Judicial Misconduct in Criminal Cases: It's Not Just the Counsel Who May Be Ineffective and Unprofessional
28 Pages Posted: 27 Oct 2013
Date Written: 2006
Abstract
This article will focus on the role of the trial judge, in particular the failure of trial courts to act to ensure that the constitutional guarantees to the effective assistance of counsel and to a fair trial are indeed honored. The judge who presides over the trial of the defendant for the crime for which the judge has assumed guilt and promoted a guilty plea, may find it difficult to be impartial when judging the recalcitrant defendant whose mere decision to go to trial can be looked upon by the court as an act of defiance. There certainly is an appearance of impropriety which becomes all the more magnified when, upon a conviction, the judge makes it clear to the defendant that the sentence of the court is to be the maximum authorized by law and one that may well be perceived of as retaliation for the defendant's refusal to have pled guilty. It is this partiality, it is this impropriety, it is this failure to adhere to the professional standards that our citizenry has every right to demand of our judiciary, that can be deemed misconduct and unprofessional. The obligations of the judiciary under the Model Code of Judicial Conduct, the ABA Standards for Criminal Justice for the Trial Judge, the ABA Standards for Pleas of Guilty, and the United States Constitution envision the judge as a protector and guarantor of the rights of defendants. That is what is demanded, that is what ought to be expected, but that is which all too often simply does not occur.
Keywords: Judicial misconduct, Gideon, Wainwright, criminal law, criminal cases, counsel, ineffective, unprofessional, Brady, trial judge, effective assistance of counsel, plea bargaining, judges, Klein, Richard Klein
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