Does Your Attorney Have a Secret?

There are attorneys and judges in every State carrying a secret to work with them each morning. They are addicted to drugs, alcohol, have gambling problems or are suffering from some form of mental illness. Due to privacy laws, the clients and litigants that are affected by these impairments never know.  All they know is that they have lost their case, are sentenced to jail, and that either their attorney was an incompetent or the judge couldn’t keep his head on straight long enough to follow the law.

I do believe that lawyers and judges like everyone else have a right to medical privacy; but our society must come up with a better way to reconcile competing rights—the right of a judge or lawyer to medical privacy and the right of the public to know when the enforcement of their guaranteed constitutional rights are dependent on the performance of a crackhead.

The problem is so significant that the American Bar Association (ABA) has established a Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs(CoLAP) which provides a model for assisting judges, lawyers and law students whose lives have been impaired by drug addictions and other emotional health issues.  Okay sidebar—law students on drugs are still allowed to become lawyers? What ever happened to the character evaluation?

It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling to know that someone is looking out for members of the legal community whose lives have been impaired by their own voluntary action of taking crack, crystal meth, or heroine.  But what I want to know is who is looking out for the innocent public who unsuspectingly doles out $225 per hour after hour to a crackhead that is supposed to be vigorously fighting for their rights.  Who is looking out for the lives that are directly and indirectly ruined by these impaired judges and lawyers?  I think I can guess who is not looking out. 

Do you think we’d be opening Pandora’s box if we sought to prevent judges who are substance abusers from ruling on cases were substance abuse is at issue?  There is something ironic about the thought of a judge who is a substance abuser himself being allowed to preside over cases where the possession and distribution of illegal drugs are at issue … what is worst is allowing a crackhead judge to sentence other crackheads and drug dealers to jail while the only penalty for the judge on drugs is to voluntarily participate in a CoLAP sponsored event?

I might be a little late to the party, but now I see what the big debate was back in 2007 when there was a brouhaha involving Gulf War veteran Derrick Kimbrough who first defended his country, then alleged to have dealt drugs.  At issue was the controversial sentencing rules that punish crack cocaine users far more severely than their powder cocaine counterparts. 

Absent from the debate was any mention of Judges who are substance abusers themselves presiding over drug related sentencing hearings.  According to the Supreme Court of The United States (SCOTUS) Blog, “Congress in 1986 adopted a federal sentencing policy that those who commit crimes involving “crack” cocaine are to be punished on a 100-to-1 ratio compared to those whose crimes involve cocaine in powder form.  The U.S. Sentencing Commission for years has asked Congress to narrow the difference, to no avail. Yet Congress has never ordered the Commission to put the ratio into the Federal sentencing guidelines.”It was said that Federal trial judges had begun experimenting with easing up, comparatively, on cocaine crime sentences.  So did the Judges ease up on the sentences because they truly felt the guidelines were unfair or was it because the Judges realized that if they put all the crack dealers in jail at a rate of 100-to-1, there would soon be no crack dealers left to service the needs of crackhead judges?