Kent resigns, for real

Disgraced Federal judge and convicted felon, Samuel Kent, tendered his resignation from the bench effective June 30, 2009, on the eve of a trial in the Senate.

Earlier this month, upon being sentenced to 33 months in prison, Mr. Kent submitted his resignation from the bench effective June 1, 2010. Outraged, members of Congress put his impeachment on a fast track.

With Kent's resignation, the list of federal judges removed from office remains at seven:

• John Pickering, Massachusetts - convicted and removed from office, 1804
• West H. Humphreys, Tennessee - convicted and removed from office, 1862
• Robert W. Archbald - convicted and removed from office, 1913
• Halsted L. Ritter, Florida - convicted and removed from office, 1936
• Harry E. Claiborne, Nevada - convicted and removed from office, 1986
• Alcee L. Hastings, Florida - convicted and removed from office, 1989
• Walter L. Nixon, Mississippi - convicted and removed from office, 1989

House votes to impeach Kent in record time

Disgraced federal judge and convicted felon Samuel Kent found out just how far he's fallen since pleading guilty to obstruction of justice charges. The House voted to approve four articles of impeachment in less than 30 minutes, with nary a soul speaking out for the so-called Emperor of Galveston.

Kent now becomes only the 14th federal judge to have been impeached since 1803. The articles of impeachment (indictment) now move to the Senate for a trial on the merits. Should two-thirds of the Senate vote to convict, Kent will be removed from office long before his hand-picked resignation date of June 1, 2010.

Time running out for disgraced federal judge

Today a panel of the House Judiciary Committee voted 10-0 to refer four articles of impeachment against disgraced federal judge and convicted felon Samuel Kent to the full committee. The full committee is expected to refer the articles to the full House of Representatives before July 4.

Two of the panel’s charges accused Kent of conduct that was “incompatible with the trust and confidence placed in him as a judge” in connection with repeated predatory assaults on case manager Cathy McBroom, 50, and Donna Wilkerson, 45.

A third charge accused Kent of having “corruptly obstructed, influenced or impeded an official proceeding” looking into the allegations.

The fourth charge accused him of making “material false and misleading statements about the nature and extent of his nonconsensual sexual contact” with the two courtroom employees.

It took the panel 20 minutes to vote the articles to the full committee. Congress hopes to complete the impeachment process and convict Kent quickly to prevent him from collecting his salary and benefits while in prison.

The Senate is expected to try the case before its August recess.

Judge not lest you be judged

U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent is not the only federal jurist in hot water for misbehavior. While Judge Kent's alleged misconduct has resulted in an indictment for federal sex crimes, his colleagues' misconduct has yet to result in any criminal investigations.


Thomas Porteous, a U.S. District Judge in New Orleans, is facing a possible impeachment over allegations he perjured himself regarding a bankruptcy filing and accepted gifts and money. He has been suspended from the bench. Judge Porteous filed for bankruptcy under a false name and attempted to hide evidence of his gambling losses. Porteous escaped criminal sanction as a result of the immunity he was granted as part of the disciplinary process.


Edward Nottingham, a U.S. District Judge from Denver, is being investigated due to his hobbies of going to topless clubs and frequenting escort services. Judge Nottingham has defended himself by blaming his problems on his own weaknesses. Funny, but that never seems to matter to the prosecutors at the Harris County (In)justice Center.

Manuel Real, a U.S. District Judge from Los Angeles, is in hot water as a result of his failing to provide reasons for his legal decisions -- admittedly a very important part of what a judge is supposed to do.


Finally, Alex Kozinski, a Federal Appellate Judge for the 9th Circuit, decided that putting sexually explicit material on his personal website was a good idea. I guess he never saw the commercial warning teenage girls not to post photos on the internet they wouldn't want their parents to see. Judge Kozinski requested that the investigation be conducted by another circuit.



All five judges are still being paid -- and will continue to be paid, as per the U.S. Constitution, until such time as they resign or are removed from office. Nice work if you can get it.

Loss of normal use...

According to the DWI statute in Texas, the state can prove a citizen is intoxicated in one of three ways:

1. Loss of the normal use of one's mental faculties due to the introduction of
alcohol, a drug, a controlled substance, or a combination thereof, into the
body;
2. Loss of the normal use of one's physical faculties due to the introduction of alcohol, a drug, a controlled substance, or a combination thereof, into the body; or
3. Having an alcohol concentration of .08 or higher.

There are two training manuals that are a must have for any lawyer who practices DWI defense in Texas - DWI Detection and Standardized Field Sobriety Testing (published by NHTSA) and the Texas Breath Alcohol Testing Program Operator Manual (published by the Texas Department of Public Safety).

Both of these manuals may be used to impeach the state's witnesses on the subject of "loss of normal use." A criminal defense attorney who knows what he's doing can cross-examine the state's witnesses with these manuals through the "learned treatise" exception to the hearsay rule.

According to the breath test manual, "[i]t is not the alcohol in the peripheral areas of the body which impairs a person's coordination, but the alcohol concentration in the CNS (central nervous system) tissue." This seems to indicate that it's not the concentration of alcohol in a person's breath that is critical -- it's the concentration of alcohol in a person's central nervous system (brain, brain stem and spinal cord) that is critical.

The breath test manual goes on to state that "[t]he first effect of alcohol is the impairment of judgment." That's because "[a]lcohol affects the brain in reverse order of how the brain develops." In other words, the higher level brain functions, such as judgment, logic and reason are affected before the lower level brain functions, such as breathing and digestion. According to the breath test manual, "[p]sychomotor skills are motor actions (physical faculties) proceeding directly from mental activity."

The NHTSA manual states that alcohol "doesn't affect a person until it gets into their central nervous system, i.e. the brain, brain stem and spinal cord."

This is important because the manuals the state uses to train its experts tell us that alcohol affects one's mental faculties before it affect's one's physical faculties. Thus, evidence indicating the citizen accused had the use of his mental faculties at the time of driving can be used to refute the state's argument that if a person performs poorly on the police coordination exercises, he must be intoxicated.

Now when you ask the arresting officer or the state's breath test expert whether alcohol affects one's mental or physical faculties first, and he tells the jury alcohol affects them both equally, you can pull out your manuals and read the training material that contradicts his "expert" testimony. But in order to do that, you have to know what's in those manuals.

If you're defending citizens accused of DWI, and you don't want to commit malpractice, you need to get those manuals ASAP.