It was ugly and bizarre enough that Senior Judge Jack Camp of the Northern District of Georgia was caught with drugs and a stripper.  Considering his reputation for being harsh, the 30 day sentence for this old white guy who didn’t cotton much to blacks might be seen as a bit of professional courtesy.  Had the tables been turned, chances aren’t good that Judge Camp would have been so considerate to anyone else.

But in the process of trying to save his old judicial butt from the rigors of prison, a couple of details raised took a bizarre situation and made it worse.

In court filings, Camp’s lawyers told [Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas] Hogan that depression and a bipolar disorder as well as brain damage sustained in a 2000 bicycle accident — all exacerbated with improper prescriptions — help explain the ex-judge’s erratic and reckless conduct last year.

It’s unclear how long Camp suffered from depression and bipolar disorder, but he claims to have suffered brain damage in 2000.  For the next decade, he made judicial decisions, including the sentencing of human beings.  Well, this raises some thorny questions.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Camp handled 3000 cases, though it’s unclear whether that refers to criminal or cases of all stripes.  Regardless, the question is raised whether the parties in those cases were entitled to the exercise of judicial discretion and decisions that were not the product of insanity.

“Every case he handled from the time he was misdiagnosed, or before, depending on when he was affected by these conditions, should be re-evaluated,” said Marcia Shein, a Decatur appellate lawyer. “The question is: Did these conditions affect his ability to be an objective judge making fair decisions?”

This is not the question, as I see it.  Not the question at all.  The infirmities suffered, by definition, affect his ability to be an objective judge making fair decisions.  But if his decisions were completely off the wall, it would be presumed that they would be reversed, because no appellate court would rubber stamp the ravings of a lunatic, right?  Consider, by the way, how the judges hearing appeals from Judge Camp’s rulings must feel now.

U.S. Attorney Sally Yates told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that her office will consider requests from defendants concerning Camp’s judgment “to ensure that justice is served.”

There’s some comfort, knowing that Camp’s decisions must pass justice-muster with the United States Attorney.  Everybody feel warm and fuzzy with that?

Bill Morrison, one of Camp’s lawyers, said the sentencing memos about Camp’s mental health sought to explain his reckless conduct in that the brain damage compromised his impulse control.

But, he said, “Nothing impaired his ability to fairly and impartially act as a judge; I’m fully prepared to defend any judicial decision he made.”

So it’s that unusual sort of brain damage that only affects the judge’s ability to decide whether to use drugs, consort with prostitutes, but not act fairly and impartially as a judge.  Is there a DSM-IV number for that particular type of craziness?  But Camp himself told his stripper gal that he had issues.

Camp told the stripper that he struggled in deciding criminal cases involving African-American men because she had previously had a relationship with a black man, said Yates, citing interviews.

What this really reflects is the tension between finality and reality.  These are all reasonable people, assuming they, unlike Judge Camp, don’t suffer from depression, bipolar disorder and brain damage, not to mention a hatred of black men, and are fully capable of realizing that every decision, every judgment, every sentenced, imposed by Camp must now be rejected. 

But they fear the tidal wave of claims, a decade at least of cases that would require re-judging, of warm-bodies in prison, of the impossibility of discerning which of the hundreds, thousands of little decisions as well as big ones were caused by misfiring synapses in the mind of a sick man.

There is no rational basis to go back and divvy up his decisions into nuts and not-so-nuts.  They will fall within the broad parameters of what a judge is permitted to decide.  Most decisions are binary, granted or denied, sustained or overruled.  Sentences are broader, but remain for the most part within the judge’s individual discretion.  In other words, the product of an insane judge won’t look a whole lot different that a not-as-insane judge.

The real question comes down to whether individuals coming before a federal district court are entitled to a judge who is not mentally and psychologically impaired, not to mention doesn’t hate black men.  No one will ever know how, or to what extent, Camp’s problems affected his decisions.  In any case, a judge makes thousands of decisions.  Some are characterized as decisions, while others are nothing more than tone of voice or a squinty eye, telling a lawyer to let go of an argument because he’s about to get slam-dunked.

Let the record reflect that this insane judge just gave me the squinty eye, and for that reason, and that reason alone, I will stop pursuing what I believe to be a completely valid line of argument that, if I was allowed to pursue, would result in the witness breaking down and crying, admitting his lying ways and conceding that my client is innocent.

Of course, the same can be said of judges who are not insane, but merely bored, annoyed or disinclined to believe that defendants deserve half a chance.  Still, that won’t stop defendants from trying.

Defense attorney Steve Sadow said disclosures that Camp’s judgment may have been impaired could serve as a foundation to court challenges.

“If someone is sitting in prison with a long sentence imposed by Camp, they might as well give it a shot,” he said. “What have they got to lose?”

That’s for sure.  There’s absolutely nothing to lose.  Make your best pitch that Camp’s insanity produced unjust results. Sure, it will be a burden, but that’s why they pay judges the big bucks. But there’s nobody really anticipates such wholesale revisitation of Camp’s cases will produce much.  Impaired judges do just as well as the unimpaired, apparently, which doesn’t say much for the latter.

So Jack Camp’s avowed incompetence to perform any of the functions of a judge will be white-washed, rationalized, and swept away, except in the handful of cases where the government feels like giving someone a break.  Forget any civil cases, where people’s fortunes were lost and lives ruined.  There isn’t a chance that they will have their causes decided by a not-as-insane judge.  After all, somebody has to lose.

There is, however, another question that should be asked, but hasn’t.  How is it possible that all those fine people, brilliant jurists, dedicated marshals, astute staff, didn’t happen to notice during a decade of interaction that their robed colleague, a man with the authority to put human beings in prison, to make or ruin lives, to determine the fate of human being, Judge Jack Camp, was nuts?