Baltimore chief judge faces ethics charges for alleged disrespectful treatment of public defender
Baltimore’s chief judge is accused in a misconduct complaint of mocking, insulting, berating and threatening to jail a public defender.
The judge, Alfred Nance, has been investigated before, the Baltimore Sun reports. The new complaint (PDF) is at least the third time the Commission on Judicial Disabilities has sought to discipline Nance.
According to the commission, Nance directed his ire at public defender Deborah Levi. His disrespectful conduct toward Levi included “chastising her and subjecting her to public embarrassment, his mocking and insulting her, and his using a demeaning and sarcastic tone,” the complaint says. Nance also repeatedly called Levi’s integrity into question, berated her in front of jurors, and threatened to jail her without legal justification, the commission said.
In the case in which Nance threatened to jail Levi, the judge said Levi was so ineffective that jurors would hold it against her client, the commission said. Nance declared a mistrial without a request by the parties, and a different judge dismissed the case on double jeopardy grounds.
The commission also alleges Nance was “rude and disrespectful” to a defendant, and “routinely directed his ire at jurors, litigants, attorneys, defendants, witnesses, law enforcement personnel and other persons present in the courtroom.”
Nance has denied committing any ethical violations. His courtroom decisions, and his exercise of authority do not amount to sanctionable conduct, Nance’s lawyer argued in a response (PDF) to the charges. Other charges are unclear and difficult to counter, the response argued.
“Demeanor, tone and ire are vague and ambiguous terms—Judge Nance cannot reasonably frame a response to such amorphous allegations,” the response said.
From 1979 to 1987, Nance was himself an assistant public defender in Baltimore, according to his court bio. Nance was reprimanded in 2001 based on a finding that he demeaned women in court, and was rude and hostile to lawyers in a med-mal case, according to the newspaper. He was accused in 2004 of massaging a prosecutor’s shoulder and criticizing the way a prospective juror wore a yarmulke, but the ethics charges were dismissed, the newspaper reports.
