The VLW Blog

A Virginia judge can pass the collection plate at church, but the judge may not want to preach during the stewardship campaign, according to a new ethics advisory opinion for judges.

Virginia’s Canons of Judicial Conduct clamp down on fund-raising activity for fear the prestige of the judge’s office will be perceived as leverage to solicit funds.

Virginia’s Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee, in its May 28 Opinion 08-1, said a regular religious service is not a “fund raising event” merely because it traditionally includes collection of small donations.

But it’s clear, the committee said, that a religious service is a “fund raising event” if it involves soliciting money for a special purpose, such as a building fund, or if it includes a call for a pledge of future contributions at a certain level.

The facially neutral ethics rules limit judges’ involvement in religious organizations in the same way as other organizations. It’s the nexus of public activity and fund raising that causes concern. Judges can help plan fund raising and help manage an organization’s funds, but generally they may not personally participate in the solicitation of funds.

Judges can speak of their personal religious faith, but a judge should not act as a pastor or minister at a regular church service, or take a position during a religious service on issues of public controversy, such as abortion, the environment or criminal sentencing matters, the committee opined.

Evangelically inclined jurists may want to study the advisory opinion, which examines whether a judge when preaching may encourage others to become Christians or to become a member of a particular church.

A judge may engage in one-on-one solicitation only if the solicited persons or those affiliated are not likely ever to appear before the court on which the judge serves, the committee concluded.

Judges probably understand better than anyone the committee’s admonition that they are “the subject of constant public scrutiny.”

Four of the nine committee members dissented from the majority’s conclusion that a judge should not act as a pastor at a regular church service, saying the majority went too far, making Virginia the “only state whose ethics advisory committee would prohibit judges unequivocally from acting as ministers.”
By Deborah Elkins

This is a case from Maryland. But in light of the recent de-benching of a Southwest Virginia judge by the Supreme Court on a complaint brought by the Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission, one can’t help but wonder what would have been the result here in the Old Dominion.

In November, Scott County J&DR Judge James Michael Shull was removed from the bench for, among other offenses, treating litigants with a lack of respect.

Here’s a case about how a judge treated three lawyers. The full account is available in the Maryland Register, but here’s the short version. The Associated Press, through MSNBC, also has a very quick item online.

Last year in Hagerstown, Washington County Circuit Judge W. Kennedy Boone III heard a criminal case. During the hearing, he referred to three African-American public defenders as “the Supremes,” and he stated that the PD’s office should send “an experienced male attorney” to handle the case.

After he was brought up on ethics charges, the judge told the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities that by making this last statement, he sought to protect the three women from “representing a very difficult, streetwise, and manipulative defendant.”

He said he has personally apologized to all three lawyers, offering to recuse himself from their cases, an offer they have not taken. He also accepted responsibility for his action, saying he violated the Canons of Judicial Ethics and should be sanctioned appropriately.

The Maryland commission found the comments to be “undignified and disparaging” and therefore sanctionable. The commission issued a private reprimand to Boone.

But the commission noted that “because Judge Boone’s comments took place on the record, in a public courtroom, they represent a serious lapse in judgment on the part of Judge Boone which warrants this Private Reprimand being made public, as the appropriate sanction.”

“The Commission further intends for this Private Reprimand to serve as a warning that any further such comments or conduct by Judge Boone may result in Charges and possible further discipline,” it concluded.

Boone, 65, has been a judge in Washington County since 1997. He remains on the bench.