Opinion ID: 1982555
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Respondent's Criminal Offense Involved Moral Turpitude

Text: In this proceeding, the Board has used general principles of collateral estoppel to determine the underlying facts constituting Judge Campbell's offense for which he was convicted and has evaluated those facts under the legal standard of moral turpitude set forth in the Court's controlling opinion. The conclusion of the Board's majority is that Judge Campbell's offense did involve moral turpitude. We, as lawyers, face with dread the determination of what crimes involve moral turpitude. First, the question of what offends the generally accepted moral code of mankind smacks of metaphysics. The vagueness and relativity of the inquiry make lawyers, who prefer precision and bright lines, uncomfortable. Second, the consequences of our determination are so draconian that the sanction tends to influence the outcome on the merits. None of us is comfortable in trying to say definitively what is base, vile, or depraved, particularly when our venture into such heady considerations carries with it the disciplinary equivalent of a death sentence. Nevertheless, the legislature and the District of Columbia Court of Appeals have charged us with the responsibility of saying what we think, and we must do so without reference to the sanction, which has been set by the legislature, and without reference to our squeamishness about speaking for mankind as to its moral code. Before we turn to the particular facts underlying Judge Campbell's conviction, we pause to say that one of the circumstances that we have considered in arriving at our determination is that Judge Campbell was a judge when the acts leading to the conviction occurred. Like the Hearing Committee, we find it tempting to say that an act of this type is per se morally reprehensible when committed by a judge. However, reflection enables us to imagine cases in which a judge might accept a gratuity without necessarily committing an act involving moral turpitude. While no per se rule can be applied in this situation, nevertheless, we have considered in general what is expected of judges, particularly in contrast to other public officials. It seems to us that citizens are prepared to accept a certain amount of human fallibility on the part of their judges. It is generally conceded that some judges are more tempermentally suited to the task than others, that some judges are more analytical than others, that some judges work harder than others, and that some judges are more result-oriented than others. Since judges are, after all, human beings, we are prepared to accept a certain amount of variability among them. However, when one contemplates the essence of judicial office, society commits enormous power into the hands of judges, particularly trial judges, because of an abiding faith that those judges will act impartially and without fear or favor. First, it is well to dwell for a moment upon the extent of the power granted to judges. Many of the decisions made by trial judges are unreviewable either as a practical matter or by operation of law. A trial judge's decisions on evidence are one example of an area in which the discretion granted is so broad as to insulate most of the decisions that a judge makes. In the area of sentencing, which is the very power at issue in this case, the trial judge's decision is absolutely unreviewable as a matter of law. Society grants judges such enormous power exactly because of its confidence that judges will act fairly and impartially. Another aspect of the fairness and impartiality that most people expect of judges is that they will not seek to profit by their judicial office. That is to say, the judges' salaries are thought to be all of the compensation that they should draw from their office, and they should not look elsewhere for remuneration on account of their office. One aspect of our desire for fairness and impartiality in judges is easy to see. No one would say that judges should be able to sell to the litigants before them the decisions that they are empowered to make in order to profit personally. That is the very heart of the bribery offense, an offense that is not involved in this case. However, there are other aspects of this same doctrine. One of them is that judges must not only be forbidden to sell the decisions that they make, but they must not appear to do so. In other words, the appearance of justice is as important as the fact of justice where those who sit in judgment are concerned. It is precisely because of our strongly held feelings about the appearance and the fact of impartiality that judges are subject to the excruciatingly high ethical standards that we impose on them. Those ethical standards are not at issue here, but in deciding what constitutes moral turpitude, we are confronted with a statute, the gratuity statute, that protects another aspect of the same constellation of values. Plainly, the idea behind the gratuity statute is that if judges accept things of value from litigants in their courts, even if they never favor or indulge those litigants, the office is prostituted, and the appearance of impartiality is lost. Because our legal system is largely a consensual system, by which we mean that most decrees of most courts are observed not only because of the power of the court to punish or levy upon those against whom they judge but also because of a general sense of the fairness of results that courts reach. Put another way, society must protect the integrity of the judicial system so that people will submit their disputes to that system and abide by its judgments, at least in part, of their own free will. What Judge Campbell did in this case debased and demeaned his office. There is no question that ECI was a corporation that appeared before the judge in a large number of cases. Therefore, his power to benefit or to harm the corporation, whether used improperly or not, was particularly extensive. Second, Judge Campbell took a thing of value from ECI, and the taking was not casual or accidental. As the Hearing Committee noted, whether Judge Campbell asked ECI for moving services or whether Jenkins offered them, the fact is that the use of ECI's services for moving Judge Campbell's household goods was prearranged. The conviction by the jury establishes that Judge Campbell did not, as he claimed, pay for those services. Third, the jury's verdict preclusively establishes that the gratuity was given for or because of Judge Campbell's judicial office. The distinction here is not a subtle or difficult one. A friend of Judge Campbell's who never appeared before him might have given him anything he wanted. Indeed, there was testimony in this case that Max Ammerman gave or loaned Judge Campbell quantities of money on more than one occasion, but there was no evidence that Mr. Ammerman had any litigation before Judge Campbell. Thus it was not proven that Ammerman's gifts or loans were for or because of Judge Campbell's judicial office. ECI's gifts, on the other hand, clearly were, and the jury so found. Our point is that for judges to accept money from litigants in their courts, even though they in fact do nothing to favor those litigants, strikes at the core of the impartiality demanded of judges. That impartiality is a generally recognized, and highly valued, characteristic of judges. Therefore, an act that debases or demeans the judicial office by breaching the integrity of the office is one that offends the generally accepted moral code of mankind. Even when one looks beyond judges, we believe that American public opinion, particularly in recent years, has regarded as morally wrong the receipt of gratuities by public officials even when they have a less direct relationship to the donor than does a judge to a litigant who regularly appears before him. The disclosure that members of the White House staff in the Truman Administration had received vicuna coats and a deep freeze was regarded as a scandal. Sherman Adams resigned his post in the Eisenhower Administration when it was disclosed that he received money from a financier. The question whether Edwin Meese improperly received gratuities was a matter referred to a special prosecutor, and Richard Allen gave up his office when it was established that he had received three expensive watches. On a number of other occasions, there has been a public outcry when it was learned that defense officials were lavishly entertained by defense contractors. Even now, the question of whether Admiral Rickover received gratuities from those over whom he wielded official power is being closely scrutinized. It is therefore difficult for us to believe that a sitting judge could be unaware that to accept a substantial gratuity from a corporation that regularly came before him for sentencing was contrary to the accepted standards of public morality. As we understand the Colson case, conduct contrary to the generally accepted standards of public morality is conduct involving moral turpitude. [1] Having read the Hearing Committee's thoughtful report with care, we cannot escape the conclusion that the Hearing Committee may have been influenced in its conclusion that Respondent's conduct was not inherently wrong because it believed the penalty of permanent disbarment to be too harsh in this case. We too may well wish that the statute were less rigid and that it permitted consideration of various factors. The majority of the Board does not, however, believe that the rigidity of the statute justifies a finding that it is not moral turpitude for a judge to accept a gratuity from a litigant who regularly appears before him knowing that the gratuity is being given because of the judge's official position with respect to that litigant. FERREN, Associate Judge, concurring: I join in the opinion of the court. I continue to believe, however, that the statute mandating disbarment for conviction of an offense involving moral turpitude, D.C.Code § 11-2503(a) (1981), does not preclude reinstatement pursuant to D.C. App.R. XI, § 21(2), upon a showing of rehabilitation and competence to practice law after the expiration of at least five years from the effective date of the disbarment. In re Kerr, 424 A.2d 94, 99 (D.C.1980) (Ferren, J., dissenting); see In re Wolff, 511 A.2d 1047 (D.C.1986) (en banc).