Joel Jacobsen

It's rare that a story about a judge manages to be both too bizarre and too vague for inclusion in this Judges' Hall of Fame, but the celebrated story of Cleveland, Tennessee's Judge John B. Hagler is very nearly disqualified on both counts.  The newly-exed ex-judge did something very, very, you know .... bizarre.  But so far his former colleagues on the bench are preventing us from finding out exactly what. 

What we know is this: The judge gave a tape to his former secretary, Nona Rogers, who worked with him for 18 years, accompanying him from private practice when he was first ennobled.  Ms. Rogers said that when she first listened to the tape, thinking it was routine dictation, "I shook all over. I was just numb."  Not, one gathers, the usual findings and conclusions.

Here's a clue as to its contents:

"It sounded like someone being tortured," Chattanooga police Sgt. Alan Franks testified Wednesday, offering the first details of what is on the tape.

Franks said the recording was investigated in relation to a still-unsolved 1997 murder. He gave no other details on the murder case.

"The content was so shocking. I have been a police officer for 24 years," Franks said before his testimony was cut off by an objection.

Ex-Judge Hagler himself "has refused to say what is on the tape other than to acknowledge it contains 'graphic fantasies.'"

Apparently, the tape has some connection with the still-unsolved murder of a 35-year-old Episcopal priest, Charles Martin Davis, usually called Marty Davis in the Tennessee media.  Father Davis was beaten and shot either 6 or 7  times, "depending on whether the gunshot wound to the anterior neck is considered a re-entry wound from the graze gunshot wound to the chin".   That last is a link to the autopsy report, which reveals no alcohol, no drugs, no sexual assault.   Not even robbery was a motive, apparently, as money was left in the house.

Does that strike you as promising material for graphic fantasies?  Well, remember that Judge Hagler went to  Father Davis's church, and the two visited and talked on the phone.   So Hagler wasn't just recording his graphic fantasies about violent death - he was fantasizing about a friend's violent death.  Then there's this:

Authorities have said Judge Hagler is not a suspect in the murder of Marty Davis, but Chattanooga Police said they want to hold the Hagler tape because if anyone is ever charged in the Davis case the defense may want it for "exculpatory evidence".

It's hard to keep at bay the thought that the opposite of "exculpate" is "inculpate," and that if a judge's private tape could exculpate another person then it must logically inculpate the judge.  How else could be possibly be Brady material for anyone else?  And, oh, yeah.  One other thing.  Father Davis was "chairman of the gay ministry Integrity" while ex-Judge Hagler teachers a Bible class at the Episcopal church Father Davis attended.  

But wait!  We haven't gotten to the bizarre part yet. 

Hagler, before his resignation became effective, issued a statement which read, in part:

Any decent person, myself, would be disgusted to hear my words as spoken on the recording.  Although I have never been afforded an opportunity to listen to this tape, I believe that the description of it as containing "graphic fantasies" in the Times Free Press is an accurate and sufficient description and all any decent person would want to hear of it.  But any decent person would also conclude that public dissemination, beyond the description previously given, can serve no legitimate public purpose and can only hurt, and continue to hurt, my family and me.

If you were a decent person, yourself, you would have no curiosity about the tape.  This strikes me as rather like Jeffrey Dahmer deploring the poor taste exhibited by a media that insisted on running sensational accounts of cannibalism:  "Any decent person would be satisfied with the information that the persons named in the news reports are no longer living."

Except, of course, that Jeffrey Dahmer didn't exercise immense power over the lives of Milwaukee's citizens for 17 years.  

But, see, that makes it worse that people began know about the pleasure Hagler takes in recording for posterity his fantasies of extreme violence.  Because, he said, an attack on him was an attack on the judiciary:  "This, not a judge's sinful but legal conduct, is the story".   Shades of the "great man" theory of criminal libel.

Remember that allowing the public to hear the tape would serve no purpose other than to "hurt, and continue to hurt, my family and me".  Given that, one might wonder how he could, in the same statement, claim that the tape was an attack on "one of our essential public institutions, the Judiciary".  

The answer, of course, is that Hagler was a judge for a long time.  And for a certain type of judge words are just the wrapping paper concealing the exercise of power.  Complaining about such a judge's self-contradictions is like complaining that the pattern doesn't line up where the paper overlaps itself. 

But now we come to really bizarre bit:

Members of the bar associations in the 10th Judicial District voted today to ask the U.S. attorney to look into how information became public about an audiotape that prompted the district Circuit Court judge to resign Tuesday.

In a joint meeting, bar association members from Bradley, McMinn, Monroe and Polk counties asked the U.S. attorney to become involved and investigate whether the surfacing of information "was an attempt to improperly influence the administration of justice." ...

The members also passed resolutions supporting Judge Hagler and saying that the tape and any copies or transcriptions should be returned to him.

So while we don't know exactly what Judge Hagler said on the tape, we do know the lawyers of southeastern Tennessee considered it well within the acceptable range, at least for judges.