Supreme Court: If you try to buy a judge, that judge must recuse himself if the buyer has a case in front of his court.
Basically, a guy in West Virginia didn't like the decision handed down against him in lower court, so he indirectly contributed $3M to the political campaign of a judge he thought would be on his side when the case came up before the State Supreme Court. Indirectly, because he spent most of the cash on attack ads against the judge's opponent.
His judge won and, no surprise, twice voted in the guy's favor, throwing out the fraud case the guy had lost.
Now the US Supreme Court says that's a situation that's ripe for corruption, so judges have to take themselves off cases brought by or involving their political contributors. Seems straightforward to me, but not to the usual suspects. Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas all thought judges were far too incorruptible for such a circumstance to occur.
If this sounds like a John Grisham novel, it inspired one. Review here.
Posted by Linkmeister at June 8, 2009 01:37 PM | TrackBack