67. Wrinkled robe

New Orleans' Times-Picayune, possessor of the greatest newspaper name of all (Cleveland's Plain Dealer is close behind), reports that on Thursday Alan Green "became the fifth Louisiana judge, and the third in Jefferson Parish, to be sent to prison in the past two decades, according to the state Supreme Court." 

Judge Green was caught in the same investigation into bail bonding that previously nabbed Judge Ronald Bodenheimer.  (See post 12.)  Bodenheimer, however, had the more colorful line of patter.  He was caught on tape instructing a flunky to plant Oxy-Contin in the pickup truck of a person who had irritated the judge.  The judge said, chuckling: "You know, this boy, you know, the sad part, he ain't got a shot, he ain't got a chance. ... You know, he ain't gonna know what's hit him."

Bodenheimer eventually pled guilty, but Judge Green insisted on going to trial.  Even during his sentencing hearing he insisted on his innocence, even though he must have known how much it irritates judges to have convicted people stand in front of them and tell them they just presided over a grossly unfair trial.

Perhaps Judge Green honestly believed the two $5,000 payments were campaign contributions, and that the favors he did for the contributors weren't a return on investment.  Denial is an amazingly powerful force, like the tiny uncurling sprouts that buckle sidewalks.  But maybe the judge's view was something closer to that of Martin Manton,  the legendary federal-judge-cum-crook par excellence, whose view was that it wasn't bribery to take money from the party who was going to win anyway.  (Manton's story is well-told in the late Gerald Gunther's superb biography of Learned Hand.  It was Hand who memorably called Manton "a moral imbecile.")