Judge is a no-show at legal ethics trial over claims she has psychotic delusions
Updated: A Detroit judge has declined to attend a legal ethics trial that began Monday over allegations that she has psychotic delusions and improperly claimed a medical disability to get leave.
Relying on a letter sent by 36th District Judge Brenda Sanders to the local U.S. Attorney and a diagnosis by a psychiatrist who has never examined Sanders, the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission is asking the state supreme court to remove Sanders from the bench, according to the Detroit News and an earlier Detroit Free Press article.
In a December 2013 letter to U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade the judge sought a federal investigation of claimed persecution, the commission says in its complaint, which alleges that Sanders suffers from a mental disability that renders her unable to serve on the bench.
The commission says Sanders complained in the letter to McQuade that: “all of my email accounts, bank accounts, cell phones, etc. have been hacked and are currently being tracked,” contended that someone had threatened to burn down her home and wrote that “judges have been murdered because they spoke out against some of the wrongs that were being committed ‘in this court.’”
After the commission unsuccessfully sought to have a psychiatrist examine Sanders, it obtained an opinion from a psychiatrist, based in part on the letter to McQuade, the Free Press reported.
“I believe that Judge Sanders is psychotic and suffers from insane delusions at this time and is likely to remain so indefinitely,” said Dr. Norman Miller in a July affidavit attached to the commission’s complaint against Sanders. “She should not be sitting in judgment of anyone until she is determined to be free of the psychosis and insane delusions that render her a danger to self and others,”
The judge’s former lawyer, Brian Einhorn, told the newspaper in September he considered the armchair diagnosis “mind-boggling” and seriously doubted that his client was a danger to anyone.
“She’s got some issues. She’s got lots of things going on in her life … her mother passed away. She’s had some physical problems and financial problems,” said Einhorn of Sanders. “But I certainly don’t think she’s dangerous, by any stretch of the imagination.”
The commission is also contending that the judge abused her paid leave on a medical disability concerning her knee, taking off nearly a year from work at her $138,000-a-year job when her physical condition did not necessitate such an extended absence.
Later, an attorney for Sanders said she intended to retire from the bench, but the trial continued because her resignation is not official.
MLive.com provides a copy of the commission’s complaint (PDF) against Sanders.
The articles do not explain why Sanders’ claimed psychosis is being treated as a legal ethics matter rather than a potential medical disability issue.
The case is being tried in Oakland County Circuit Court before a retired Wayne County Circuit Court judge. He is expected to issue a ruling at a later date.
Updated on Dec. 11 to include information from subsequent ABAJournal.com post and link to complaint against Sanders.
