Lecture to Black At-Home Dad Requires New Sentence; Irked Ex-Judge Says More
Although an irritated Wisconsin judge apparently didn’t intend his lecture to an African-American stay-at-home dad to reflect any racial bias, phrases such as “baby mama” and “you guys” require that the convicted cocaine dealer be resentenced, a state appellate court has ruled in a 2-1 decision.
The decision today further irked the judge, who is now an assistant U.S. attorney in Milwaukee, and he described it as a “legally incorrect and shameful” effort to appear politically correct on the part of the appeals court, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The appellate ruling concerns a August 2007 courtroom lecture by then-Milwaukee Circuit Judge Joseph Wall to defendant Landray Harris, 22. Harris, who had no prior record, had been convicted of possession of cocaine with intent to deliver and being a party to the crime after entering a guilty plea, the Wisconsin newspaper says.
Asked by the judge at the sentencing hearing whether he was working, Harris explained that he was taking care of his then 2-year-old daughter while the girl’s mother both worked and attended college. At that point, Wall spouted off, according to an Associated Press recap of the appellate court decision, saying, in part: “Mr. Harris sits at home, gets high while his baby mama works and goes to school. I swear there’s a club where these women get together and congregate.”
Although the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals doesn’t think Wall intended to be offensive or stereotype the defendant, “What concerns us is the reasonable perception of an African-American defendant, or an observer, that the sentence was imposed at least in part because of race,” the majority explains in its written opinion.
A concurring judge also criticized Wall’s “sarcastic and demeaning” comments as contrary to the Code of Judicial Conduct; a dissenting judge said no new sentencing hearing is required, because there was no racial subtext in Wall’s remarks.
Contacted by the Milwaukee paper, Wall castigated the two-judge majority in an e-mail, saying that his comments were taken out of context and that he didn’t make—or intend to make—any race-based criticism of Harris. He also cited a lengthy record of working with and on behalf of African-Americans as evidence that he is not racially biased.
“The comments, reasoning, and conclusion of these two judges are legally incorrect and shameful, and are a transparent stretch to appear politically correct at a politically correct moment,” Wall writes in an e-mail response to a Journal Sentinel reporter’s request for comment on the appellate decision.
Wall had sentenced Harris to two years in prison followed by three years of supervision; his trial lawyer, Christopher Smith, had suggested probation. Smith tells the Milwaukee newspaper that he suggested an appeal because Wall said during sentencing that Harris possessed far more cocaine than he, in fact, did.
