The American ideal of a judge is embodied in "Lady Justice." She stands tall, a bit aloof and blind-folded — so she can be impartial. She also is holding a pair of scales for balancing the evidence.
The last thing citizens want is for Lady Justice to jump down and begin jawing and wrestling with those before her. But that's what Third District Judge Leslie Lewis was seen doing recently on the Web site YouTube. Instead of taking the high road with a man in her courtroom, she rolled up her sleeves and decided to grapple. She wanted to show him who was boss.
Now Utah voters have shown Lewis who is the real boss. They've shown her the door. Such antics may play well in television dramas, where jawing and shouting have created a mini-industry of courtroom shows at night and Judge Judy-style programs during the day. But in real life, wrangling does not wear as well. People want to feel they are before someone who has decorum. They want a grown-up in the courtroom.
The sad thing is, by most accounts, Lewis was not a bad jurist. By and large her decisions were well-reasoned. Her schoolyard episode broadcast on YouTube, however, prompted others with anecdotal evidence to come forward with complaints. One involved Lewis offering to take 10 years off the sentence of a sex offender on the sly.
Utahns demand more than judgments from their judges. They also expect those judgments to be handed out with grace and high-mindedness. Lewis said she created the courtroom scene because she didn't want to lose control. The fact she felt the need to get down in the mud shows control already was gone.
She becomes the third judge ousted by Utah voters since 1985. Some have argued that Utah judges get too much of a pass when it comes to accountability, but the booting of Lewis shows that Utahns are indeed monitoring them and will take action against them at the ballot box if their conduct proves to be unacceptable. And with new technology, it is no longer a case of "he said, she said." It is a case of "cue the video." Judges, like everyone else, no longer have a safe haven for acting out. They, too, will be judged.