Just because someone files an ethics complaint, we shouldn't assume anyone did anything wrong. Ethics charges get lobbed far more often than they strike home. As I often say, "sometimes, 'legal ethics' is just a brick they throw at you." So, these stories illustrate only the kinds of allegations being raised these days.
Here's news that a new ethics complaint alleges that a former justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals is doing TV ads in a judicial robe, soliciting clients for a Vioxx class action. The allegations may eventually cause her chronic pain . . . Sometimes a trial attorney is elevated to the bench and watches while her trial conduct is the subject of an appeal. Here's news of a former prosecutor and current Texas judge who sought to intervene as a witness in a death penalty appeal, apparently to justify her behavior as prosecutor and to deny charges that she withheld informaton from defense counsel. The judge was caught between a rock and a hard place: the death penalty appeal accused her of bad conduct as prosecutor, and when she stepped forward to clear her name she was accused for stepping forward to clear her name. . . . Here's news that a justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court built his own personal web site and then quickly killed it after ethical questions were raised about whether the site.