May 07, 2007 05:19 PM UTC

A Mike Norton Scandal (Judicial Discipline in Colorado: Impotence on Stilts)

• 4 Comments
• by: riogrande

George Washington once wrote that “laws or ordinances unobserved, or partially attended to, had better never been made.” There are few laws with less potency than article VI, section 23 of the Colorado Constitution, pertaining to the removal of state judges who have violated their oath of office.

That Section created the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline, tasked with the investigation of citizen claims that judges have committed “willful misconduct in office.”  But owing to the terms of their enabling statute, they act in a state of almost total secrecy, which makes it easy to avoid doing their job without getting noticed.  Roughly 200 complaints are filed in a typical year; over 90% of them are summarily dismissed without even cursory investigation.

As citizen complainants are routinely threatened with criminal prosecution by the Commission and its agents for mere disclosure of their grievances, it is difficult to ascertain whether commissioners are telling the truth when they say that virtually all of them are insubstantial.  However, when our judicial blotter is compared with the robust ones of Michigan, Texas, and California, it is facially absurd to suggest that they are.  Accordingly, the blame ought to lie with Commission members, and their apparent concession to political expediency.

Michigan’s judicial blotter is the most consistently amusing.  One alcoholic judge recently insisted that he hadn’t been drinking when he managed to plow his SUV into a convenience store.  Another got busted for smoking a doobie at a Rolling Stones concert.  Others include a judge who reportedly referred to himself as God, another caught fixing traffic tickets in exchange for sexual favors, and another suspended for lying to investigators about her love affair with an attorney now serving life in prison for murdering his wife.  And then, there’s the one about the married judge who exposed himself in an airport men’s room, apparently while soliciting anonymous gay sex (he ‘got off’ … because district attorneys try hard not to prosecute judges). [see http://home.earthlin… for documentation]

As Judge Biddle recently demonstrated, judges are (as Thomas Jefferson put it) as honest as most men and not more so. As it defies logic, reason, and common sense to think that Colorado judges are more honorable than their counterparts in other states, the difference must lie in our state’s lack of ethics enforcement.  Here, the blood is on the hands of none other than “Mr. Jane Norton,” the prince consort of our esteemed former Lieutenant Governor.

Enter Mike Norton: The Rusty Sword of the Lord
While it is admittedly de rigeur for Republican politicos to wear their religion on their sleeves, Norton was earnest enough to obtain not one but two theological degrees from Denver Seminary.  The Gospel Norton claims to follow is painfully explicit in its requirement that every man be treated with dignity and respect:

My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? [James 2:1-4]

Yet, the Pharisaic political gospel that takes precedence in his life requires him to pay homage to power and privilege, as the exchange of letters presented in this precis (http://home.earthlin… specific letters available at http://home.earthlin… http://home.earthlin… and http://home.earthlin…) demonstrates so poignantly. 

This gospel of Christian hypocrisy is especially delicious when seen in the pious and devout, as it demonstrates that the short definition of the Christian politician is one whose gospel is meant for preaching, not keeping.  How could a seemingly capable lawyer like Mike Norton not have learned in seminary school that judges and officers of the law are not to be “respecters of persons,” Deut. 16:18-20; 2 Chron. 19:7, lest they turn judgment to wormwood (Amos 5:7).  How could he have missed Scriptural exhortations to the children of Israel to ensure that even those who were foreign to the Covenant received their just due as members of the human family? E.g., Exod. 23:9; Deut. 24:17.  It is unlikely that he did; rather, he knows that to enjoy power, he must prostitute his principles.

As vice-chairman of the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline, Mike Norton has voluntarily accepted a sacred trust.  And by participating in the cover-up of widespread judicial misconduct, he has irrevocably soiled his character.  If even a man of Mike Norton’s ostensible moral fiber cannot hope to stand against the juggernaut of judicial corruption plaguing this state, it is time that we eliminate the Commission altogether, and place the power of policing the judiciary in the hands of the people.