Wednesday, February 13, 2013

No pay in his game either.

Continuing our coverage of Michigan circuit judge Wayne McCree (see here, here, and here) we report, thanks to this United Press International story, that Judge McCree has been suspended without pay over the allegation that he allegedly impregnated a woman who appeared before him as part of a custody dispute.  We covered that story back in December.

The order suspending Judge McCree's pay is here.  It says:
On order of the Court, the motions for immediate consideration are GRANTED. The petition for interim suspension is considered, and it is GRANTED. The respondent Wayne Circuit Judge Wade H. McCree is suspended without pay, effective immediately, until further order of this Court. The respondent’s salary will be held in escrow pending the final resolution of these disciplinary proceedings. The motion to seal the Supreme Court file is also considered, and it is GRANTED, in order to preserve the confidentiality required by MCR 9.219(A)(2) and MCR 9.221(A). With the exception of this order, the Supreme Court file is suppressed and shall remain confidential until further order of this Court.
The UPI story says that unpaid suspensions of judges are rare and mentions a comment that a law school professor made to the Detroit Free Press that the unpaid suspension means that the evidence supporting the allegations is "quite compelling" and credible.  Part of the credibility undoubtedly stems from the fact that the woman involved has several pictures of her and the judge together in various settings.

The story mentions that of the threer previous unpaid suspensions, two of the judges had been convicted of felonies by the time of the suspension and the other had admitted to dereliction of duty.  One might assume from this that Judge McCree is unlikely to continue to be a judge once the Michigan Supreme Court rules on his case. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments on posts older than 30 days are moderated because almost all of those comments are spam.