve on a State Bar task force tasked (as they say) with countering the negative image of lawyers.  The idea was that a better-informed public would have a much rosier impression of the profession.  It struck me as not only a hopeless but a misguided mission, because the dismal public perception of lawyers isn't based on ignorance.

Most lawyers don't put up lighted billboards along the freeway saying things like, "If you've had an accident, somebody somewhere owes you money!!!   Dial 555-TORT," like the millionaire lawyer who had never tried a case in one of Carl Hiaasen's best.  Nor is it true that most lawyers "spend too much time finding technicalities to
get criminals released", as an ABA survey found 73% of Americans believe (page 7).  (I love that Papa Bear-like "too much.") 

But the public perception that lawyers do these kinds of things is nonetheless perfectly accurate.   The problem isn't that the public doesn't know what lawyers do, but that it knows all-too-well what some lawyers do.  (Besides, what the rest of us do is too boring to bother learning about.)

The same curse of partial knowledge explains much in the newspaper biz.  In their rhapsodic moments, journalists come closer to the sanctimoniousness of lawyers than any other profession ("sacred duty" – no, really – or even a Frodo-like "sacred mission" – no kidding, they say that to one another) and yet they score hardly higher than lawyers in the Gallup Honesty and Ethics poll. 

This is how respondents responded to the loaded questions of pollsters:

Six-in-ten see news organizations as politically biased, up from 53% two years ago. More than seven-in-ten (72%) say news organizations tend to favor one side, rather than treat all sides fairly; that is the largest number ever expressing that view. And by more than three-to-one (73%-21%), the public feels that news organizations are "often influenced by powerful people and organizations," rather than "pretty independent."

It doesn't matter that most journalists aren't like that, because some news organizations are.  Rupert Murdoch's newspapers are politically biased, unfair, and influenced by powerful people – in particular, by Murdoch himself, as the Wall Street Journal recenntly reported from its deathbed.  (On the positive side, the family conglomerate almost certainly won't survive the lying bastard's death, which can't be far off.  People with Murdoch's particular combination of qualities don't produce intact children, much less dynasties.) 

Some time ago I read a book-length compilation of clippings from the Police Gazette of the late 19th century.  This was the pink-sheeted, "second" Police Gazette, no longer a log of police activity but a startlingly modern tabloid.  It featured lots of stories about athletes (e.g., bare-knuckle fighters - some of the stories were distinctly Michael Vickish, except they involved humans), and lots of engravings of sexy girls in revealing (by the standards of the day) costumes, such as trapeze artists in tights and short skirts. 

There was also a violently racist campaign against recent immigrants – the Chinese, depicted as fiends who addicted white girls to opium for purposes of satisfying unspeakable lusts – and offbeat news stories that read as though they had been thought up at the compositor's stand.  It was remarkably close to the formula followed today by Murdoch's flagship The Sun.  (Can't wait for the WSJ's page three, can you?)

The story of the judges and the sex tapes (see post 295) might have been made for Murdoch.  Readers could read about the details ("J found out about the affair when she discovered them in bed together at Mr Khan's home around Christmas 2004") while deploring the foreigners who supplied them (an English judge named Khan in bed with a Brazilian) and waxing indignant (see post 286) that immigration judges should hire an illegal immigrant to clean their houses.

But the effort required to tsk and chortle at the same time might obscure for many readers the exploitation.  An immigration judge first hired, then sexually used, an illegal immigrant.  It took an unusual convergence of events, up to and including a blackmail prosecution, for any of the story to become public (or rather semi-public, as UK press law still censors some details).   And even then the woman went to jail while the man continued to draw his £101,948 per year salary for staying home from work.

Similarly, here in New Mexico, a longtime advisor to President Richardson hurriedly quit his new job as a workers compensation judge (hey, gotta find 'em jobs somewhere) under circumstances that must be gathered from the inconclusive hints found in this Albuquerque Journal report:

After the conference adjourned, [Judge Chris] Berkheimer and the worker were left alone in the room, [the woman's attorney, Justin] Pennington said.

    "That's when he made his comment," Pennington said. "I can tell you that Mr. Berkheimer wasn't aware his actions were being observed."

    He had failed to turn off the visual and audio equipment used to set up the videoconference, Pennington said.

    "I can tell you that the inappropriate sexual proposal was made according to two witness statements," Pennington said— the female worker and a conference participant still connected by videoconference in Albuquerque.

    "Objectively, 99 out of 100 people would have understood that a sexual proposal was being made," Pennington said. "What Mr. Berkheimer's side of the story (is), I don't know. I'm sure he has a side," he said.

The real significance of both stories isn't that male judges seemingly abused their judicial power to solicit sex from women brought before them, but that judges possess power that can be abused so blithely.  If not for the judges' own stupid / hubristic miscalculations, neither incident would have come to light.  How many judges avoid making such miscalculations?