Judging a judge just because we can doesn’t make it right

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/09/2010 (5680 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

University of Manitoba law professor Karen Busby clearly runs in more sophisticated circles than I.

Responding to a reporter’s question about Queen’s Bench Judge Lori Douglas’s ability to serve after a smarmy sex scandal detonated around her, Busby had this to say:

"She agreed to have sex pictures taken of herself and that’s all she ever agreed to," she said.

"If that’s a reason to disqualify somebody from being a judge given, I venture, most people have sex pictures out there somewhere, then it’s an impossible standard for anyone to meet to become a judge."

Most people have sex pictures of themselves out there somewhere? Really? I’ve never agreed to make my personal activities a Kodak moment, not even when I was young and dewy and someone might have actually wanted to look at them.

God only knows what the rest of you are up to.

But Busby’s essential theory is correct. As regrettable as it is that Douglas posed for now-public explicit pictures taken by her husband (and you’ve got to believe this mess is larded with regret), there’s no reason she can’t continue as a judge. One has nothing to do with the other.

Douglas was appointed to the bench five years ago and promoted to associate chief justice last year. There’s not a whiff she has done anything unprofessional in her career.

The existence of the photos, her husband’s coincidental mental breakdown followed by his year’s absence from work, and his apparent interest in finding a black man with whom the missus could have sex (a fantasy there’s no evidence she shared) have come to light only because aforementioned black man decided the payoff he gladly grabbed in 2003 is no longer enough.

Alex Chapman hired lawyer Jack King to handle his divorce. He alleges King wanted him to hook up with Douglas to satisfy the lawyer’s interest in interracial sex.

That didn’t happen. To shut him up, King and his law firm paid Chapman $25,000. King and Chapman agreed the latter would destroy emailed pictures of Douglas and never discuss the matter again.

Instead, Chapman waited seven years to decide he was more of a blushing bride than he previously realized. Sixty-seven million dollars, he seems to reckon, would restore his virtue.

If the stink’s on anyone in this case, it sure isn’t on Douglas.

Wednesday, a judge ordered Chapman to return all photos and emails to the beleaguered couple.

There’s been all sorts of piffle about how important it was to tell this story in order to preserve the sanctity of the courts, blah, blah, blah. That’s utter nonsense.

None of this matters a tinker’s damn to Lori Douglas’s ability to offer sane and appropriate judgment on those who come before her. There are no dots to be connected.

If Karen Busby’s correct, and most of us have sex pictures or ill-advised letters or emails we wish we hadn’t sent, there’s a lesson. Some people are judging the judge because they can, because it’s sport to see the powerful humbled.

I hope Douglas’s friends, family and colleagues are gathering around and holding her close.

What’s happened isn’t her fault. She did something in the privacy of her marriage that was made stunningly, egregiously public.

She has been shamed. But if she has found it in her heart to forgive her husband (and, since they’re still married, it appears she has), the pair of them should be allowed to repair the damage themselves.

Glass houses, right?

lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca