Opinion ID: 849171
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the negative consequences of sua sponte increasing discipline

Text: By departing from the constitutional restriction that this Court must act only on recommendation by the JTC, the decision in this case will set in motion unfortunate consequences in judicial discipline cases. It is important in this case that respondent has not petitioned this Court to modify the JTC's recommended discipline. Rather, she indicated her willingness to accept the thirty-day suspension the JTC recommended. In fact, respondent only became adverse to the JTC in this Court when this Court declined to adopt the recommendation and ordered the parties to argue whether the thirty-day suspension was appropriate, inherently ordering them to address this Court's authority to sua sponte increase discipline beyond the JTC's recommendation. See 463 Mich. 1201, ____N.W.2d____(2000). Thus, the dispute over how this Court may modify the JTC's recommendations comes not at respondent's urging, and not at the JTC's either, which recommended the thirty-day suspension, but only upon the majority of this Court's own interest in deciding a question that the parties had not actually presented. In any event, previously, when a judge consented to the JTC's recommended discipline and did not petition this Court to modify the JTC's recommendation, this Court has entered the recommended discipline. See, e.g., In re Waterman, 461 Mich. 1207, 625 N.W.2d 748 (1999); In re Milhouse, 461 Mich. 1279, 605 N.W.2d 15 (2000). However, after this decision, respondent judges would be well advised to consent to nothing and run the entire gauntlet of available proceedings because whatever the discipline recommended by the JTC, this Court is lurking at the end of the line to increase that discipline if it so chooses. A respondent judge's consent, then, would be futile, as this Court may turn a recommended censure into a suspension, or a suspension into removal, regardless of the respondent judge's willingness to acknowledge an ethical breach and submit to the discipline the expert body, the JTC, has recommended. Instead of relying on the JTC's expertise, though, the majority has decided that this Court would do better to take these matters into its own hands. The benefits of a negotiated and relatively amicable resolution between the JTC and the respondent judge, avoiding the hearings and attendant publicity that contested allegations entail, and thus avoiding unnecessarily promoting the appearance of impropriety guarded against by Canon 2A of the Code of Judicial Conduct, are lost when judges must contest every case or be subject to a sanction that, before this Court issues the final word in a discipline case, is unforeseen. Also lost are the benefits of a judge acknowledging before the JTC and the public that he has done wrong and voluntarily is taking steps to correct the problem. Instead, the new practice of increasing discipline beyond the JTC recommendations encourages respondent judges to fight alleged misconduct to the bitter end because the final sanction that might be imposed in the end would be unknown until this Court imposed it, when it would be too late for a respondent judge to have any input or review of that sanction. [4] Even if the Court's decision did not contravene the constitution, I would not be able to join a decision that encourages such practices.