Arrogant and sarcastic' justice of the peace suspended. Click here.
Arrogant and sarcastic' justice of the peace suspended
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It’s better than nothing.
For arrogantly treating his traffic court like his personal fiefdom where an unrepresented defendant was mocked and an entire docket of cases thrown out because he was kept waiting just over a minute, justice of the peace Alfred “Budd” Johnston has been slapped with a seven-day suspension without pay.
But it’s far short of the 30-day suspension recommended at his disciplinary hearing last month.
The Justices of the Peace Review Council upheld two complaints against the Old City Hall JP: that he was “arrogant and sarcastic” when courier Alexander Leaf appeared before him without a lawyer on Nov. 22, 2012 to fight a charge of driving with a handheld device; and that he abused his position by dismissing an afternoon session of 68 charges on Dec. 4, 2012 because the prosecutor was one minute and 10 seconds late.
“The misconduct in this case was serious,” justice of the peace Maurice Hudson said in reading the panel’s decision Tuesday morning. “It struck at the heart of the administration of justice and in the public confidence attached to it. Warnings, reprimands, education or treatment are simply insufficient or inapplicable to remedy the misconduct.”
For most citizens who don’t run afoul of the law, the presiding justice of the peace in provincial offences court is the only face of the justice system that they will encounter. At least on these two occasions in 2012, that face was condescending, impatient and rude.
On Nov. 22, 2012, Leaf was trying to argue that his charge should be dismissed because it violated his constitutional right to have a speedy hearing but kept referring to the relevant Charter decision as “Ascot” rather than the proper “Askov.”
The panel found Johnston sarcastically mocked the courier’s pronunciation and “feigned ignorance” of the case. Less than two weeks later, the JP Hudson had a hissy fit when he took the bench for the afternoon session at Old City Hall only to find the Crown was still not present.
The prosecutor, in the hall dealing with defendants, was paged to the courtroom, but the system wasn’t working. Someone offered to go out and get him, but Johnston refused.
Instead, 70 seconds after taking his seat on the bench, he dismissed the 62 defendants on the list that afternoon, declaring the prosecutor was “too late.”
“His Worship’s actions were hasty, intemperate and lacked proportionality,” the panel ruled. “It struck at the very core of the public’s confidence in the administration of justice.”
You would think Johnston would know better.
Unlike many of his patronage colleagues, this JP actually has a legal background: He was a prosecutor himself before his appointment in 2003. And until these two episodes, he’d never had a complaint before the council. At his guilty plea last month, he blamed a long list of woes at the time, including stress and depression due to the breakup of his 35-year marriage and complications from his diabetes.
His lawyer had told the hearing Johnston is undergoing counselling and should be given a warning and a reprimand since he plans to retire next summer and the end of his career would be tainted by a suspension.
But the council disagreed. A mere tongue lashing wouldn’t send the right message — especially when Johnston didn’t show any remorse before his public hearing began. More than a year after treating Leaf so despicably, he finally apologized in a letter he sent to the council just two months ago: “I was rude and sarcastic and showed you far less patience than you were owed as a self-represented litigant,” he admitted.
Yet after treating the public so badly, Johnston still expected taxpayers to foot his legal bills. The disciplinary panel turned him down, refusing to award costs because of the “gravity” of his misconduct.
“The case before this panel falls within the extremes of the spectrum of cases that come before the Justices of the Peace Review Council,” the panel ruled.
But not extreme enough, it seems, to warrant a 30-day suspension.
Johnston sat stone-faced as the 10-page decision was read and declined to comment as he left. Gloria left with him; fired and suspended also for harassing real law graduates. He will now be benched for seven days starting Sept. 8.
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