Posted on 05/21/2007 2:35:00 PM PDT by Eric Blair 2084
So would just about anybody. When your kid needs your help, you naturally use anything you have--including your job title, if it might count--to get him what he needs.
LOL, agreed on that.
perhaps someone was intimidated by his hysterical "do you know who I am?" posturing.
When a sitting Judge calls a prosecutor, it is not "posturing", it is in all probability, a thinly veiled threat.
I do not know what you do for a living (obviously) but if for example, the CEO or President of a company drops a file on a lower level person's desk (let's say one who is two or three rungs down the ladder) and says: "Can you make sure that this file get's the attention it deserves?"
That, is also not "posturing". That would be a direct order.
I wonder if the son is handcuffed by the fact that his dad is a judge. Not to mention that he's getting accidentally beat on by a teammate.
What do you do, fight back? Fight your team captain and get kicked off the team? Get kicked out of school and become a political embarassment for your father the judge? Have the other kid file a lawsuit against you, soaking your family for damages because he knows your dad's a judge?
I agree with you.
If he called the courthouse and announced himself as "Justice Soto from the Supreme Court", he was out of line.
Good thing this kid was playing on some tag rush team and not at a real football high school like Brockton High or a lot of high schools in Texas. The kid would have his mouth in his a$$.
He handled it like an idiot lawyer would, not a father. This happened at football practice, for Pete's sake.
A father would tell his son to buck it up, and not show any fear to the older player. A lawyer shows his son the way to solve the smallest problem is to take it to the authorities, and use your influence to force the outcome ("Do you know who I am!").
Republican or not, someone with that attitude does not belong on the supreme court.
EVERY SINGLE JUDGE does this.
This use thier “you honor” status all the time for a little help in life. No speeding tickets for them. Little helps in various groups and affairs. Making sure their kids have a little assist in private school admissions.
The model judicial cannons followed by most all states state “the appearance of impropriety is impropriety in and of itself”.
A judge is not allowed to use his status as judge for advantage for ANY reason. He can not use it to get a better mortgage rate, business dealings, or use his position as a product endorsement.
Not to say they don’t. But they are not supposed to.
I this judge used his satus as “judge” then he gives the appearance of doing bad.
GENERALLY for a judge to be sanctioned it REALLY REALLY REALLY has to be the last straw situation.
He wasn’t buying a house. or a car. or getting a loan. or subborning perjury, or soliciting a campaign contribution, or trying to suppress evidence against him.
He was defending his son against some turd, of whom very little is written.
Oh yeah, and he’s a ‘Pub.
In New Jersey.
Sometimes, y’gotta read between the lines.
I asked Eric Blair 2084 to post a thread about this because I couldn’t. My only Internet access is on my cell phone so I usually just lurk. I’m pleasantly surprised that Eric accepted such a request from a complete stranger.
There’s something fishy about this complaint against Judge Rivera-Soto. No, there’s a lot fishy about it. I hope FReepers will look deeper into this and expose the corruption behind this setup.
I’ve read several articles about this, some more biased than others. Asbury Press is going for blood.
Judge Rivera-Soto’s son (a sophomore) had an ongoing problem with the captain of the football team (a senior) bullying him. Rivera-Soto says he had advised his sons to avoid trouble and back down from confrontations when he was appointed to the bench. This appears to be true in light of the fact that the alleged bully was reprimanded for bullying the judge’s son. The bullying allegedly continued.
The judge’s son claims it was no accident when the older boy rammed him in the face with his head, during practice. Maybe it was an accident, but that seems unlikely in light of the facts admitted to by the judge’s adversaries. In any event, the judge obviously thought this was a continuation of the past bullying.
When the school declared the incident an accident, and refused to discipline the bully, the father threatened to file a police complaint. He allegedly made it a point to tell the school he was a Supreme Court Justice. He says he gave that information in response to a question about his job from the school district superintendent. As far as I can tell, he’s not alleged to have told anyone else connected to the school.
Having gone all the way to the top at the school with no satisfaction, he filed a police report. He began that process by calling the police chief on his cell phone. He should have walked into the police station like anyone else. I wonder if it’s unusual for high-profile individuals to avoid the lines the rest of us must stand in. Still, I don’t see how his method of filing the complaint could have given him an advantage in the outcome. If he was trying to influence the police taking the report, he could have done that more easily at the police station, where other officers and supervisors would likely discuss the wisdom of handling the case to the judge’s satisfaction.
Judge Rivera-Soto contacted some people in the court system to make sure his complaint received attention. He also told the judge and prosecutor (who both must have already known who he is) to treat the case as any other. The complaint against him states this. That he specifically advised them not to give him any special advantage.
He allegedly tried to use his influence with a court employee when a hearing was postponed. That charge is downright stupid. He arrived for the hearing and was told it had been postponed. He says he gave his business card to the employee so she could contact him. (I presume he means with info on the new court date, which makes perfect sense). Are we to believe he was trying to use his influence on a court employee whose job is telling people that their court dates have been postponed? To what purpose? Did he expect her to get everyone in the courtroom and make them proceed with the case? Does that make more sense than his claim that he was giving her contact info so she could tell him when the new court date would be?
At least one of the letters Rivera-Soto wrote was on his personal stationery.
The evidence pointing toward Judge Rivera-Soto’s guilt is slight and flimsy. The complaint against him contains allegations that preclude any reasonable belief that he tried to use his influence.
I find it hard to believe that Judge Rivera-Soto went to such great lengths to maintain privacy, then ran around telling everyone he met who he is, including fellow judges who already knew him, and low paid workers who had no ability to do anything for him.
The complaint does not specify who brought the matter to the attention of the Judicial Conduct Panel. Isn’t an anonymous accuser somewhat suspicious? Could it be the football coach who repeatedly protected the captain of his football team from disciplinary action for his known bullying? BTW, the coach also happens to be a lawyer.
Could this aggressive pursuit against Judge Rivera-Soto
be politically motivated? The only reason McGreevey appointed a Republican is there is an agreement between the parties that neither will have more than 4 Supreme Court Justices at any time. It would be interesting to know how many of each party there are now, and if a democrat could be appointed to replace him.
I think I read somewhere (maybe even on this thread) that if Rivera-Soto is found guilty, his punishment would be determined by the other Supreme Court Justices. A review of his record showed me that he rarely agrees with the other justices. They are typical NJ liberals. He’s conservative, at least by NJ standards.
If a bright light isn’t shone on this process, I can almost guarantee Judge Rivera-Soto will be railroaded and replaced a liberal rat.
Can we throw some infamous FReeper research at this?
I question this one:
Judge Rivera-Soto contacted some people in the court system to make sure his complaint received attention.
Depending on the nature of that conversation (or conversations?) the judge may, or may not have crossed the line between "concerned" father and misusing authority.
I do know this, as a Freshman, playing against the JV squad, I got my ass kicked more then once by the the older guys. When I bitched to my dad about it his comment was:
"Well, hang in there. They will soon pick on someone else and next year, you get to kick ass."
One thing he did not do, was call up the town Police Chief and cry about his poor boy getting a nose bleed.
According to the complaint filed against him by an anonymous person, Judge Rivera-Soto specifically advised the people he spoke with to treat his case the same as any other, and to not give him any special advantage. How would you characterize that, if you didn’t want to see him railroaded?
Your strawman argument about the judge reacting in a way that he did not react, to a situation that did not exist, hasn’t convinced me of his guilt. Try sticking to the facts, or at least the previously published rumors. It’s difficult to address arguments made up out of whole cloth.
What world do you live in?
When a sitting judge, calls a prosecutor and tells him to make sure that the case is given "fair" treatment, just as "any other case". That, my friend is a threat (or an order), as I have said before in this thread.
If he wanted the case to be treated, "any other case" he would NOT have made the call!.
Missed that comment before. Spot on!
Which call? He shouldn’t have called the school to report the incident? He shouldn’t have reported it to the police? He shouldn’t have inquired about the court date? He shouldn’t have checked the status of the case? Which of the calls that every good parent makes should he have failed to make?
That shows poor judgment in needlessly tying up the criminal justice system for a petty matter. A judge should know better.
read my post #’s 14 and 22, then ask me a question. You seem to be coming into this w/o reading the entire thread. That is understandable in a thread which runs into the hundreds, but this one is relatively short.
Sorry, but the accusation wasn’t that he had no right to report the assault, or that the assault was a mutual tussle. The accusation was that he tried to use his influence to achieve an outcome. Whether you support bullying and physical assault has nothing to do with it.
The mere fact that he called the prosecutor affirms that that is exactly what he was trying to do.
Such conversations are wholly inappropriate and deserving of a penalty. To think otherwise shows a perspective which stems from a lack of knowledge on the workings of the legal system.
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