Winnebago County judge suspended for 7 days after making inappropriate comments, showing gun

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A Winnebago County circuit court judge has been suspended from office for seven days after making inappropriate comments during several hearings and showing his handgun in the courtroom.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court announced its decision on Tuesday in the Wisconsin Judicial Commission‘s case against Judge Scott Woldt, who has served as a Winnebago County judge since 2004.

The opinion said Woldt admitted to all of the facts alleged in the commission’s complaint, and he agreed that he had violated the Code of Judicial Conduct. The complaint detailed six incidents in which Woldt violated the code, which were summarized in the high court’s opinion. Among the allegations:

• In February 2009, Woldt made comments to a victim in a domestic-abuse case, including telling her, “I’m just sick and tired of victims coming in here and they call the cops when they need ’em but then later on they come and say: Oh, no, this person’s an angel.”
• In May 2015, Woldt interrupted defense counsel for a man faced with a charge for sexually assaulting a minor and described the 13-year-old as a “so-called victim.”
• In June 2015, Woldt denied a postconviction motion and added, “I would love to grant this motion, I would love to have a trial on this issue, I’d love that he get found guilty, and I’d love to give him a year in jail for wasting my time today. I would love to do that, but unfortunately I can’t.”
• The day after the previous incident, Woldt gave two victims of a burglary a “rather lengthy soliloquy” about courthouse security and took out his handgun while he was talking, which he had been legally carrying concealed.
• In January 2016, Woldt showed his gun to a group of high school students who were visiting his courtroom during a Government Day event, again while discussing courthouse security.
• In April 2016, Woldt interrupted a cross-examination, telling counsel “there’s a thin line between being an advocate and being a ‘dick’ – thin line – and you’re blurring it” and that he didn’t want to play games.

Although Woldt stipulated to the misconduct, the opinion said he took issue with the commission’s descriptions of the incidents and thought they failed to acknowledge the context in which they happened. For example, he said he was trying to show empathy to the burglary victims by showing them his handgun, not intimidate the defendant, and characterized his comments about the defendant in the May 2015 incident as an “impulsive reaction.”

The Judicial Conduct Panel recommended a punishment of suspension without pay for seven to 21 days. The opinion said Woldt had a lot of mitigating factors, such as his time on the bench and no previous formal complaints against him. The panel also noted that three of the incidents occurred within a week, which Woldt described as a “tumultuous time” for his family.

7-day suspension punishment for conduct causing ‘detrimental impact’

Five of the seven justices participated in the decision. Justices Ann Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky formed the majority. Justices Rebecca Bradley and Pat Roggensack concurred in part but dissented to the majority’s conclusions about the two incidents in which Woldt took out his gun (see below).

All the justices classified Woldt’s misconduct as serious, and they said it had a “significant detrimental impact” on the public’s view of the judiciary.

“Five of the six incidents occurred during case proceedings in open court,” the opinion said. “All of the incidents have certainly had a negative effect on the public’s respect for the integrity, fairness, and competency of the judiciary.”

The justices determined that a seven-day suspension was the appropriate punishment for Woldt’s misconduct, saying the short suspension was necessary to assure the public that judges will treat them with dignity, fairness and respect in the courtroom.

“(W)e conclude that a seven-day suspension will be sufficient to ensure that there will not be a repetition of this misconduct by Judge Woldt,” the opinion said. “We remind him and the other judges in this state that how justice is dispensed is often just as important as the substance of the legal ruling.”

The suspension will begin on Aug. 2. A staff member in Winnebago County’s Branch II said Woldt was out of the office on Tuesday. The Wisconsin Law Journal left a message with his office seeking comment on the decision.

Disagreement on punishment for gun incidents

While all of the participating justices were in agreement about the length of Woldt’s suspension, Justices Rebecca Bradley and Pat Roggensack concluded that he hadn’t violated the Judicial Code of Conduct when he displayed his handgun in the courtroom.

Bradley wrote a partial dissent that said the three-justice majority ignored and distorted the text of the judicial code to “justify a legally unsupportable” finding of misconduct when Woldt displayed his gun in the courtroom.

“This court should be wary of suspending a judge elected by the people, thereby temporarily subverting the will of the people, particularly when part of the basis for such discipline rests on three Justices regarding his conduct as politically incorrect,” Bradley wrote.

The majority acknowledged that Woldt was authorized to carry a concealed weapon, but they said that didn’t resolve the question of whether his conduct during those two incidents was inappropriate.

“A judge who displays a personal gun as a ‘prop’ during a court proceeding and then immediately threatens to use it to kill the defendant if he ever broke into the judge’s residence is not demonstrating the integrity of the judiciary, and is not ‘promot[ing] public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary,'” the majority wrote.

In both incidents, the majority found that Woldt had no reason to show his gun, and by doing so, he was not conducting himself in a reasoned manner. Follow @WLJReporter