237. When you strike the king ...

I've long thought that lawyers make lousy managers because we're trained to anticipate the worst, even rewarded for it: "A Johns Hopkins study in 1990 showed that in all graduate-school programs in all professional fields except one, optimists outperform pessimists.  The one exception: law school."  The more pessimistic your outlook, the better your law school performance. 

That pessimism, combined with a detailed knowledge of the worst that can happen in the litigation meat grinder, prompts law firms to transfer an incompetent secretary from department to department, unwilling to wield the ax unless there's a paper trail guaranteed to stand up in court: a bulletproof personnel file.  Maybe that's why we have no mechanism for reining in out-of-control judges.  Like the bad secretary, we let the bad judges go on, adding to the file until we're ready to lower the boom.

At least, that's one explanation for the length of Cheryl Aleman's judicial career.  According to Florida's Judicial Qualifications Commission - the most transparent (see post 236) judicial standards commission in the country -  she ordered an attorney to appear in her courtroom the following day, knowing full well that he was out of town.  When he "failed" to show up at the appointed time, Judge Aleman found him in criminal contempt of court and sentenced him to 60 days in jail.  He in fact served four days, getting sprung last Valentine's Day.

Hey, what good is absolute judicial immunity from lawsuits if you don't use it?

Then there was Judge Aleman's sadistic little way of playing with lawyers she didn't like, most of them, it would seem, public defenders.  For example, when a public defender asked for time to prepare a written motion to disqualify Judge Aleman, the judge allowed 15 minutes, and when the lawyer wasn't back in court in time, issued an order to show cause - prelude to a contempt citation.  When the public defender asked that the lunch recess by delayed for 15 minutes to permit her to attend a hearing in another courtroom, the judge refused; "yet, you readily granted a request from the assistant state attorney for a 15-minute delay in the start of the afternoon proceedings".

The judge made national news in 2003, when she refused to furlough an inmate on the point of death.  In response to negative publicity, she filed an order explaining that the defense attorney had failed to present any expert medical testimony - neglecting to mention that the defense and prosecution had stipulated that the man was on death's door.  You have to admit, the order was not-false.  (See post 65.)

That was nearly four years ago.  How abusive does a judge have to be, before she gets the first tap on the shoulder?  (Three disciplinable events seems to be the minimum, presumably based on the ancient Rule of Three.)  As Bill Gelin wrote on the collective blog known (I'm sure there's an explanation somewhere) as JAABlog,

The anger and resentment in Broward is leading to complaints in Tallahassee because there is no remedy or redress at the local level.  Our judges are not held accountable by judicial administration, the same judicial administration that sets the tone and the example as to how judges should behave.  While we have mostly good judges, the fact that the outlyers are given carte blanche and never called to task, no matter how weird, destructive, or dysfunctional their behavior, results in the complete undermining of the reputation of Broward's judiciary (IMHO, of course).

The lesson Judge Aleman learned from her abuse of the public defenders is that she could do what she wanted.  So she spent the next three and a half years doing it.  Should we be surprised?  Meanwhile her superiors refrained from taking the first step until they were sure they were ready to take the final one.  

(Hat-tip to Me-Mo.  Thanks!)

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