How Richard Baumgartner, a drug-addicted judge, stayed on the bench despite warnings

Knoxville News Sentinel ^ | 2/12/12 | Jamie Satterfield

[SmithL]

Court of secrecy:

How Richard Baumgartner, a drug-addicted judge, stayed on the bench despite warnings

It was a Thursday night in January 2010 when the phone rang at the Andersonville home of then-Knox County Sheriff's Office courtroom security officer Meredith Driskell.

"He said, 'I'm coming to get those pills.' He told me to put them in a brown paper bag. I told him no ... but he told me I was going to," she recalled when contacted by the News Sentinel. "So, I put them in a brown paper bag and handed it to him, my husband, who hadn't been in the room. I said, ‘Don't look inside. The judge is coming to get this.' "

"The judge" was former Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner. He wasn't officially her boss. Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones was, but Baumgartner still held the power to have her fired. Driskell, a former state probation officer, worked in his courtroom. Jones was a regular visitor to the judge's chambers, and Driskell had missed work lately.

Her dad was in the hospital. She had undergone a hysterectomy - for which she had been prescribed the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin. Baumgartner, she knew, was keenly attuned to the medications prescribed to those who worked in his court and, she said, made no bones about demanding a share.

It would have done no good, she said, to seek help from the Knox County Sheriff's Office. She had reached out to her supervisors a few years before when, she said, Baumgartner was coming to work smelling of alcohol and displaying a nasty temper. They refused to transfer her.

Since then, Knoxville's most horrific murder case - the torture slayings of a young Knox County couple - had been assigned to Baumgartner's court,...

[SmithL]

A very long read, as Baumgartner digs his way deeper into Hell.

[yldstrk]

some pigs are more equal than others

thsi country has become a country of men not laws. All this cult of the person is wrong wrong wrong. The laws shoudl be applied evenly

[SmithL]

STILL no justice for Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom.

[Steely Tom]

To find out his party affiliation, you’ve got to read to paragraph 10.

[SmithL]

To find out his party affiliation, you’ve got to read to paragraph 10.

Yeah, but once they get to the party issue, they do a pretty good job of outlining the Democrat efforts to put this guy in power in the first place.

[eyedigress]

That Son of a Bitch should be in jail.

[Steely Tom]

That Son of a Bitch should be in jail.

He's "too big for jail."

[afraidfortherepublic]

This is the most convoluted and poorly written story that it is hard to follow.

[jessduntno]

STILL no justice for Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom.

Those filthy savages....

[cva66snipe]

The DA and Special Judge who approved his plea bargain should be fired and possibly disbarred themselves from any further government jobs related to the criminal justice system. There is no way this could have went on as long as it did {drinking before the pills} and no one had not known about it. There should have been felony charges not just on his dealing with persons he was to rule on but also employees in which he used his position to acquire their medications. BTW I don't think he is the only one in the area on the bench with such issues.

[Trailerpark Badass]

Sounds like honest people in government are pretty rare.

Big shock.

[cva66snipe]

That Son of a Bitch should be in jail.

And not the one in Knox County either. I will never understand why a deal was cut. No judge should have let this cased be pleaded down even before all the facts had came out.

[UCANSEE2]

I will never understand why a deal was cut.

Someone else had a bag of pills to give the judge.