Court-approved drinking mugs?

David Lee Roth, et al.

The judge in Racine County who allegedly threatened a lawyer with contempt for not having his shirt's top button buttoned (see here) has also issued special court-approved drinking mugs, according to this short story in the ABA Journal.  

What kind of soft, liberal nonsense is that?  Any hard-liner worth his salt would prohibit in-court hydration entirely!  I remember a "professor" at MU Law many years ago when I brought out my plastic water bottle in class.  He asked, "What are you going to do if you get thirsty in court? Pull out a water bottle?"  I replied, "Um, yes?"

He didn't find it humorous.  But neither did I.  Nor did he offer a better alternative to the time-tested H2O in a bottle.  He was indeed a hard-liner.  (He was also lazy.  Who gives a commercially available, multiple choice final in law school?  If you don't want to grade issue-spotter questions, at least make up your own multiple choice.)

In any case, I don't practice in Racine so I don't have one of those special, court-approved mugs.  And for you out-of-county lawyers who also lack the court-approved drinkware, but may be venturing into Judge Gene Gasiorkiewicz's court room in the future, The Legal Watchdog has obtained "inside information" that he will also permit you to drink out of a Van Halen mug.  

Don't research that.  Just trust me on this one.

Judicial Bias, the Top Button, and the Criminal Case Backlog [Updated 9-17-22]

As a criminal defense lawyer, judicial bias is a subject of great interest to me.  In 2019, I published a law review article titled Combating Judicial Misconduct: A Stoic Approach.  (You can find all of my law review publications, organized by topic, here.)  In that article, I described how judges can be incompetent, hostile, biased, and in some cases flat-out unhinged.  I also provided strategies for combating such misconduct, including the defense motion to recuse the offending judge.  I have filed such motions in the past, and I included a sample motion in the article for criminal defense lawyers to adapt and use in their own cases.

While I have no reason to believe he ever read my article, I was very interested to learn that another defense attorney, Christopher Carson, recently filed his own motion to recuse a criminal court judge.  Carson alleges in his motion that Racine, Wisconsin trial-court jurist Eugene A. Gasiorkiewicz conducted himself so poorly in the courtroom that it constituted judicial bias against the defense, thus requiring recusal.

The entertaining facts alleged by Carson in his motion include these.  In front of a packed courtroom—i.e., “lawyers, defendants, members of the public and court staff”—the judge became “emotionally triggered” and publicly lambasted Carson for not buttoning the top button of his dress shirt.  However, Carson “could not comply with the Court’s novel interpretation of the lawyer’s dress code” because, possibly due to recent weight gain, “his shirt’s collar was too small for buttoning at the top, given the melancholy thickness of [his] neck.”  After yelling at Carson, the judge then allegedly threatened him with a contempt finding should he ever repeat this fashion misstep.