Here's an update on Judge Plough, the Ohio jurist who jailed a public defender for five hours because he failed to prepare a case for trial within twenty-fours hours of being assigned to it.
On Friday, Judge Plough held a hearing and (not surprisingly) concluded that he was correct to have punished the public defender. He ordered the lawyer to pay a fine of $100, but stayed the order pending an appeal.
At the hearing the judge asserted that the public defender should have prepared for trial by interviewing all of the witnesses during his lunch break. The judge thought that the twenty minute meeting that the lawyer had with his client that morning was sufficient, because it 's "probably all the time you're going to spend with a client." Judge Plough told the lawyer: "I wasn't asking you to do anything unlawful. I was asking you to try a case."
Wow. So in Ohio public defenders are expected to spend twenty minutes talking with a client and spend a single lunch break speaking with all of the relevant witnesses. Judge Plough perhaps wished for such inadequate preparation by defense counsel while he was a prosecutor for twelve years, but it's hard to see how such preparation would pass muster as sufficiently diligent under the ethics rules. So you're right, Judge Plough, you weren't asking the lawyer to do something illegal; it was only unethical.
If anyone should be sanctioned here, it's Judge Plough. Under Canon 3(b)(5), a judge must perform judicial duties without prejudice or bias. Given that Judge Plough has taken punitive actions against public defenders in the past, it seems worth questioning whether the judge is capable of the kind of objectivity that the judicial code requires. Indeed, it's hard to imagine Judge Plough imposing sanctions against a prosecutor under similar circumstances.