Posted on 07/13/2005 7:07:17 PM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
The long-running cases seemed like old friends. The black robe made her feel more herself. The routine docket lasted just 15 minutes, but for Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow of Federal District Court, returning to the bench on Tuesday was a tiny triumph in recovering from the Feb. 28 murder of her husband and mother.
"It felt good to be back," Judge Lefkow said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "I've always enjoyed my work. I guess it was just sort of a sense of normalizing myself a little more, which is good."...
A simple notice outside Courtroom No. 2541, where the chief judge had been hearing her calendar, alerted lawyers to proceed downstairs to Courtroom No. 1956, where Judge Lefkow presides. On that door, a notice was posted expressing "profound gratitude" for the outpouring of prayers and donations, and asking that, during court proceedings, "no reference be made to the matter."
But a reporter for The Chicago Tribune sat in on the brief court session and filed an article about it for Wednesday's paper. "I was hoping to do it under the radar," the judge lamented, "but I wasn't quite successful."
Judge Lefkow, who had previously been the target of an assassination plot by a white supremacist with a copyright case before her, continues to live in an undisclosed location under 24-hour protection of the United States Marshals Service. But she said she has frequently returned to the scene of the crime to oversee the restoration of the 1904 Mission-style home in the Edgewater neighborhood that she and her husband had been working on for years...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I don't know why judges and the media think judges are entitled to greater protection than the rest of us. Afterall, who is it who's enforcing the law anyway?
How many places of employment allow one to take five months off for deaths in the family, even if they were caused by murder? Oh to be a federal judge.
15min routine docket??? please... what a joke!!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.