A Judge’s Recusal and what does it mean?

 Al Ritter

Recusal is a term that has recently come to the fore front as more and more cases are being politically driven. Defense attorneys may ask for a judge to recuse themselves in a criminal or civil trial and that may either be accepted or turned down.

What it amounts to might be considered as the proverbial “fox watching the hen house.” The reason I’m saying this is that the Judge has the final say as to the recusal motion, they are the final deciding factor. They and they alone decide if the case will be heard by them whether or not there are extenuating circumstances or biased situations surrounding the case.

I think you already know which Judges I am referring to, and which cases.

Judges in the Trump trials that have refused to recuse themselves even though they have very clear biases and past history are clearly in ethical violations. Sadly in those states there are no state laws that stop such actions. Some states have passed laws that stop rogue Judges from ruling on their own ethical violations, but they are few a far between.

Judge Engoron is absolutely the worst violator, but Judge Merchan runs a close second. Neither accepted a motion of recusal and have both seemingly decided the cases based on their political bias. Long gone is an unbiased case in our court system.

30 years ago cases were supposedly decided by an unbiased Judge, but as the years go on there is no such thing as blind justice, everything in this decade is decided on political preference.

In my opinion there should be some sort of civilian oversight on Judge Recusal motions, and base it on the Judge’s overall ratings made by civilians.  In other words if that Judge has an unfavorable rating outcome by the public a recusal request should be handled much differently than a favorable rating.

A Judge turning down a recusal request should be viewed the same way that a Police Department reviews a justifiable shooting report.

Recusal in law:

https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/how-does-judicial-recusal-happen.html