The Supreme Court denied cert. yesterday to Charles Dean Hood, the latest joke played by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. You may remember it as the one where the judge, Verla Sue Holland , was deeply in love with the prosecutor, and, well, stercus accidit.
Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast spells out the details, so no need to do so again here. It’s enough to know that the justices of the Supreme Court are romantics at heart, and not even an execution can stand in the way of true love.
The good news is that Hood will get a new trial, purportedly because of erroneous instructions. The bad news is that there’s no impropriety if the judge is screwing the prosecutor in an entirely different way than everyone else. It’s almost like they’re librarians .
Ain’t love grand?
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So, if I practice law in a state where judge-attorney relationships legally do not deprive defendants of a fair trial, am I now ethically obligated to seduce the judge?
Seducing the judge is a privilege, not a right.
Except with some judges, it would not be a privilege, it would be a duty, and an onerous one at that.