Georgia judge under investigation for racial slur retires
A Georgia state judge reportedly being investigated for uttering a racial slur from the bench has announced his retirement.
Appalachian Judicial Circuit Judge Roger Bradley, in a letter to Gov. Nathan Deal, said he would retire at the end of the month, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports.
The judge did not return multiple calls for comment, the paper says. But Bradley had drawn criticism last March for using a racial slur in court during a pretrial hearing involving a black witness.
According to the Times Free Press, Assistant District Attorney Morris Martin said he thought the witness, Allen Duray Green, went by the nickname “(N-word) Ray.”
Bradley then told a story about a black man he met in the 1970s whom everybody in town, including the man himself, referred to as “(N-word) Bob,” though not, he said, in a disparaging way.
“Is that a spin-off of that same family?” he asked.
The Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission, the arm of state government that investigates allegations of misconduct by judges, won’t say if a judge is under investigation, the Times Free Press notes. But after Bradley’s announcement, director Mark Dehler issued a statement saying the agency was satisfied that “this matter” had been concluded in a manner acceptable to the commission.
