Playful judge tied up in video tape

Judges are not always the most upstanding members of society, it is our duty to report.

At least in the US.

The annual National Law Journal survey of injudicious black-robed antics features, among others, a Texas judge who faced a complaint from a secretary known only as AH, claiming it was a condition of employment that she play along with his little games.

Or what the judges attorney explained as consensual efforts to act out vignettes from old cowboy movies and damsel-in-distress videos that did not interfere with their official duties.

In its reprimand, the Texas state judicial conduct commission noted: [the judge] would bind AHs hands behind her back, tie her ankles together and gag her with a scarf.

[he] would sometimes carry the bound-and-gagged AH around the office; other times, [he] would leave AH tied to a chair or lying on the floor for long periods of time.

While she was restrained, the judge would amuse himself by timing her attempts to free herself, watching his personal collection of bondage videos, or surfing salacious Web sites.

[He] resigned after the complaint was made public.Other stars in this years survey include a judge in Arkansas, who, seven times over two years, postponed a drunk and disorderly case against a woman who was later found to be his sister.

In a second case involving a traffic offence, the judge wiped out fines against the defendant for failing to appear and repeatedly postponed the case.

The defendant was his nephew.

The judge has agreed never to take a judicial role again in return for not facing a hearing.And then there was the judge in Mississippi who was found guilty of forging evidence and carrying out court proceedings from his pawn shop and tyre centre.

As a result, his courtroom hours were somewhat erratic.

Once, at 11.15pm, he asked clerks who had been working since 8am to get him two files.

When one of them said she was going home and would get them the next morning, he had her arrested, hauled back before him at 1.30am and sentenced to probation all without legal representation.

The judge later explained that conflicts with staff were exactly why he preferred to work from his shop.

He has been suspended pending action on a recommendation to remove him from office.