Court Opinion

ID: 9618373
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:11:44.692029+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:10:01.889899
License: Public Domain

KAREN NELSON MOORE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I join Judge Merritt’s excellent opinion in full, and I write separately to address Getsy’s judicial bias claim. I believe that Bracy v. Gramley, 520 U.S. 899, 117 S.Ct. 1793, 138 L.Ed.2d 97 (1997), has far more bearing on the case before us than the majority lets on.
In Bracy, the Supreme Court concluded that the district court abused its discretion by refusing to permit Bracy to undertake discovery. Id. at 909, 117 S.Ct. 1793. Evidence came to light that Bracy’s trial judge had accepted bribes, and although there was no evidence that the trial judge accepted a bribe in Bracy’s case, Bracy alleged that his lawyer, a former associate of the trial judge, agreed not to object or otherwise interfere with a prompt trial so that Bracy’s case could proceed quickly and camouflage bribe negotiations for a case to be tried later. Id. at 907-08, 117 S.Ct. 1793. The Court acknowledged that “[i]t may well be ... that petitioner will be unable to obtain evidence sufficient to support a finding of actual judicial bias in the trial of his case,” but concluded that the specificity of Bracy’s allegations combined with the circumstantial evidence linking Bracy’s lawyer to the corrupt trial judge was sufficient to warrant discovery. Id. at 908-09, 117 S.Ct. 1793.
Similarly, in this case, Getsy has specific evidence of circumstances raising the possibility of bias—specifically, evidence that Judge McKay socialized with Prosecutor Rice during the trial and that Judge McKay was charged for drunk driving, raising the possibility that Judge McKay curried favor with the prosecutor’s office in order to garner favorable treatment during his criminal prosecution, cf. Thompkins v. Cohen, 965 F.2d 330, 332 (7th Cir.1992) (noting that a defense lawyer may act out of self-interest rather than in the defendant’s interest when the lawyer is under criminal investigation), or because of his relationship with Prosecutor Rice, who might be both a close friend and a potential witness in the judge’s criminal case. Indeed, Judge McKay took the bench the day after his arrest without informing the defense of what had happened, raising the likelihood of further impropriety well above the speculative level. Just as in Bracy, Getsy has not been able to prove how these improprieties prejudiced him directly, but has made specific allegations that can only be proven or disproven with further evidentiary development, and I would conclude that, just as in Bracy, the district court’s decision to deny Getsy an opportunity for further evidentiary development was an abuse of discretion.
*328The majority makes much of evidence that Judge McKay was prosecuted by a special prosecutor from another county, but this evidence does not show when the special prosecutor took over the case and under what circumstances, actually highlighting the need for further evidentiary development. The state courts denied this opportunity to Getsy at every turn, and I respectfully dissent from the majority’s decision to deny him this opportunity yet again.