Judicial Atrocities: Judges Go Unsanctioned and Victims Left Uncompensated

Some commentators -- particularly members of the legal establishment -- think K.R.'s comments about the judiciary are over the top. They, and anybody else who believes that the lack of accountability of judges is a good thing would do well to consider the following:

The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently upheld absolute immnity for judges performing judicial acts, even when those acts violate clearly established judicial procedures. In Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349, 98 S. Ct. 1099, 55 L. Ed. 2d 331 (1978), the Court held that an Indiana state judge, who ordered the sterilization of a female minor without observing due process, could not be sued for damages.

In 1971 Judge Harold D. Sparkman, of the Circuit Court of DeKalb County, Indiana, acted on a petition filed by Ora McFarlin, the mother of fifteen-year-old Linda Spitler. McFarlin sought to have her daughter sterilized on the ground she was a "somewhat retarded" minor who had been staying out overnight with older men.

Judge Sparkman approved and signed the petition, but the petition had not been filed with the court clerk and the judge had not opened a formal case file. The judge failed to appoint anyone to represent Spitler or her interests or to look out for or protect her rights, and he did not hold a hearing on the matter before authorizing a tubal ligation. Spitler, who did not know what the operation was for, discovered she had been sterilized only after she was married. Spitler, whose married name was Stump, then sued Sparkman.

The Supreme Court ruled that Sparkman was absolutely immune because what he did was "a function normally performed by a judge," and he performed the act in his "judicial capacity." Although he may have violated state laws and procedures, he performed judicial functions that have historically been absolutely immune to civil lawsuits.

A dissenting opinion argued that Sparkman's actions were not absolutely immune simply because he sat in a courtroom, wore a robe, and signed an unlawful order. The minority opinion maintained that the conduct of a judge "surely does not become a judicial act merely on his say so. A judge is not free, like a loose cannon, to inflict indiscriminate damage whenever he announces that he is acting in his judicial capacity." That, of course, is exactly what the majority ensured he and his fellow jurists would be able to continue to do.

In another case the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the facts of any given case are irrelevant because judges could be reached for even malicious acts, only through impeachment, or removal from office.

That almost never happens and even in the rare instances in which it does occur, it does so only long after the fact, and the victims of tyrannical judicial atrocities are left without any offsetting compensation or any remedy whatsoever for their sufferings.