11/19/2023 0 Comments This american life duty calls![]() Like the time a judge, in court, took a gun out and told the witness she was, quote, "killing her case and might as well shoot her lawyer." And then there was this other time. They publicly reprimanded him and the judge went back to being a judge.īut Hyde says there are more extreme cases. It had the judge in for a little talk, to discuss what had happened and how to avoid it again. Hyde says the judge had a stellar record before this, so the JQC, when it heard about it, did what it often does. When the defendant says he's going to masturbate in court, the judge says, why don't you do that right now? Do it now. The defendant threatens to kill the judge's family, and the judge just kind of loses it. The judge tries to reason with him, and then this happens. He starts actually swearing at the judge, using profanity. It's a murder case, and the defendant is refusing to use a lawyer. When I went to interview Hyde, he'd brought along a transcript of a case they'd had to look into. If a judge slips up, they try to work things out. They're just trying to protect the public. One news story quoted someone saying they would "rather have a wasting disease than to be investigated by Hyde." He's just so relentless.īut Hyde says the JQC is not out to get judges. In the Atlanta school testing scandal where teachers were doctoring students' test scores, it was Hyde who got an elementary school teacher to wear a wire, which broke the whole thing open. Once, he shot an escaped chimpanzee who was attacking people on a street. Back then he would tow the cars of state lawmakers who had double-parked near the state capitol. Judges are powerful people, but Hyde is not easily intimidated. Honestly, I can't tell if that question is some high-minded way of trying to engage a judge's inner sense of duty, or just a fancy version of, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. If you prefer a beeped version of our program, go to our website. There is some language in the story that we have un-beeped here in the internet version of our show. A quick warning to podcast and internet listeners. Well, one of our producers, Dave Kestenbaum, flew to Atlanta to figure out what was going on. Like, who's going to vote for that in a democracy? Like, how can something like that happen, right? Like, why was this on the ballot? It seemed like the only people who would benefit from weakening the JQC would be bad judges. And, OK, I know that state-level politics can be kind of nutty sometimes, but my question was, OK, here's an example of a government agency doing a good job. And then a few months ago, one of my sources in Georgia called me to say, guess what? Lawmakers in Georgia were trying to neuter the JQC, and the whole thing was going to be on the ballot this fall. And in the past decade, in addition to Judge Williams, over 60 judges in Georgia have stepped down after being investigated. They have a tiny staff, seven members, who work pro bono. Sometimes they're called JQCs, for Judicial Qualifications Commissions- that's what the one in Georgia is called- and they are the way that we as a country have come up with for getting rid of judges who do bad things. The commission that filed those charges- before we did that story, I didn't even know anything like this existed, but all states have them. Shortly after that, Judge William stepped down from the bench. The commission later filed a 14-count ethics complaint against her. So while I was working on that story, an official commission in Georgia that is charged with investigating judicial ethics violations was also looking into Judge Williams. We attempted to interviewed Judge Williams about this and some other issues, but she declined to comment on those issues. You know the one.įinally, during this confinement, Lindsey tried to kill herself. This issue that propelled Donald Trump to win the Republican nomination. Like, people talk about this all the time. Like, honestly, this is one that I just took for granted. And in the last few weeks since I started obsessing over all the lies that are being presented as truth right now, at some point I realized, like, oh, maybe the defining issue of this election is built around a story that isn't true. But facts do not have a fighting chance against this right-wing fable. They're from the Department of Homeland Security. That's the thing that's changed, for him, and lots of people, I think.Īnd those numbers that I quoted him are true. He didn't believe these kind of dark conspiracies. Like, they spent too much money, they were soft on defense. Back in the '70s and '80s, he hated liberal politicians, but he hated them because they were liberals. ![]() I remember crying as a kid when he went off to Vietnam.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |