Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged by Mike Royko
A lawyer by profession, Virginia Martinez is also a once-a-week commentator on Channel Five. A couple of weeks ago she spoke up on behalf of a juvenile court judge Mike Royko had savaged in print. She called the judge “a capable and committed jurist.” She said Royko had presented a “distorted and slanted version of the facts” of a recent case.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The boyfriend pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 60 years in prison. Irene Taboda was declared unfit by Judge Morgan Hamilton, and her children were taken away. She entered therapy and was later allowed supervised meetings with her children. On May 1 Judge Hamilton took the next step; she said unsupervised meetings could now take place.
It began: “Do me a favor. When you have a few minutes, will you explain why in the hell you have someone like Judge Morgan Hamilton sitting in Juvenile Court?”
Royko fired back in the Tribune: “If they’re going to go on giving abused children as much respect as laboratory rats, I’m going to go on inciting public outrage. And Ms. Martinez and Channel 5 can take that and stick it in their earphones.”
“But I write one column a week, and I do one commentary a week,” Martinez tried to explain. “I’m a lawyer by profession. I’m not a journalist.”
Should a presiding judge cave in like that to a columnist? The Chicago Council of Lawyers thinks not. The CCL wrote Comerford notifying him that “there is concern that your failure to support a judge who took an unpopular position will discourage other judges from reaching difficult decisions, even if they are following the law.”
