Prosecutor Complains of ‘Being Roasted in Effigy’ by Angry Judge
A Michigan judge censured for displaying a “severe attitude” and setting excessive bail is facing a new misconduct investigation.
Judge Norene Redmond is accused of humiliating a police officer and prosecutor in a new complaint filed with the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission, report the Detroit Free Press and Macomb Daily.
The complaint by the police chief of Eastpointe and the Macomb County chief prosecutor says Redmond attempted to taunt and humiliate their employees after she dismissed a domestic violence prosecution in March. The complaining witness in the case had failed to show up and Redmond questioned whether the victim had been subpoenaed properly.
After she dismissed the case, Redmond asked each of the jurors to tell what they would have been doing that day if they didn’t have to be in court.
Assistant prosecutor Stephen Steinhardt claims that Redmond “used her state-given power to taunt and humiliate the parties as part of her temper tantrum against a policy.” In his complaint to the commission, Steinhardt writes that the judge’s action “came across very clearly as an attempt to degrade and belittle the police and prosecutor. … In effect, I was being roasted in effigy.”
Redmond maintains the complaint is unfounded and is an attempt to derail her candidacy for a new term in the Aug. 5 primary election.
“The good old boys have come out into the sunlight with this quote-unquote surprise that is nothing more than a dirty election-eve tactic,” she told the Free Press.
The incident occurred about a month after the Michigan Supreme Court censured Redmond partly because she displayed “a severe attitude” toward witnesses and “a controversial manner or tone in addressing litigants or witnesses.”
