When the state’s Court of the Judiciary’s investigated three separate complaints alleging judicial misconduct against him, Sessions Court Judge Bob Moon was offered a choice: He could accept a public reprimand regarding charges, or contest the investigative findings. He chose the latter, signing an agreement — akin to a plea bargain — to accept a public reprimand. But now that the reprimand has been made public, Moon is back-tracking on his agreement, arguing after the fact that the mistakes he made really amounted simply to a “definitive difference of opinion in interpretation and applicability of the law…”.
There’s a transparent problem with that, of course. It begs the question of why he didn’t take that stand — if the issues were as ambiguous as he now claims — when his cases actually were before the Court of Judiciary. Reversing course now is like leaving the courtroom after the verdict’s been delivered and telling the media on the courthouse steps that the jury got it wrong.
Judge Moon owes voters here more than that. The charges that the Court of the Judiciary was compelled to investigate involved defendants’ basic rights in court and his disregard for those rights when he was sitting on the bench. The reprimand by the Court of the Judiciary said Moon’s actions in the three separate cases violated judicial rules requiring judges to “respect and comply with the law” and to “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the Judiciary.”
One charge, filed against Moon by Criminal Court Judge Rebecca Stern, involved a preliminary hearing before Moon in which, the reprimand said, he wrongly “threatened to have a young woman, who was a reluctant victim/witness of a domestic assault, handcuffed and arrested if she did not testify in a manner which he considered to be truthful.”
Another case, filed by attorney Hank Hill, concerned a case in which a defendant who had previously been given a six-month suspended sentence on traffic charges pending a drug screen. When the defendant returned following the drug screen, which he failed, Moon offered him a choice of sentences — on the driving charges, or a marijuana charge. The defendant then asked for a lawyer. Moon told him to turn around and ask one of the several lawyers waiting on other cases: the defendant asked one of the lawyers, and was told to take the drug (marijuana) charge. When he asked for that, Moon amended the charge against the defendant without a charging document, the reprimand said, and sentenced him to six months’ incarceration.