391. Et tu, Minnesota?

Minnesota judges have made a poor showing in this blog.  Sure, there was Minneapolis's Judge Hudlund embarrassing herself in her campaign for the Supreme Court and then trying to lie her way out of it (see post 366), but that was a campaign gaffe (=moment of unintended candor).

Now, as if to prove that there's more to the state than hot dish, a gangster past (see post 43) and, well, you know, comes Timothy L. Blakely, who used to work as a judge in this dorky courthouse (I admit I kinda like it - it's different, y'know?) - and, sadly, will starting doing so again next March, unless he has a sudden attack of self-respect and resigns.

While going through an apparently bitter divorce, Blakely ran up legal bills totaling $109,501, of which he paid only 41%, his lawyers writing off the balance.  His lawyers, meanwhile, operated a mediation service, of which anybody who runs up $109,501 in legal fees for his half of a divorce really should have given a little more consideration.  Particularly when, as Judge Blakely claimed after the fact (NB: up front! get your fees up front!), he couldn't afford to pay for more than 41% of the services he contracted for.

In a series of e-mails, the judge pressured the firm to write off his bills - to give him something, but not for nothing.  He offered something in return: "There is also very substantial past, and future, benefit to you from significant business referrals we have made in excess of the compromise we are asking for."  (Did he really use the royal we - the majestic plural - in his private emails to his lawyer?!  Maybe not, as we'll see.) 

How, you might wonder, did the arrangement ever come to light?  Remember, it was a nasty, expensive divorce, with husband and wife paying what must have been in the neighborhood of $200,000 to their respective lawyers to avoid behaving like human beings to each other.  And the judge's ex revealed the nature of the discount to the Minnesota Board on Judicial Standards.

Blakely at first tried to brazen it out, but something happened - an attack of conscience? a subpoena for his computer's hard disk? a lawyer who didn't care to fall on her sword for him? - to make him come clean.  His supplemental response to the Board is a small masterpiece of North Country weaselry:

I don‟t recall that this was my intention at the time that I wrote the email, but I clearly decided to include these words and a reasonable inference from their use could be that I was offering a quid pro quo.

Offering a quid pro quo - i.e., demanding a bribe - would be bad enough, but I think the judge was doing something more aggressive than that.  I think he was threatening.  I gather the firm's revenue depended in significant part on the goodwill of judges referring cases to them for mediation.  If so, the prospect of displeasing a judge would be an uncomfortable one. 

Blakely sat in the Twin Cities' southeastern suburbs, and a few quietly critical words among his fellow judges could be expected to devastate an uncooperative mediator's bottom line.  That, indeed, could be the meaning of his use of the plural "we" - it might not have been the megalomania talking.  He might have been suggesting that he was speaking on behalf of his benchmates.

It's interesting to note that his attorney hasn't been disciplined for giving in.

At any rate, the Minnesota Supreme Court came down on Blakely like a feather pillow: six months' suspension without pay.  Randi James points out that the amount of pay he loses is actually less than the discount on his legal bills, meaning that he turns a profit on the transaction.

The Supreme Court announced, with the orotund pomposity characteristic of these things, that "a sanction of censure and suspension from judicial duties for 6 months without pay is sufficient to restore public confidence in the judicial system."

Of course, they didn't ask the public's opinion about the public's confidence.  I'm strongly inclined to believe the Minneapolis Star-Tribune is a better judge of that:  "The judge's actions over several years betrayed the public's faith in the judiciary. For that, he should have been permanently relieved of judicial duties."   

The Supreme Court's stated reasoning is lame almost beyond belief: "although extremely serious, Judge Blakely‟s misconduct is not as egregious as the misconduct in the three cases in which we have exercised our power to remove a judge."  The justices were saying that the standard for removal of judges was set by judges who were removed.  Those disgraced ex-judges led by example. 

Good thing they weren't all murderers.  Otherwise no lesser felony would provide grounds for skimming the scum off the top of the judicial pond.